[News] Save Israeli apartheid, says NY Times ad - echoes “separate but equal” language that white supremacists used to justify Jim Crow and segregation.

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/save-israeli-apartheid-says-new-york-times-ad 



  Save Israeli apartheid, says New York Times ad

Full-page ad from 22 September 2016 edition of /The New York Times/.

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> - 23 
September 2016

Journalist Max Blumenthal 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/max-blumenthal> tweeted 
<https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/779178651921289216> this photo 
of what he calls an “explicitly racist and quintessentially liberal 
Zionist full-page ad” in Thursday’s /New York Times./

It raises fears that within a few years – if it hasn’t occurred already 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-demographics-idUSKCN0RA1VR20150910> 
– Palestinians will outnumber Jews in historic Palestine.

The ad’s point is to argue for “separation” of Palestinians and Israelis 
into their own ethnically homogenous states to preserve a Jewish 
majority in Israel. Such separation should be quick, according to the ad 
because “in a few more years, it will be too late.”

It may well be part of the ongoing campaign 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/will-obamas-final-act-be-liquidation-palestinian-rights> 
to persuade US President Barack Obama to back a UN Security Council 
resolution endorsing the so-called two-state solution and abrogating 
basic Palestinian rights before he leaves office in January.

The ad was placed by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace. 
The think tank’s president Robert Wexler 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/robert-wexler> is a former 
congressman who in the center’s own words 
<http://centerpeace.org/about/staff/robert-wexler/> is “a leading 
proponent of Israel’s right to self-defense.”

A Hillary Clinton surrogate, Wexler testified before the Democratic 
Party’s platform drafting committee earlier this year, arguing against 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/democratic-clash-over-palestine-signals-changing-party> 
including the word “occupation” to describe the present relationship 
between Israelis and Palestinians.


    Liberal racism

The same segregationist logic also appears this week in an article in 
Israeli media by the EU’s ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/lars-faaborg-andersen>.

“All Israelis who treasure their country as a Jewish and democratic 
state should be advocating for a negotiated two-state solution,” 
Faaborg-Andersen writes in /Ynet/ 
<http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4857731,00.html>. “For 
without the prospect of an independent Palestinian state living in peace 
alongside Israel, Israel itself, for demographic reasons, is unlikely to 
remain both Jewish and democratic.”

This echoes long-standing claims that Palestinians constitute a 
“demographic threat 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/demographic-threat>” to Israel.

What it boils down to is that the very existence of Palestinians, the 
very birth of their babies, violates 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/abunimahs-justice-palestine/> Israel’s 
claimed “right” to have a specific ethno-religious composition.

In any other context, a person calling themselves a liberal would 
starkly reject such odious racism, just as mainstream liberals reject 
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/donald-trump> blanket assertions 
about various populations perceived as being non-white.

In substance, the ad’s argument is no different to claiming that the 
nominally independent Black “homelands” – bantustans 
<http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands> – created by the 
apartheid regime in the 1970s and 1980s were justified to preserve South 
Africa as a “white and democratic state.”

But good liberals saw through the racist ruse of the bantustans.

The ad also echoes the infamous “separate but equal 
<http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/separate-but-equal.html>” 
language that American white supremacists used to justify Jim Crow 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jim-crow> and segregation.


    Ethnic cleansing and apartheid

What does it mean to Palestinians for Israel to be and remain a Jewish 
majority state?

The Jewish majority liberal Zionists seek to protect was engineered 
through systematic 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/book-casts-new-light-palestines-ethnic-cleansing/8464> 
ethnic cleansing <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing> 
starting in 1947-48, followed by racist and discriminatory policies for 
the last seven decades.

This is why Israel cannot exist as a “Jewish state” 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/abunimahs-justice-palestine.html> without 
violating the rights of all Palestinians to varying degrees.

To maintain its Jewish majority and “Jewish democracy,” Israel curtails 
the rights of millions of Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens 
of Israel <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinians-israel>, 
Palestinians besieged and ghettoized in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and 
Palestinian refugees denied their right of return 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/right-return> solely because they 
are not Jewish.

Israel’s siege <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-siege> and 
repeated massacres in Gaza are at the extreme end of the spectrum of 
abuses necessary to maintain Jewish majority rule, but they are an 
essential part 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-massacre-price-jewish-state> 
of the same continuum 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/abunimahs-justice-palestine.html> that 
requires employment and housing discrimination against Palestinian 
citizens of Israel and outright land theft and ethnic cleansing in the 
Naqab (Negev) <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/negev-naqab>.

While stark in its racism, /The New York Times/ ad should nonetheless be 
welcomed as a clear admission that the so-called two-state solution has 
nothing to do with peace or justice.

“Separation” is a perfectly good translation of the Afrikaans word 
“apartheid.”


-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20160923/c52aa466/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 2016-9-22_nyt_ad.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 227319 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20160923/c52aa466/attachment.jpeg>