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<h1 id="reader-title">Save Israeli apartheid, says New York
Times ad</h1>
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<article class="node-18026 node node-blog view-mode-full
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<figure class="file file-image file-image-jpeg
media-element file-figure figure__right" id="file-41511"><source
media="(min-width: 72rem)"><img
moz-reader-center="true" title="" alt=""
src="cid:part2.46DC5B16.793636E1@freedomarchives.org"
class="media-element file-figure" height="254"
width="156"><figcaption class="group-caption
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<p>Full-page ad from 22 September 2016 edition of <em>The
New York Times</em>.</p>
</figcaption></figure>
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ali Abunimah</a></span>
<span class="field field-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2016-09-23T13:20:59+00:00">23 September
2016</span></span><br>
</p>
<p>Journalist <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/max-blumenthal">Max
Blumenthal</a> <a
href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/779178651921289216">tweeted</a>
this photo of what he calls an “explicitly racist and
quintessentially liberal Zionist full-page ad” in
Thursday’s <em>New York Times.</em></p>
<p>It raises fears that within a few years – <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-demographics-idUSKCN0RA1VR20150910">if
it hasn’t occurred already</a> – Palestinians will
outnumber Jews in historic Palestine.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>It may well be part of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/will-obamas-final-act-be-liquidation-palestinian-rights">ongoing
campaign</a> 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.</p>
<p>The ad was placed by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for
Middle East Peace. The think tank’s president <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/robert-wexler">Robert
Wexler</a> is a former congressman who in <a
href="http://centerpeace.org/about/staff/robert-wexler/">the
center’s own words</a> is “a leading proponent of
Israel’s right to self-defense.”</p>
<p>A Hillary Clinton surrogate, Wexler testified before
the Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee
earlier this year, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/democratic-clash-over-palestine-signals-changing-party">arguing
against</a> including the word “occupation” to
describe the present relationship between Israelis and
Palestinians.</p>
<h2>Liberal racism</h2>
<p>The same segregationist logic also appears this week in
an article in Israeli media by the EU’s ambassador to
Israel <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/lars-faaborg-andersen">Lars
Faaborg-Andersen</a>.</p>
<p>“All Israelis who treasure their country as a Jewish
and democratic state should be advocating for a
negotiated two-state solution,” Faaborg-Andersen <a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4857731,00.html">writes
in <em>Ynet</em></a>. “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.”</p>
<p>This echoes long-standing claims that Palestinians
constitute a “<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/demographic-threat">demographic
threat</a>” to Israel.</p>
<p>What it boils down to is that the very existence of
Palestinians, the very birth of their babies, <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/abunimahs-justice-palestine/">violates</a>
Israel’s claimed “right” to have a specific
ethno-religious composition.</p>
<p>In any other context, a person calling themselves a
liberal would starkly reject such odious racism, just as
mainstream liberals reject Republican presidential
nominee <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/donald-trump">Donald
Trump’s</a> blanket assertions about various
populations perceived as being non-white.</p>
<p>In substance, the ad’s argument is no different to
claiming that the nominally independent Black
“homelands” – <a
href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">bantustans</a>
– created by the apartheid regime in the 1970s and 1980s
were justified to preserve South Africa as a “white and
democratic state.”</p>
<p>But good liberals saw through the racist ruse of the
bantustans.</p>
<p>The ad also echoes the infamous “<a
href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/separate-but-equal.html">separate
but equal</a>” language that American white
supremacists used to justify <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jim-crow">Jim
Crow</a> and segregation.</p>
<h2>Ethnic cleansing and apartheid</h2>
<p>What does it mean to Palestinians for Israel to be and
remain a Jewish majority state?</p>
<p>The Jewish majority liberal Zionists seek to protect
was engineered through <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/book-casts-new-light-palestines-ethnic-cleansing/8464">systematic</a>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing">ethnic
cleansing</a> starting in 1947-48, followed by racist
and discriminatory policies for the last seven decades.</p>
<p>This is why Israel cannot exist <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/abunimahs-justice-palestine.html">as
a “Jewish state”</a> without violating the rights of
all Palestinians to varying degrees.</p>
<p>To maintain its Jewish majority and “Jewish democracy,”
Israel curtails the rights of millions of Palestinians,
including <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinians-israel">Palestinian
citizens of Israel</a>, Palestinians besieged and
ghettoized in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and
Palestinian refugees denied their <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/right-return">right
of return</a> solely because they are not Jewish.</p>
<p>Israel’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-siege">siege</a>
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 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-massacre-price-jewish-state">essential
part</a> of <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/abunimahs-justice-palestine.html">the
same continuum</a> that requires employment and
housing discrimination against Palestinian citizens of
Israel and outright land theft and ethnic cleansing in
the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/negev-naqab">Naqab
(Negev)</a>.</p>
<p>While stark in its racism, <em>The New York Times</em>
ad should nonetheless be welcomed as a clear admission
that the so-called two-state solution has nothing to do
with peace or justice.</p>
<p>“Separation” is a perfectly good translation of the
Afrikaans word “apartheid.”</p>
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