The forthright branding of Israel as an apartheid state by Human Rights Watch could be a watershed moment in mainstream acceptance of what Israel has become. Human Rights Watch is not an outlier or left wing organisation. It is very much a part of the establishment in the United States and is not generally associated with hard hitting criticism that conflicts with the promoted interests of the American state. Kenneth Roth, the Human Rights Watch CEO who has been in power longer than Putin, is a darling of the New York liberal and Democratic Party Establishment. That is an important financial source for HRW and includes many members of New York’s highly altruistic liberal Jewish community (who I should declare have frequently hosted me).
Shortly before I formally left the FCO in 2005, I was shortlisted for a position as Global Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch and flown to New York to be interviewed by Kenneth Roth in their offices – which if memory serves were very plush and actually in the Empire State Building. Having worked closely with Human Rights Watch in Uzbekistan and elsewhere, I was reasonably confident, and I was surprised when the interview was cold and almost hostile. Kenneth Roth asked me questions exclusively about Israel. I very distinctly recall that he said that I had been describing human rights abuses as perpetrated by governments, but did terrorist offences not also grossly violate the human rights of their victims? He specifically referenced Palestinian terror attacks as being detrimental to the human rights of Israelis.
I replied to the effect that terrorist offences were to me a matter of criminal law as any other assault or murder, whereas human rights abuses were perpetrated by governments or sometimes, in conflict situations, others wielding control and authority. I also referenced the need to bear in mind the imbalance in Israeli/Palestinian infliction of violence. A number of other Israel specific questions followed, which were increasingly unfriendly, and it was plain that Roth was looking for an expression of firm condemnation of the Palestinians, which I did not give, while I did state that violence against innocent civilian targets was never legitimate.
Anyway, I did not get the job which went, perhaps significantly, to an ex US State Department employee with no visible record of dissent. I remember pondering, on the flight back across the Atlantic, that I had been a civil servant for 22 years and forbidden from expressing political opinions. I had said nothing which was not British government policy on Israel since 1984. You would have to go back to my student days and membership of Friends of Palestine to find in public any private views of mine on the Middle East (which from pre-internet days would not be readily discovered). I was wondering who had briefed Roth, and my thoughts turned in obvious directions.
I give that background so you understand how much it has taken for Human Rights Watch to conclude that Israel is now an apartheid state and how far they have come. This cannot be dismissed as “the usual suspects”. Furthermore, the report is a formal legal analysis of what constitutes the crime of apartheid and whether Israeli actions and statutes meet that bar, and it concludes that Israel is an apartheid state not as a matter of political categorisation, but in a formal, legal sense. Roth is respected as a lawyer and Human Rights Watch is an organisation to which people, not just in State Department but at senior levels of the Biden Administration, genuinely listen if not always taking heed.
It is worth reproducing the Human Rights Watch Press Release in full:
BEGINS
Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The finding is based on an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem.
The 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” examines Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It presents the present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government, ruling primarily over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.
“Prominent voices have warned for years that apartheid lurks just around the corner if the trajectory of Israel’s rule over Palestinians does not change,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “This detailed study shows that Israeli authorities have already turned that corner and today are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
The finding of apartheid and persecution does not change the legal status of the occupied territory, made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, or the factual reality of occupation.
Originally coined in relation to South Africa, apartheid today is a universal legal term. The prohibition against particularly severe institutional discrimination and oppression or apartheid constitutes a core principle of international law. The 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court (ICC) define apartheid as a crime against humanity consisting of three primary elements:
An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another.
A context of systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group.
Inhumane acts.
The reference to a racial group is understood today to address not only treatment on the basis of genetic traits but also treatment on the basis of descent and national or ethnic origin, as defined in the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Human Rights Watch applies this broader understanding of race.
The crime against humanity of persecution, as defined under the Rome Statute and customary international law, consists of severe deprivation of fundamental rights of a racial, ethnic, or other group with discriminatory intent.
Human Rights Watch found that the elements of the crimes come together in the occupied territory, as part of a single Israeli government policy. That policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. It is coupled in the occupied territory with systematic oppression and inhumane acts against Palestinians living there.
Drawing on years of human rights documentation, case studies, and a review of government planning documents, statements by officials, and other sources, Human Rights Watch compared policies and practices toward Palestinians in the occupied territory and Israel with those concerning Jewish Israelis living in the same areas. Human Rights Watch wrote to the Israeli government in July 2020, soliciting its perspectives on these issues, but has received no response.
