HRW: Israel's crime of apartheid

[Jayhawker Soule]

See Forward: Israel is committing 'crime of apartheid,' Human Rights Watch says.

I find the following to be particularly instructive and infuriating:

The HRW report emphasized that it was using “apartheid” in the strict legal sense and not as a reference to South Africa, where domination by whites drew international condemnation and spurred a successful boycott movement that pro-Palestinian activists have tried to recreate. Human Rights Watch officials say they are not equating Israel to “an apartheid state,” a term they note does not exist under international law but is common in conversational usage.

But some observers are skeptical that the public discourse will reflect such a distinction.

Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli author and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, said that applying the term to Israel was intended to malign the Jewish state and ensured that the Israeli public would ignore whatever substantive criticism was behind the Human Rights Watch analysis.

“The game of those who seek to delegitimize Israel is to latch onto the words and the images that are most reprehensible to the moral sensibilities of our time, so it’s ‘apartheid, it’s ‘colonialism,’” Halevi said. “We don’t react well to being libeled.”​

It seems to me that it is just as reasonable, if not more so, to cast Halevi's complaint as a time-tested effort to delegitimize the term 'apartheid' in an effort insulate Israel against any and all criticism.

 

[Harel13]

The Israeli police and the Supreme Court are trying Arabs who have viciously attacked Israeli Jews in recent weeks (and this is still going on every day) with regular assault and battery charges and not as hate/nationalistic-based crimes and you're worried that Israel isn't deemed enough of an apartheid state. Earlier this morning, the yeshiva in the settlement of Chomesh was destroyed by the government. Apartheid. Right. Give me a break.

 

[icehorse]

I know the following argument isn't new, but I've yet to hear a cogent refutation:

AFAIK, the Palestinians declared war on Israel the moment they democratically elected Hamas to lead them. Can "apartheid" occur during wartime? Seems incoherent to me.

 

[sun rise]

Israel especially under Netanyahu is in effect creating Muslim bantustans in the occupied territories.

And then we have the "death to Arabs" Nazi-like contingent once again proving that Jews can be as evil as Muslims.

Again, I used to be pro-Israel, very much so before the post 1973 era. No longer. A pox on both their houses - I see equality in lack of virtue from both sides there.

 

[rosends]

The Guardian and HRW: allies in the demonisation of Israel

Looks like HRW's claims don't hold water.

 

[Kooky]

The Guardian and HRW: allies in the demonisation of Israel

Looks like HRW's claims don't hold water.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) is an American non-profit pro-Israel[2] media-monitoring, research and membership organization. According to its website, CAMERA is "devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East."[3] The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to The Washington Post's coverage of Israel's Lebanon incursion", and to respond to what it considers the media's "general anti-Israel bias"

Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America - Wikipedia

CAMERA is widely regarded as a pro-Israeli lobby group that as put by journalist and author Robert I. Friedman - "CAMERA, the A.D.L., AIPAC and the rest of the lobby don't want fairness, but bias in their favor. And they are prepared to use McCarthyite tactics, as well as the power and money of pro-Israel PACs, to get whatever Israel wants."

CAMERA - SourceWatch

“We will go to war,” reads the ungrammatical email, “after we have build our army, equipped it, trained… so if you want to win this war help us build our army.”

The language, fortunately, is figurative. According to that email and others, the members of a secret cell of nationalist operatives were expected only to edit, not to explode. Their battleground in the great Israeli-Arab Narrative War would be Wikipedia, where they would heroically struggle to retake virtual territory for “accuracy and impartiality” by keeping “Israel-related articles… from being tainted by anti-Israel editors.” For instance, they’d rename the article on the “2006 Lebanon War,” making it the “2006 Israel-Hezbollah War,” thereby eliminating the calumny “that this war was conducted against Lebanon.” (Never mind the impact on Lebanon as a whole, or the fact that the Israeli government itself named that conflict the Second Lebanon War.)

Behind the clandestine Wiki-editing effort apparently stood the Committee for Accuracy on Middle East Reporting in America, CAMERA, the hawkish watch-dog group that has for years attacked what it regards as biased reporting on Israel in the mainstream media.

The Mideast Editing Wars

 

[lewisnotmiller]

The Guardian and HRW: allies in the demonisation of Israel

Looks like HRW's claims don't hold water.

Perhaps not, but even if they did, I'm not sure Camera UK would be announcing it.

 

[Kooky]

AFAIK, the Palestinians declared war on Israel the moment they democratically elected Hamas to lead them.

