Apartheid
Apartheid
Apartheid
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18<br />
recognizes these people as Palestinians. Because of its ‘Law of Return’, however, Israel has a<br />
potential majority of Jews, which it is now trying frantically to mobilize through immigration<br />
and naturalization. I shall argue that the ‘Law of Return’ is an ethnicist law, an apartheid law,<br />
as long as it remains exclusively for the benefit of Jews. And so it does. Palestinians chased<br />
out of Palestine, including what is today the state of Israel, have through a United Nations<br />
resolution been given the right to return, and the right to compensation for their losses by the<br />
state of Israel, which, however, refuses to act upon it. Israeli law thus contradicts international<br />
law and favors ethnic cleansing, in particular of Palestinians, and in favor of Jews.<br />
Around two thirds of all Jews worldwide today are not Israeli citizens, but all Jews<br />
who live in Israel must have Israeli passports. A Jew who lives in Israel or in the Occupied<br />
Territories cannot leave the country unless s/he has an Israeli passport, whether s/he likes it or<br />
not. Of course the passport is issued in less than an hour and s/he may give up his/her passport<br />
if s/he wishes to leave the country for good. The ethnicist point of all this is that Jews are not<br />
allowed to be foreign residents of Israel.<br />
Israel could slip from apartheid into domestic oppression, from minority to majority<br />
rule soon, because it is presently engaged in something tantamount to ethnic cleansing as well<br />
as energetic efforts to lure and entice, and as we saw to some extent even to force Jews and<br />
other non-Arabs, or at least non-Palestinian Arabs (the two latter groups as an alternative<br />
ethnic underclass to replace the troublesome natives), to immigrate to Israel and, especially, to<br />
the illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and to become Israeli citizens<br />
there, whilst Israeli authorities, paramilitary and civilian groups collectively, indiscriminately,<br />
illegally, and brutally pressure Palestinians to leave. Many Jews abroad (and many non-Jews<br />
too) are supporting this practice, for instance with massive financial or military aid, but the<br />
Palestinian resistance is also formidable and it is also receiving aid, though only very little<br />
compared to what the Jews are receiving.<br />
But it is not only support and money that counts, and with regard to the<br />
majority/minority question they do not count at all. The Palestinians clearly still warrant being<br />
labelled the ‘majority’ in terms of the conflict between them and the Israeli Jews. Since the<br />
establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Israeli Jews have in fact never been a majority in<br />
relation to the Palestinians. The ‘Law of Return’ is illegitimate from the perspective of<br />
international law and from the perspective of secular morality as well as within any religious<br />
ethic other than the Jewish one, and the latter only if it is interpreted in a Zionist, i.e.<br />
ethnocentric and/or ethnicist manner. The state of Israel’s ‘Law of Return’, therefore, is part<br />
and parcel of a crime against humanity. Likewise, the discriminatory use of the institution of<br />
citizenship coupled with military occupation and its denial of citizenship and citizens’ rights<br />
(and even basic human rights) to the vast majority of indigenous Palestinians by the Jewish<br />
state are from this perspective also part of a crime against humanity, but additionally they<br />
amount to some very convenient window-dressing, intended to create false impressions,<br />
especially the one that Jews are already a majority and Palestinians a minority, and that Israel<br />
is a democratic state, while attempting by means of ethnic cleansing and ethnicist<br />
repopulation to turn these lies into reality on the ground. Once the Palestinians have been<br />
transformed into a safe minority, democracy shall flourish. At any time since 1967, however,<br />
democracy could have been introduced as a franchise for the Palestinians presently under<br />
military occupation, but apparently the Israeli elites and their powerful allies do not wish to<br />
make this reality, at least not until at least a couple of million of them have left, been expelled<br />
or killed, and then replaced by Jews and/or other non-Palestinians from abroad, if the current<br />
decision-makers, above all the Israeli and US elites, get their way. Then, the Palestinians<br />
could never win nor possibly even swing an election.<br />
Alternatively, a more South African-like ‘Bantustan’ solution is being pursued by<br />
Israelis, and by the Americans in particular. This, as we will see, became particularly clear in<br />
the Oslo Accords, as well as in the 2000 Camp David negotiations, and in the current<br />
implementation of the ‘Road Map’ for ‘peace’. Since the vast majority of Palestinians refuse