Across Israel and the occupied territory, Israeli authorities have sought to maximize the land available for Jewish communities and to concentrate most Palestinians in dense population centers. The authorities have adopted policies to mitigate what they have openly described as a “demographic threat” from Palestinians. In Jerusalem, for example, the government’s plan for the municipality, including both the west and occupied east parts of the city, sets the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain.
To maintain domination, Israeli authorities systematically discriminate against Palestinians. The institutional discrimination that Palestinian citizens of Israel face includes laws that allow hundreds of small Jewish towns to effectively exclude Palestinians and budgets that allocate only a fraction of resources to Palestinian schools as compared to those that serve Jewish Israeli children. In the occupied territory, the severity of the repression, including the imposition of draconian military rule on Palestinians while affording Jewish Israelis living in a segregated manner in the same territory their full rights under Israel’s rights-respecting civil law, amounts to the systematic oppression required for apartheid.
Israeli authorities have committed a range of abuses against Palestinians. Many of those in the occupied territory constitute severe abuses of fundamental rights and the inhumane acts again required for apartheid, including: sweeping movement restrictions in the form of the Gaza closure and a permit regime, confiscation of more than a third of the land in the West Bank, harsh conditions in parts of the West Bank that led to the forcible transfer of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes, denial of residency rights to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their relatives, and the suspension of basic civil rights to millions of Palestinians.
Many of the abuses at the core of the commission of these crimes, such as near-categorical denial of building permits to Palestinians and demolition of thousands of homes on the pretext of lacking permits, have no security justification. Others, such as Israel’s effective freeze on the population registry it manages in the occupied territory, which all but blocks family reunification for Palestinians living there and bars Gaza residents from living in the West Bank, use security as a pretext to further demographic goals. Even when security forms part of the motivation, it no more justifies apartheid and persecution than it would excessive force or torture, Human Rights Watch said.
“Denying millions of Palestinians their fundamental rights, without any legitimate security justification and solely because they are Palestinian and not Jewish, is not simply a matter of an abusive occupation,” Roth said. “These policies, which grant Jewish Israelis the same rights and privileges wherever they live and discriminate against Palestinians to varying degrees wherever they live, reflect a policy to privilege one people at the expense of another.”
Statements and actions by Israeli authorities in recent years, including the passage of a law with constitutional status in 2018 establishing Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” the growing body of laws that further privilege Israeli settlers in the West Bank and do not apply to Palestinians living in the same territory, as well as the massive expansion in recent years of settlements and accompanying infrastructure connecting settlements to Israel, have clarified their intent to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis. The possibility that a future Israeli leader might someday forge a deal with Palestinians that dismantles the discriminatory system does not negate that reality today.
Israeli authorities should dismantle all forms of repression and discrimination that privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians, including with regards to freedom of movement, allocation of land and resources, access to water, electricity, and other services, and the granting of building permits.
The ICC Office of the Prosecutor should investigate and prosecute those credibly implicated in the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. Countries should do so as well in accordance with their national laws under the principle of universal jurisdiction, and impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, on officials responsible for committing these crimes.
The findings of crimes against humanity should prompt the international community to reevaluate the nature of its engagement in Israel and Palestine and adopt an approach centered on human rights and accountability rather than solely on the stalled “peace process.” Countries should establish a UN commission of inquiry to investigate systematic discrimination and repression in Israel and Palestine and a UN global envoy for the crimes of persecution and apartheid with a mandate to mobilize international action to end persecution and apartheid worldwide.
Countries should condition arms sales and military and security assistance to Israel on Israeli authorities taking concrete and verifiable steps toward ending their commission of these crimes. Countries should vet agreements, cooperation schemes, and all forms of trade and dealing with Israel to screen for those directly contributing to committing the crimes, mitigate the human rights impacts and, where not possible, end activities and funding found to facilitate these serious crimes.
“While much of the world treats Israel’s half-century occupation as a temporary situation that a decades-long ‘peace process’ will soon cure, the oppression of Palestinians there has reached a threshold and a permanence that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” Roth said. “Those who strive for Israeli-Palestinian peace, whether a one or two-state solution or a confederation, should in the meantime recognize this reality for what it is and bring to bear the sorts of human rights tools needed to end it.”
