[News] Landmark UN report backs Israel boycott - Israel guilty of crimes of apartheid as defined in international law

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/landmark-un-report-backs-israel-boycott 



  Landmark UN report backs Israel boycott

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> - 15 
March 2017

A new UN report offers explicit backing for the Palestinian-led boycott, 
divestment and sanctions <https://bdsmovement.net/call> (BDS) campaign 
to end Israeli apartheid <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/apartheid> 
and support a just peace.

The landmark report’s endorsement of boycotts, economic sanctions and 
other grassroots initiatives comes at a moment when Israel is 
desperately attempting to criminalize and suppress international support 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/lobby-group-laments-israel-travel-ban-victory-bds> 
for Palestinian rights.

Published by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia 
(ESCWA), the report concludes that “Israel has established an apartheid 
regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”

It finds “beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies 
and practices that constitute the crimes of apartheid” as defined in 
international law.

It urges national governments to “support boycott, divestment and 
sanctions activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives.”


    Racial regime

The UN report – “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and 
the Question of Apartheid 
<https://www.unescwa.org/publications/israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-occupation>” 
– is not a comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/south-africa>, but an evaluation of 
Israel’s practices against the 1973 International Convention on the 
Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid 
<http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html> and other key human rights 
laws.

The convention defines the crime of apartheid as “inhuman acts committed 
for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial 
group of persons over any other racial group of persons and 
systematically oppressing them.”

International law defines racial discrimination to mean “any 
distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, 
descent or ethnic or national origin,” the report notes.

The Zionist movement’s “claim to Palestine as the exclusive homeland of 
the Jewish people rests on an expressly racial conception of both 
groups,” the report states. “This means that Jews and Palestinians are 
‘racial groups’ ” for the purposes of applying the apartheid convention.

“The mission of preserving Israel as a Jewish state has inspired or even 
compelled Israel to pursue several general racial policies,” the report 
says.

These include “demographic engineering, in order to establish and 
maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority in Israel.”

This encompasses the ethnic cleansing 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing> of almost 800,000 
Palestinians in 1948, the denial of the right of return 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/right-return> for Palestinian 
refugees and “a range of other policies designed to restrict the size of 
the Palestinian population.”

Although they can vote, the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinians-israel> – about a 
fifth of the state’s citizens – are also systematically restricted, 
while full rights are granted only to Jews.

Meanwhile, Israel’s discriminatory “Law of Return” automatically grants 
citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world, “while denying 
citizenship even to those Palestinians who have a documented history of 
residency in the country.”


    Sham democracy

“As in any racial democracy,” the report argues, “such a majority allows 
the trappings of democracy – democratic elections, a strong legislature 
– without threatening any loss of hegemony by the dominant racial group.”

In a stark illustration of the racial logic espoused by Israel’s 
leadership, the country’s defense minister Avigdor Lieberman 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/avigdor-lieberman> this week 
reiterated the view that the Jewish state should eventually be 
ethnically cleansed of virtually all Palestinians.

“There is no reason why Sheikh Raed Salah, Ayman Odeh, Basel Ghattas or 
Haneen Zoabi should continue to be Israeli citizens,” he said 
<http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/1.777115> in reference to 
prominent Palestinian politicians, three of them members of Israel’s 
parliament, the Knesset 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-knesset>.

Israel prohibits anyone from using its ostensibly democratic system to 
challenge the regime’s fundamentally racist set-up. Its Basic Law – the 
closest thing that Israel has to a written constitution – bars parties 
from running on a platform that explicitly or implicitly includes 
“negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and 
democratic state.”

“Voting rights lose their significance in terms of equal rights when a 
racial group is legally banned from challenging laws that perpetuate 
inequality,” the report states. “Israeli law bans organized Palestinian 
opposition to Jewish domination, rendering it illegal and even seditious.”

This is not the first analysis to find that Israeli policies meet the 
legal definition of apartheid: a 2009 study 
<http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/media-briefs/democracy-goverance-and-service-delivery/report-israel-practicing-apartheid-in-palestinian-territories> 
by South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council concluded that Israel 
practices apartheid in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But the new UN study goes much further, finding that Israel’s apartheid 
system dominates the entire Palestinian people. It concludes that the 
“strategic fragmentation” of the Palestinian people into separate 
territorial units and legal regimes – as citizens with limited rights 
within Israel, as stateless persons in the West Bank and Gaza, as 
“permanent residents” in East Jerusalem 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem>, or as refugees and 
exiles with no right of return – “is the principle method by which 
Israel imposes an apartheid regime.”

The 2009 study was overseen by political scientist Virginia Tilley 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/virginia-tilley>. Tilley and the 
eminent <http://www.global.ucsb.edu/orfaleacenter/fellows/Falk.html> 
professor of international law Richard Falk 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/richard-falk> are co-authors of the 
new UN report.


    Ending a “criminal enterprise”

Governments have a legal obligation to act immediately to end the crime 
of apartheid. This includes refusing to recognize an apartheid regime as 
lawful, refusing to aid a state in maintaining such a regime and 
cooperating with UN bodies and other states to end it.

The report urges UN bodies to act, and even suggests seeking a formal 
opinion from the International Court of Justice 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/international-court-justice> on 
Israel’s apartheid system. National governments should also back BDS and 
allow “criminal prosecutions of Israeli officials demonstrably connected 
with the practices of apartheid.”

But given that states and official bodies are not likely to take the 
lead, the report recognizes that “civil society institutions and 
individuals have a moral duty to use the instruments at their disposal 
to raise awareness of this ongoing criminal enterprise.”

They must use these tools to “exert pressure on Israel to dismantle 
apartheid structures and negotiate in good faith for a lasting peace 
that acknowledges the rights of Palestinians under international law and 
makes it possible for the two peoples to live together on the basis of 
real equality.”


    Transnational movement

Recalling an earlier era, the report notes that research and legal 
analyses by UN bodies – such as the United Nations Center Against 
Apartheid – were critical resources for civil society activists in their 
efforts aimed at “legitimating boycott, divestments and sanctions, and 
contributing to the overall formation of a transnational movement 
against apartheid in South Africa.”

One of the report’s key aims today is to encourage “practical measures 
in accordance with international law to exert pressure on Israel to 
dismantle its apartheid regime.”

“Efforts should be made to broaden support for boycott, divestment and 
sanctions initiatives among civil society actors,” the report recommends.

Private sector firms should be “reminded of their legal, moral and 
political responsibility to sever ties with commercial ventures and 
projects that directly or indirectly aid and abet the apartheid regime.”

All of this confirms the reasoning and tactics of the Palestinian-led 
BDS movement – support for which even the staunchly pro-Israel European 
Union 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/eu-recognizes-right-boycott-israel> 
has belatedly recognized as a democratic right.


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