Finally, to answer the apartheid enquiry. This comparison has been made by many leaders of the ANC and anti-apartheid struggle such as Desmond Tutu & Ronnie Kasrils, the most well known Jewish South African politician. The ANC and PLO had very close links seeing themselves as both being engaged in an anti-racist universal human rights struggle(just as the government of Israel and South Africa had fraternal relations, for example, developing nuclear weapons together).

Israel bears many similarities with South Africa, both are settler states founded on the myth of an empty land. White South Africans used to ludicrously claim that the land had been empty and that Black people came afterwards attracted by the society they had created. Zionist ideology likewise has a strong strand that seeks to deny that the land was very much occupied before they turned up on the scene. (Many Jewish people saw through this, before the creation of Israel, a Rabbi who visited the area famously said – ‘The bride is beautiful, but she already has a husband’ and people such as the philosopher Martin Buber tried to put forward the idea of a binational state based on equality)

However, there is a fundamental difference. South Africa dealt with the indigenous population mainly through creating a system of domination. The South African system relied on black labour. Whereas Zionism aimed to exclude and drive out the indigenous population. Hence the history of the last 60 years has been one of ethnic cleansing, land grabs and population transfer.

All the essential features of Apartheid – exclusivity, inequality, separation, control, dependency, violations of human rights and sufferings – are an integral part of the Jewish state.

If you went to Galillee (the area of Israel where the majority of Palestinians in the country live) you would see state discrimination against the 20% of the population who are Arab (but are herded onto 2% of the land), but it would be only a whiff of apartheid.

If you were to go onto the West Bank and see the apartheid wall that is dividing people away from their land & all the mechanisms of separation related to Jewish settlements, you would get more than a whiff of apartheid.

You would see armed enclaves where one race lives with swimming pools and luxury, while another race suffers from shortages of water and economic collapse. Palestinian land is seized to make way for ‘Jew only roads’ that connect the settlements and are designed so that the Jewish settlers don’t even have to see the Palestinian inhabbitants. Meanwhile Palestinians face a regime of military checkpoints with the equivalent of a journey from Cardiff to Newport taking hours, sometimes a few days, sometimes not allowed.

This is an account from an Israeli Jewish human rights activist of the set-up in Hebron, West Bank. This is a place where the Israeli army routinely abuse thousands of Palestinians in order to defend 450 racists who occupy the choicest 20% of the town while 160,000 get the other 80% and suffer regular human rights abuses.

‘Hani, a Palestinian, lives with his family in a house near a barracks that shelters settlers. The house is like a cage; the entrance and the entire front of the house are covered with a close-meshed grill. The chicken-wire is not to keep the family inside the house, but to prevent the rotten eggs and stones thrown by the settlers from constantly damaging the windows. Hani’s sister — speaking both Arabic and English — tells of the constant attacks: as soon as she leaves her home, eggs and stones rain down on her. “You have to try and imagine what it’s like,” Yehuda says. “These people can’t even meet their friends for a coffee without it being cleared with the military and planned. Exit permits have to be issued. It’s simply not possible to maintain a group of friends here.”

Hani’s father died a year ago. Because the way into the city, through the settlers’ quarters and the “exclusively Jewish” roads, was closed to them, the family had to carry the body of their dead father through the fields to the checkpoint — on their backs. From here, a Palestinian ambulance collected him, Hani’s sister continues. Settler ambulances don’t come for their Palestinian neighbors when they are ill. The woman breaks down in tears.

The whole reality in Hebron cries out, “Why?” But Yehuda says: “This is an upside-down world. Here the answer is, ‘Why not?’ Why shouldn’t the settlers throw stones at Palestinian girls on their way to school? Why shouldn’t they break into a Palestinian house and smash everything up? Why shouldn’t they cut down trees to deprive Palestinians of their connection to the land? Why shouldn’t they take over, road by road, until the Palestinians are left with nothing?”‘

Some brief comments:

1. Yes, I see the most just solution in Israel/Palestine as abolishing all racist discrimination whether on the occupied territories or within Israel and having one state where all the people there live with equal rights. I believe that true reconcilliation can only be built on this basis of justice.

As the poet Cesaire wrote: “no race possess the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force, and there’s a place for all at the rendezvous of victory”

Our peace plan is equality, instead of discrimination on the basis of race.

You can read Rabbi Dan Cohn Sherbok, a Lampeter academic, talking about a one-state solution here in the Western Mail: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/welsh-politics/welsh-politics-news/2009/01/14/leading-welsh-rabbi-professor-dan-cohn-sherbok-says-it-s-time-for-israelis-and-palestinians-to-live-together-91466-22686609/

Sherbok’s interpretation of the conflict is different from mine, but we come to a similar conclusion as to the solution that will lead to a lasting peace.

Respected human rights activist, Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions has also recently come out in favour of the one-state solution:
http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/772

2. While a socialist, I am not a member of the Socialist Workers Party. I was at one time, around the same time as Leigh above!

3. Actually the most specific comparison I made was between the situation of Arab ‘citizens’ of Israel and the situation of discrimination faced by Catholics in Northern Ireland in the 60s that led to the Civil Rights movement there.

Though it’s more complicated as the oppression of Palestinians in Israel is linked to the wider oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories & the denial of the right of return to Palestinian refugees.

There are not 3 Palestinian people – the diaspora snd refugees, on the occupied territories and within Israel – there is one, and the dispossession has the same root the drive of the Zionist movement to create an ethnically pure state.