ENDS
I regret to say that because I am extremely preoccupied with my own legal case (which is of course largely its purpose) I have quickly read through the 223 page full report but not had time fully to study and analyse. It contains some very powerful graphics.
The strength of the report lies in its systematic comparison of the structural system of Israeli rule with the formal definition of the crime of Apartheid in the Statute of Rome and the Apartheid Convention, both widely ratified and important documents of international law. This perforce leads to less concentration than is possible on the outrageous acts of individual cruelty, but shows them to be systemic and part of a much wider design.
The Statute of Rome defines the international crime of apartheid as:
inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.
The Apartheid Convention defines 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.
I do not believe anybody can sincerely deny that the situation in Palestine meets these criteria, even if attempts are made to justify how we got here. If you have not done so, you may like to read my previous personal article on why Israel is an apartheid state, which draws on my experience as FCO Desk Officer for South Africa when it was the original apartheid state.
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As an outsider (not Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim) who used to live in Israel, I’ve been explaining the situation there for decades in the simplest possible way: with numbers.
Add up the total number of Jewish citizens in Israel to get X
Add up the number of Palestinians living in Israel and Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA to get Y (total number of Palestinians in the world).
Y is bigger than X.
That was true in 1948 and has been true every year since, including this year. And Y’s lead over X is increasing every single year.
Therefore, every single Israeli policy is built upon the FACT that Jews are the minority. Their ONLY option for survival is apartheid. Even if you support the “Israel is for Jews” cause, you’ve got no option but to embrace this inhumane apartheid system because if Palestinians could vote, Israel would be voted out of existence tomorrow.
That’s the standard hasbara argument that’s been used for years, to get up the fear: Jews will be overwhelmed. Well, you know, there is an alternative, excluded since the first days in 1948: make peace. Israel runs a Crusader-style policy of permanent war. Instead, make peace, and give the Palestinians their rights. There would have to be power-sharing, as they have in South Africa, not ethnic domination. Avi Shlaim’s “The Iron Wall” shows very well how this option has only briefly been considered, before being overthrown by one or another extremist.
Why do you want power-sharing other than you think the Jewish supremacists won’t allow one person one vote?
Power-sharing is a form of apartheid – “separate development”.
They don’t have power sharing in South Africa.
They have it in the Lebanon and Northern Ireland. Power sharing in South Africa would be e.g. there are x seats in parliament for blacks and y seats for whites, and bills or ministerial appointments have to be supported by a majority in both groups. They don’t have a system like that. In Northern Ireland they do, and they call it “cross-community”.
“… if Palestinians could vote, Israel would be voted out of existence tomorrow”.
Would that be a bad thing? If so, why?
I sort-of understand what you are saying. But wasn’t it also the case that in South Africa, white people were a minority? and they are still surviving, even without apartheid?
Israel was only voted *into* existence in 1948 because half of the world’s nations were still colonised and had no independent vote at the UN. If Israel, in its white supremacist settler colonial form, were voted out of existence in the 21st century it should be celebrated as the righting of an historic wrong.
Xavi,
The irony is in what you have written:-
” If Israel, in its white supremacist settler colonial form, were voted out of existence in the 21st century it should be celebrated as the righting of an historic wrong.”
The Holoucaust itself was a historical wrong; yet, the irony is that it is Jews in Israel who in consequence are now inflicting, via another historical wrong, suffering and injustices upon the Palestinian people.
It is voted that way because couple of countries were blackmailed with denial of economic assistance in case they voted
wrong way.
Vote was postponed for a few days and couple of countries change there mind in those crucial 2 day
It had to be 2/3 majority so couple of countries changing opinion was game changer
BTW no one asked Palestinians what they think or had any representative.
Having said that we have to accept, either two states( old boundaries ) or One multicultural democratic state with equal rights
for it’s citizens.
Quite right, the Palestinians were sold on 1948 just like the Czechoslovaks in 1938 and real South Africans in 1910.
Other options for the Jews of Greater Palestine besides apartheid are certainly imaginable. The Jews could have entrenched rights, guaranteed constitutionally and/or by treaty, say, a treaty involving the UN and/or superpowers. The entrenched right could be a guaranted number of legislative seats or a separate house of the legislature.
Do you want black seats, white seats, and Pakistani seats in the House of Commons too?
