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Israel's policies and actions in its ongoing occupation and administration of the Palestinian territories have drawn accusations that it is committing the crime of apartheid. Leading Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have said that the totality and severity of the human rights violations against the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and by some in Israel proper, amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid. Israel and some of its Western allies have rejected the accusation, with Israel and others often labeling the charge antisemitic.[2][3][4][5][6]
Comparisons between Israel–Palestine and South African apartheid were prevalent in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.[7][8] Since the definition of apartheid as a crime in 2002 Rome Statute, attention has shifted to the question of international law.[9] In December 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination[10] announced commencing a review of the Palestinian complaint that Israel's policies in the West Bank amount to apartheid.[11] Soon afterward, two Israeli human rights NGOs, Yesh Din (July 2020), and B'Tselem (January 2021) issued separate reports that concluded, in the latter's words, that "the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met."[12][13][14] In April 2021, Human Rights Watch became the first major international human rights body to say Israel had crossed the threshold.[14][15] It accused Israel of apartheid, and called for prosecution of Israeli officials under international law, calling for an International Criminal Court investigation. Amnesty International issued a report with similar findings on 1 February 2022.
The accusation that Israel is committing apartheid has been supported by United Nations investigators,[16] the African National Congress (ANC),[17] several human rights groups,[18][19] and many prominent Israeli political and cultural figures.[20][21] Those who support the accusations hold that certain laws explicitly or implicitly discriminate on the basis of creed or race, in effect privileging Jewish citizens and disadvantaging non-Jewish, and particularly Arab, citizens.[22] These include the Law of Return, the 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, and many laws regarding security, freedom of movement, land and planning, citizenship, political representation in the Knesset (legislature), education and culture. The Nation-State Law, enacted in 2018, was widely condemned in both Israel and internationally as discriminatory,[23] and has also been called an "apartheid law" by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), opposition MPs, and other Arab and Jewish Israelis.[24][25] Israel and a number of Western governments and scholars, on the other hand, have rejected the charges or objected to the use of the word apartheid.[26][27] Some argue that the situation is not comparable to apartheid in South Africa, that Israel's policies are primarily driven by security considerations,[28][29] and that the accusation is factually and morally inaccurate and intended to delegitimize Israel.[30][28][31][32]
12 Israeli human rights organizations have since expressed "grave concern" about attempts to associate Amnesty's report with antisemitism, and they have rejected the Commission's failure to recognize Israel's apartheid. These organizations argue that weaponizing antisemitism to silence legitimate criticism actually undermines attempts to address rising antisemitism.Republished from Geddie, Eve (13 March 2023). "EU needs to understand the realities in the West Bank". Politico. Retrieved 19 April 2024. Eve Geddie was writing as the director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.
Amnesty's report is important and for many advocates it is affirming of what they have been stating all along is a racist regime of systemic discrimination. However, for many longstanding critics of Israel, accusations of Israeli apartheid are not new, nor is the predictable backlash against them whereby antisemitism has been weaponized by Israel and its supporters. This backlash is now been directed against Amnesty International
As Human Rights Watch noted, the first example opens the door to reflexively labeling as antisemitic human rights organizations and lawyers who argue that current Israeli government policies constitute apartheid against Palestinians
There have been a few lines of attack on Penslar, and there are thus a few issues at hand. First, there is the notion that he called Israel a regime of apartheid. & What makes the series of events at Harvard so disheartening is not that the attack on Penslar is unique but that it transparently gives the game away: There is no set of credentials that can prevent a person who is earnestly trying to do work in this space from getting sucked into the politicization and, yes, weaponization of antisemitism. This is the way that current public debates over antisemitism tend to go, in Congress and on debate stages, on social media and between friends, within families and within organizations. But when fact and understanding and nuance of the issue are all considered secondary, what gets sacrificed isn't just an individual's career or standing or time, but comprehension of the actual issue that is antisemitism.
A regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another is an apartheid regime. Israeli apartheid, which promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians, was not born in one day or of a single speech. It is a process that has gradually grown more institutionalized and explicit, with mechanisms introduced over time in law and practice to promote Jewish supremacy. These accumulated measures, their pervasiveness in legislation and political practice, and the public and judicial support they receive – all form the basis for our conclusion that the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met.
Tuesday's lengthy ANC statement accused Israel of 'crude viciousness,' comparing it to South Africa's past apartheid regime.
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