This is why they relentlessly drive Palestinians off their land and into ghetto’s on the occupied territories, treat Palestinians as third-class citizens in Israel & in contravention to the norms of international law deny Palestinian refugees the right to return – because this might effect the demographics of Israel – too many Arabs would mean that the State would become untenable as one based on race & have to become a democratic state of all its citizens.

4. I’m not sure what on earth Morgan Hen is on about re. courts. I can tell him that the lawyers of Pakistan have been rather more robust in challenging their government than the lawyers of Britain. And Pakistan is not a democracy!

5. There are similarities between apartheid in South Africa and Zionism in historical Palestine there also many significant differences.

6. Israel is founded upon the ethnic cleansing/exclusion of the indigenous people of Palestine.

The root of this conflict is the racism of the Israeli state that privilleges one ethnic group at the expense of the other.

Just read the latest interview with the Israeli Prime Minister who sees the solution as “maximum Jews, minimum Palestinians”

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=360533&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

The entire political establishment in Israel for the last 60 years has been obsssed by what they term the ‘demographic threat’.

In Britain such obssessing over the racial make-up of society is generally identified with the far right, in Israel it is the mainstream discourse of left and right because this is the root of the conflict

7. “Whether you like it or not Adam the human rights situation in Israel may not be perfect. But the Arabs where not butchered like the Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey or the Marsh Arabs were in Basra. Or even the Copts in Egypt.”

Nor were Black South Africans butchered like the Kurds in Iraq. Nor are Palestinians who live in Israel oppressed and butchered like Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. Nor were Catholics in Northern Ireland facing the same situation as a Tutsi in Rwanda in the 90s.

Nobody has argued that the worst attrocities in history are taking place in Israel/Palestine – though attrocities do take place.

Nevertheless Israel is a state that is clearly based on racism, and therefore I support those who campaign for an end to the racism.

Ironically it is people who refuse to acknowledge these basic facts who are prolonging the war that dehumanises oppressor and oppressed alike.

What I do find quite abhorrent is Adam Johannes making statements that Israel is a “racist state” comparable to South Africa, that is slanderous. It is not perfect and not all of us necessarily accepts Israel’s actions as right. We just try to understand it from their perspective. Adam needs to present his facts accurately and not distort the way he does. When he says that the SWP supports a secular Palestine his comments ring hollow when Respect his linked with Islamic organisations that do not believe in that. Also it is a fact that George Galloway I the past has suggested that “Progressive” movements should ally itself with Muslim movements, hardly a belief that any self respecting secularist would hold.

Whether you like it or not Adam the human rights situation in Israel may not be perfect. But the Arabs where not butchered like the Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey or the Marsh Arabs were in Basra. Or even the Copts in Egypt. What makes a country truly free are not elections, but a truly independent judiciary.

You of course would not accept that! “Capitalist courts”. Change will inly truly happen when all governments in the Middle East recognize Israel’s right to exist. Then peace will reign and Arab Israelis will truly not feel like strangers in their own land

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=8621668#post8621668

Any debater with should keep this in mind.

To be frank, during the Algerian War of Independence against French occupation and colonialism, when the Algerian resistance was criticised for it’s indiscriminate bombings they said to the French, “If you don’t like our bombs, give us your F16s, your tanks, your helicopter gunships”. I’m sure if Hamas received the same kind of weaponry that Israel receives from Britain then maybe they would fight the occupation in a more conventional way.

Hamas launched primitive rockets after Israel broke the ceasefire (that it was Israel who broke the ceasefire is something that has been admited by both Israeli politians and the UN).

Israel repeatedly failed to meet the conditions of the original ceasefire negotiated with Hamas and agree to continue it. Hamas had met its terms – not only discontinuing Hamas’ firing of rockets but pretty much clamping down on rockets fired by rival militias such as Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Between June 19, when the ceasefire was agreed and November 4, when Israel launched a military raid, breaking the ceasefire, rocket and mortar fire was effectively ended. It was Israel that failed to meet the terms of the ceasefire and repeatedly provoked Hamas with attacks, arrests and killings including targetted assassinations of Hamas leaders.

But more to the point the ceasefire was unjust and its terms shaped by the powerful. This has always been the case, during the Oslo Peace Process, Israel argued that agressively expanding settlements, checkpoints, house demolitions was not an act of war.

The ceasefire offered as an alternative to mass slaughter the slow killing by starvation through the total siege and economic blockade of Gaza include stopping medicines and medical equipment getting into the strip. It’s not really surprising that this violence of siege and blockade would engender violence in return.

Naturally, I would prefer the Palestinian resistance to be led by secular leftists, but one of the reasons Hamas rode to power was because the PLO got locked into the West-brokered fraudulent peace process that led nowhere, the Israeli’s gave the PLO a prison instead of a state and made them the guard.

Hamas are now the democratically elected leadership of the Palestinians. The reason why the West and Israel want to smash them is not because they are homophobic or mysogynistic (the West has no problem backing regimes far more vile) but because their vote represented a refusal of the Palestinians to surrender and just submit to occupation. Unlike Fatah, Hamas have proved far less malleable to being puppets of the West and collaborating with the occupation. This is why they won the Palestinian elections by a landslide, and why the West are determined to smash them – including attempts to destabilise this elected administration.

Although the Israeli response was totally disproportionate, let’s not forget that Hamas started the rocket attacks. Did they consider the population as a whole?

Someone else on another blog has made the comparison between Hamas and the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno

Even yesterday, after thousands of deaths, including amongst their own ranks, they were claiming victory. “Come back, I’ll bite your legs off”