Zionism in Palestine should be banned the way Nazism is banned in Germany.
Right.
Do you want reserved trans seats?
“Two state” is a kind of apartheid, entrenching settlements. Israel already controls the majority of water in Palestine. Israel controls the borders. Palestine has no airport. Palestine’s coast is basically the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli navy prevents anyone loading or unloading there. A two-state solution (if such a thing were proposed) could never result in the tearing-down of settlements such as the one in Hebron.
The only just way out is a single-state solution, in which every citizen is treated equally. This should be the only protection that Israeli jews need.
I have been told that the vast majority of Palestinians in Israel and in the occupied territories favour a single-state solution. I have no evidence, because they don’t get to do much voting in the occcupied territories. But it seems to me that is the only sensible outcome – anything else is bound to be both fragile and unfair.
This isn’t simple; jews have been entrenching their power in Palestine for 60 years, and demolishing the settlements comes with it’s own unfairness. Most of the people living in the settlements were not born in 1967. It seems harsh to evict them because of the sins of their fathers. So I don’t know how to plot a route to a solution; but I do know that two-state isn’t a valid final destination.
The Yong Jewish Israeli economist Shir Hever told me that Jewish Israel is not one society but 12 or 13, each with its own leadership, and that there would be civil war if they did not have a common enemy in the Palestinians. He also said that the strength of Palestinian civil society is the best hope for social stability in a single state with equal rights for all.
Bonus fun fact: did you know that in South Africa TODAY(!) they are still using the same apartheid-era race categorizations of White, Black, Indian, and Colored?
Unfrickingbelievable…
Are you saying this means apartheid still exists in SA? While the apartheid system in South Africa has been dismantled, sadly much of the apartheid era ethnic imbalances persist. Govt policy is (correctly) heavily focussed on redressing these imbalances, and uses the high level ethnic categories to evaluate and to set policy.
There is certainly an argument that its time now for a more nuanced approach with a socioeconomic rather than ethnic focus, but I don’t think the fact that hasn’t happened yet means apartheid is ongoing. Its effects of course certainly are.
If your concern is the word “Coloured”- this is not a pejorative term in South Africa as it is in this US, you should not equate them. Coloured people are the majority group in the western half of the country and while it is a high level term (like the others) encompassing multiple distinct subgroups, its also a very distinct and long standing ethnicity which people strongly self identify with.
There is some debate about whether it should be replaced with another word but to my knowledge there are no other strong candidates put forward. “Mixed-race” for example does not capture that the group has a distinct ethnic identity.
What proportion of South Africans who are classified by the state as “coloured” “strongly self-identify” with that label?
The whole existence of the “coloured” category in South Africa is one of the most racist heaps of crap I’ve ever heard of. See the pencil test. Who on earth “self-identifies” with an label that’s decided by whether or not a pencil falls out of their hair?
Theres a Wikipedia article you can check out on the Coloured identity which will give some deeper context.
The whole of apartheid was a racist heap of crap, but the ethnic identity existed in its own right long before the pencil test. Not so much as a high level category but certainly the subgroups which comprised it. Of course there’s a lot of nuance I am glossing over here, and it’s not unproblematic either.
Mixed-race groups all over the world have built up their own ethnic identities based on shared language and culture. Its not unique to the South African situation. The important point is how do the people see themselves? There are some groups who would say they are Cape Malay or Khoisan for example, but most would just say they are Coloured, in the same way other racial groups would say white or black etc if you asked their ethnicity in many parts of the world. Its just not correct to be overly offended by the term, because it’s not a simple product of apartheid or ongoing government policy. Although I do understand how it can come across to a foreign audience.
Here’s Trevor Noah explaining some of this in a humorous way:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kMFC0Rh9aDY
This HRW report astounded me when I first heard about it. How come such a major volte-face? At first, I thought, without checking, that there must have been a change of director, but as Craig indicates, this is not the case, rather the same regime for a long, long, time. So I’m puzzled. The usual answer is “Biden”, but I doubt whether this could be the complete answer. If the enthusiasm to defend Israeli government policy under any circumstances were there, this report could not have been published. There must be less enthusiasm for Israeli hard-line policies these days, especially in New York.
BBC’s headline in response to the HRW report:
“Israel and apartheid ‘nothing in common'”. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-33612556
No surprise here from the morally corrupt British Brainwashing Corporation.