This did not happen the way you describe it, as far as I can tell:

Hamas won 76 seats, excluding four won by independents supporting Hamas, and Fatah only 43.[192] The election was judged by international observers to have been "competitive and genuinely democratic". The EU [...] promised to maintain its financial support. [...] three months later, in violating of its core principles regarding free elections, it abruptly froze financial assistance to the Hamas-led government, following the example set by the US and Canada. It undertook to instead channel funds directly to people and projects, and pay salaries only to Fatah members, employed or otherwise.[198]

In early February 2006, Hamas offered Israel a ten-year truce "in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem,"[202] and recognition of Palestinian rights including the "right of return".[203] Mashal added that Hamas was not calling for a final end to armed operations against Israel, and it would not impede other Palestinian groups from carrying out such operations.

Hamas - Wikipedia

Hamas has also stopped calling for the destruction of Israel since its 2017 declaration, instead using the term "liberation":
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

 

[icehorse]

That didn't happen?

Hamas Covenant - Wikipedia.

 

[Kooky]

Hamas Covenant - Wikipedia.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

 

[icehorse]

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

Indeed. We have an extremely complex situation. Throwing around terms like "apartheid" are an attempt to make things simpler than they are.

 

[Kooky]

Indeed. We have an extremely complex situation. Throwing around terms like "apartheid" are an attempt to make things simpler than they are.

Apartheid was "an extremely complex situation", too. It only seems simple in hindsight, after people have written it off as one of the monikers of evil, without knowing much about how it functioned or what it did to the people who lived in it. In this, our current treatment "apartheid" is arguably not too dissimilar to how people object when we accurately call fascistoid politics "fascist" because they have been taught to use the term as a generic moniker for politics they don't approve of, rather than a technical term with a definite meaning.

There are no heroes or villains in history or politics, but that does not mean that we can't still stand on moral grounds to condemn bad systems that hurt people and create widespread suffering and injustice. The current system in Palaestina is no doubt one such system. And while I don't consider it a particularly sensible use of my time to get into one of these Middle Eastern politics slapfights that seem to be one of the Internet's long and proud traditions, I think we can still be able to judge the current situation by the countless lives it has warped, corrupted, or ended.

 

[InChrist]

I think considering the ongoing situation Israel has every reason to call the charge of “apartheid” an inaccurately false libel.


“Now compare that description to Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in the 1990s, most Palestinians are governed by the Palestinian Authority. This body was set up with international encouragement, and the Palestinians willingly agreed to adopt a system in which they gained partial autonomy while granting Israel overall security control. Given the many wars Israel had faced in the decades previously — and since — this arrangement made eminent sense as a stepping stone along the road to a more permanent solution.

Nevertheless, the HRW report slams Israel — essentially for keeping its citizens safe.”


“The lengthy report makes only passing reference to the ongoing threats faced by Israel, by focusing on Israel’s response to the numerous Gaza-based terror groups which periodically fire hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory. It completely overlooks the threat posed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah, located primarily in Lebanon and Syria.

A quick search of the report for words like “terror” and “rocket” shows that HRW totally fails to describe Palestinian terrorist actions against Israel.

In addition, the report totally fails to take into account the longstanding enmity between Hamas, the terror group which rules the coastal territory, and Fatah, which rules the Palestinian population of the West Bank, and what that means for peace negotiations with the Jewish state.

Instead, the reports casts Israel as solely responsible for the lack of a resolution to the decades-old conflict, and characterizes its desire to keep the lid on violent Arab uprisings as “apartheid” — a stunning inversion of reality. Why, at the very least, are journalists not asking HRW how Israel’s basic security needs can be met?”


Media Fail to Ask Tough Questions After Preposterous HRW Claim About Israeli "Apartheid" | Honest Reporting

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The Israeli police and the Supreme Court are trying Arabs who have viciously attacked Israeli Jews in recent weeks ...

Yes, they are.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The Guardian and HRW: allies in the demonisation of Israel

Looks like HRW's claims don't hold water.

No, it looks like selection bias.

 

[Kooky]

Media Fail to Ask Tough Questions After Preposterous HRW Claim About Israeli "Apartheid" | Honest Reporting

Maybe it's just me, but I find myself getting immediately suspicious when a website calls itself "Honest Reporting".

 

[Harel13]

Yes, they are.

And? Or are you deeply bothered that Israel dares to give proper, yet incredibly unobjective trials to criminals?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

And? Or are you deeply bothered that Israel dares to give proper, yet incredibly unobjective trials to criminals?

Please do not put words in my mouth. It's simply dishonest.

 

[InChrist]

Maybe it's just me, but I find myself getting immediately suspicious when a website calls itself "Honest Reporting".

I’d say suspicion is wise, as well as further investigation and checking out all sources, sides and perspectives.

 

[Kooky]

I’d say suspicion is wise, as well as further investigation and checking out all sources, sides and perspectives.

Then let me just say that this opinion piece's title is somewhat incongruous with the body of its article (or perhaps overly self critical of itself).