It’s dated 21 July 2015.
DoctorK.
Damn! Good observation. Hadn’t seen that. My post still stands though, don’t you think?
I certainly would have expected so, but then I did a search on the BBC website, not something I would normally do without washing my hands afterwards, and remarkably they have given it substantial coverage with the headline:
Israel committing crimes of apartheid and persecution – HRW
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56898864
Maybe the tide is turning at last.
Not really, it was clear in the article that it was a response from one side of the argument and not an editorial line. Just like Boris says he ‘has not lied’. There are dozens of articles in this format every day.
They could have run with the fourth paragraph as the headline:
Israel’s foreign ministry has rejected the (HRW) report as “preposterous and false”.
But they didn’t.
So that is a change of attitude from 2015 in my view.
Arabs aren’t allowed to stay overnight in some designated Jewish towns.
There are widespread pass laws.
The state discourages sexual relations between Jews and Arabs. (That’s why there’s no civil marriage in Israel.)
How they brought down Jeremy Corbyn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34eN9vR81eU
Apartheid; the EU’s exercise in loquacious, forsaken and cunning evasion: https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1387780712753815553/photo/1
Is it not time to recognize the ethnic cleansing of 1948 as the the crime that it is and as the war crime that it is?
Is it not also time to recognize that the UK either colluded with the nascent state of Israel in the displacement of the Palestinians or exercised a mind blowing level of foreign relations blithering incompetence?
You make a very important point which is often forgotten. From the Balfour Declaration until today the UK has been not only Israel’s sponsor but its inspiration and, for the crucial years before 1948 its muscle No other country, including the USA has played a more important role in delivering the people of Palestine into the hands of the Zionists.
And Labour’s role in this, which is still to be completely revealed, has been utterly shameful. Israel would not exist today in its racist form had the UK Labour government brought it into existence. There is a rough justice in the way in which democratic rights in the Labour Party were finally and thoroughly quashed after a campaign led by an affiliate claiming to be descended from the Israeli Labour Party- a reminder that there can be no democracy, no social justice and no lasting peace in a polity which condones the fascistic behaviour of Israel’s government.
bevin
What a crock the Labour Party constitution is. Was it devised by MI5?
Johnny,
The Labour Party constitution is certainly a mess. The members elect a leader; then the NEC appoint the deputy, who might be from a completely opposed political view. Policy isn’t developed by the leader; it’s developed by the NEC. And the NEC is also a mess; it’s a mixture of grassroots party membership, Trades Unions (who have never been consistently socialist), and elected representatives.
Labour is a huge compromise, designed to win political power.
All political parties are compromises; you need a coalition if you want power, so you have to set aside your differences from your coalition partners, to achieve shared goals. But if the coalition lurches very far to one side, it breaks up.
For me, Labour is history. There is no party to which I am prepared to lend a vote. I am disenfrachised, effectively (but I’d lend a vote to Alba, if englishmen had a vote in Scottish regional ballots).
Two blogs worth visiting about the Israel / Palestine issue are mondoweiss https://mondoweiss.net/ and Tony Greenstein’s Blog https://azvsas.blogspot.com/
Blimey. You might think today was a good day to give Israel-bashing a break.
Then you realise that for some it is a 24/7 obsession.
You think the Israelis have got it bad? The Palestinians have had a 70 year long 24×7 bashing. All of it at the hands of the Israelis. You don’t have a problem with that?
Amazing that some country can behave utterly disgracefully for the better part of a century, persecuting a weak minority, violating International Law, Human Rights, UN Resolutions, and basically any form of decency. Then apologists like you come along to say it’s really out of order to call them out on it.
With the same logic, you surely think it’s time to give the KKKlan a break – after all, they’ve been denounced for years now. Apart from by their numerous supporters and apologists, of course.
I’ve been a supporter of the Palestinian cause since Sabra and Shatilla 1982, and have travelled all over the region. Spare me the history lessons.
Minorities in that neck of the woods either have a heavy duty police state to represent them, like Syria/Egypt/Iran or they get tooled up, build some walls and protect themselves. None of these options are very nice, but the Jews are still there, and the Coptics and Shia are still in Egypt/Syria to name a few.
Give ’em a break because some right wing group says they have been naughty boys ?
And what minorities are we talking about in Syria and Iran, would that be the Shia’s, ie. the majority peoples ! The actual minorities in these places are the Sunni’s and Christians.
Your logic is a bit dubious.
If you think Sunnis are a minority in Syria you clearly know nothing about the region. Go and read some books Stevie boy.
Glass hopper
If your Damascene conversion took place in 1982 you need a history lesson to cover the gap between 1948 and 1982.
All of it at the hands of the Israelis. Sad to say many other hands too, including Syria.
Israeli propagandists like to exaggerate. Arab countries took in lots of Palestinians as a humanitarian gesture to their brothers. That is not an obligation. The obligation is on Israel to let the Palestinians return to their homes, but you, and Israel, prefer to forget that.
Eh?
The other two apartheid tyrannies have been flushed round the u-bend of history; two down, one to go.
We’re all Palestinians now.
I’m glad to see this, but it is a bit disorienting – as if the o.p.c.w. came up with a statement blaming the white helmets for the gas attack in douma.
“I’m glad to see this, but it is a bit disorienting – as if the o.p.c.w. came up with a statement blaming the white helmets for the gas attack in douma.”
Yes, there’s a rabit off somewhere and I wonder what it is.
Palestinian priest Fr Elias Chacour relates in his book “We belong to the land” that in 1986, when he met archbishop Desmond Tutu in Houston, Texas, the South African said to him, “Father Chacour, from what you have told me there are ways in which your situation in Israel is worse than ours in South Africa”. When Chacour asked him why, he said “In South Africa, blacks are underprivileged. The white reserve the privileges to themselves as a matter of deliberate policy and we blacks have the status of second-class citizens. But the whites need our labor. In your situation, it seems that Jewish Israelis regard you as dispensable and want you out of the country, wherever you might go.”
Before I become euphoric that this report will bring about any meaningful changes in Israel, I wait to see if there is one single call, from any of the Israel supporting west, for the unlawful settlements to be stopped, or the embargos on Palestine lifted. I am not holding my breath!
Social Justice supports globalism and demands that nations delete their borders and allow themselves to be overrun and conquered by their enemies. Nations which resist this agenda have their resistance depicted as Apartheid. Zionism isn’t Apartheid and it will not fall until appearance of the Beast Kingdom in 2033.
Nice to see a genuine nutter contributing to the blog again.
If you’re talking about a coming world dictator, I don’t know when such a figure might arise, but let us hope that if necessary, we might be granted either the means to escape to sanctuary from his rule, or the strength to reject his cult.
Bottom line you believe genocide, as defined by the United Nations, is the legitimate answer to your aspirations. How are you not also a Nazi?
There are many faces of evil and Keir Starmer is one particular face I call a shapeshifter an entity with the integrity of a pre-programmed talking machine. Starmer, a fallen robot whose left hemisphere controls the right set his stand up to “put human rights at the heart of foreign policy,” indeed, the launch video of his party leadership campaign implied support for the Palestinian cause by showing images of ‘Stop the War’ marchers holding Palestinian flags as the voiceover stressed that, “We can promote peace and justice around the world with a human-rights-based foreign policy.” This a construct devised by ex Unit 8200 analyst, Assaf Kaplan.
Starmers own banner promises to suspend the arms trade with Saudi Arabia over humanitarian suffering in Yemen and another rolling slogan to engage with Iran constructed after Qasem Soleimani was murdered while on a peace mission. This is his shop window above the counter. Below this counter lurks the pornography, the Israelization of British politics. However Starmer’s pre-programming fluctuated from the Divine path in a recent exposure of his ‘sexismploitation.’
Attending interfaith Open Iftar, a fast-breaking event organised by the Ramadan Tent Project was indeed a step too far for Starmer after knowing the organiser’s support for the boycott of Israeli dates grown and produced in occupied Palestinian Territory. It is here we note an important poignant moment in time with an emotional and warming response from salam.
Numerous UN resolutions have affirmed that settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are in breach of international law. Meanwhile, support for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against goods grown on illegal settlements or through other means deemed in contempt of international law are a legitimate form of democratic activism to promote peaceful change, regardless of where in the world such acts are being committed’.
Mark Golding
Thanks for that link to ei on the Labour Party.
I have always voted for Corbyn while he was Party leader. But now sadly I revert to the Green Party again.
My MP is a bit of Brownite chaff who wants to become Labour Mayor on 6 May. They used to say that factory white bread had had all the nutrients removed and put into animal feed.
Anybody thinking of voting for Labour on the 6 May should understand that Labour under Starmer has had every nutrient of social justice removed and the might and muscle of the Labour Party is now dedicated to Zionism = apartheid.
That mirrors Israeli politics where, when I went there in about 1977, there was a vibrant Labour movement with a strong critical journalism in the country.
Now, with both the main British Parties being unashamedly pro zionist apartheid, the old meme of Muslim voters, that British political parties would do whatever they like anyway, has to change. Keir Starmer is pro-Zionist apartheid fair and square, and nothing will restrain him in actively supporting violence and oppression against Palestinians, and by extension Muslims, anywhere in the world.
Anas Sarwar has recently been selected by Starmer to represent Labour in Scotland, so I would strongly urge disillusioned SNP voters NOT to switch to him thinking he is a pasty-faced Scot at heart. His white bread is totally devoid of socialism and, if Starmer chose him, he is a Zionist too.
Giyane
Here’s the Green MP stopping a motion against the bogus anti-semitism definition.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/uk-green-mp-stops-motion-against-bogus-anti-semitism-definition
Johnny Conspiranoid
Oh dear.
There once was a man with a beard
Who said it is just as I feared,
Two libs and a Dem
And an SNP hen
Have all made a nest in my beard.
Voting him to be Mayor might be the only
way to get rid of him .
The CNN interviewer tries her utmost to discredit the report, but fails. Interview with Kenneth Roth.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hrw-accuses-israel-of-apartheid-israel-refutes-claim/vi-BB1g9k26
“In all sincerity I tell you that there can be no peace without the Palestinians. It is a grave error of unpredictable consequences to overlook or brush aside this cause.”
— Anwar el-Sadat, speech to the Israeli Knesset, November 20 1977
Thanks to whoever put a link to the Guardian’s report on this. The Guardian has two orange neon flashing lights like the bin Lorry so it can be seen even in the next street.
So this report by HRW is a throwaway. Like every British whitewash here in England, they suddenly reveal a scandal which is dog-eared with internet reporting for 20 years but which is a stunning new revelation in the MSM. This distracts from the unbelievably evil, new catastrophes to which they have now moved on.
As for proxy jihadists, an army of several million terrorists , all publicly sworn enemies of USIKIS, but partly loyal to USUKIS, is a great deal more useful to USUKIS than a disorganised mass of opposition which is unpenetrated by them. This is how public opinion is gamed and USUKIS is the absolute master of Crusader gaming of public opinion.
Slave Trade, Empire, Aboriginal occupants of North America and Australia, and now Palestine.
Israel is estimated to have between 75 and 400 nuclear weapons.
Destabilizing a nuclear power could have profound consequences.
South Africa disarmed but Israel has not.
All good people must ignore or support apartheid in order to avoid nuclear war.
I know, all human beings having equal rights is destabilizing. For an apartheid state, that is. Call their bluff.
Actually, there is cause to believe that SA’s nuclear arsenal (quite small in megatonnage) was transferred during the transitional period ’90 to ”94. under the USA’s watchful tutelage (at around the same time the Kazakhstan SSR’s (sizeable) one was being spirited across to that Exceptional land in the far west.
omitted to say: ///was transferred to Israel during the transitional period ’90 to ”94. under the USA’s watchful tutelage///
Interesting development. Liberal American Jewry takes a moral stand just as Britain’s Labour party doubles down in support of the apartheid regime. Bankrolled by state of Israel lobbyists like Trevor Chinn and hardened Islamophobes like David Abrahams; its members and activists branded anti Semites by the leadership; prominent party roles awarded to ex-Israeli intelligence officers. All essential moves in the effort to make the party “respectable” again.
Another telling insight into Sir Keir’s character emerged this week in the £161,000 he expensed the taxpayer over 21 months for being chauffeur driven to work while DPP. The great man lived 4 miles from the CPS office in London.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kennardmatt/status/1387713909184991233
Carl
How many bikes could Corbyn buy with £161,000 ?
Starmer’s utterly atrocious.
Have you read about Skwawkbox’s FoI request which revealed that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has had absolutely NO contact with the Forde Inquiry, regarding possible personal data breaches. This was the the reason cited for non-publication. Proof as if needed, that the party’s right-wing are absolutely unscrupulous, and the media are perfectly fine with that.
https://skwawkbox.org/2021/05/01/exclusive-forde-inquiry-had-no-contact-with-ico-before-shelving-report-or-after-and-party-now-moving-to-withhold-it-permanently/
‘Great’ as in iniquitous Carl – Starmer’s care, respect, considerateness and thoughtfulness are severed, replaced by a semantic network.
As the country sleepwalks into disaster and our thoughtful men and women are dragged away – the conscience of the country is being blinded and corrupted daily, just like the prewar Germans who became deluded Nazis – tools of the real nazis , who long planned the Great Takeover of the Muddle East, just as they over decades and centuries extended their Empire through the fairy tale of Money and ‘National’ Banks (which never were publicly owned when set up), Slavery and Drugs – a set of Activities that have never been abolished worldwide and the gains of which never confiscated.
Stopping along the way to hand themselves a ‘contract’ legally binding a few decades earlier as the Balfour Declaration, with their many controlled ‘leaders’ in offices of state across the western world, which also put Yankee Boots on European soil for the first time just over a hundred years ago.
It is now time to name the individuals who hide behind the DS and pull strings of the puppets that we are told are the decision makers. It is time that people with conscience are given these names and asked to understand that it’s their duty to hold these to account or they are just merely nasty nazis not good Germans of 80 years ago.
These string holders live in the open and daily laugh at how easily they have squashed internal ‘dissent’ and set nation against nation for centuries now.
Putin is making it clear that Russia is not going to let history repeat and this time they will not need or wait for General Winter and sacrifice of tens of millions of its peoples again to save ‘Europe’ from its bought assassin despots.
As Patrick Armstrong reports:
‘PUTIN SPEECH. Mostly domestic as usual but the foreign bits were memorable – in short: ‘we’ve had enough. We will respond as and when we chose and we’ll do whatever we think we have to. And we’ll decide where the “red lines” are.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Putin make a threat before.’
Sounds like a promise not a threat to me. And that makes me feel a little better.
We are the fools for not wanting to see the reality – instead we are just overexcited virgins about to be led by our genitals by the great carnival of insane quarantine breaking summer madness and dumbeddownton teevee addiction to fake police procedurals and cinematic exceptionalism of super heroes and for many the simple drug of football and the Euros.
I’ll be using my freedom to use a spray can to yell to my fellows.
FREE JA, FREE CM, FREE SCOTLAND.
FUCK THE POWER – AS THEY HAVE FUCKED US AGAIN AND AGAIN.
Because we are the many and these of us left will need to know who our enemies are – we need to name them and list their crimes.
DunGroanin
Ken Livingstone stuck his stick into the hornets nest when he said Hitler supported Zionism and that perhaps is main reason that Corbyn was hung out to dry. The existence of non- Overton ideas was revealed and could not be put back into the box.
Now that we have witnessed the wholesale destruction of the Middle East Muslims, 80 million homeless maybe, it is easier to conceive of the idea that Zionism was capable of sacrificing 6 million Jews to create a narrative for the creation of Israel.
Never in a million years did Craig think that criticising Nicola Sturgeon might land him in jail. But we now know who her powerful friends are in the US and why she always looks so smug.
If you’re going to do graffiti, at least try to make it look a bit artistic . I did it for the sake of art might stall your freemasonic police. Hang on a minute aren’t we supposed to support Art. Long enough to put his tazer down and take an appreciative look.
That is what I call intention Dungroanin sadly lacking in the Labour Party to the extent they fucked their leader JC and opened a portal that let in a fallen robot, a non-human, an insentient arranged for power.
MG, yup I’ll plead guilty to intent and even hand myself in after my spray cans are empty.
Time to stand in the line to take the blows – we must. Craig is, and will very likely be illegally jailed. As is Julian and a few others. The heavy hand of the DS only pretends not to show its rusty iron spiked gauntlet at ‘home’ as easily as it does abroad. The likes of the gang wars encouraged in the deprived youths of our purpose built ghettos where kids are ready to kill and maim each other in public and be recorded on social media doubt so and go to prison for ten years knowing they will still only be in their late 20’s /30’s and come out with a rep that will allow them the lifestyles they aspire to but can only ever get through a state sanctioned criminal route, is just the same discrimination that the Whores of Mammon do daily from the offices of state.
The answer to Starmer is the self realisation of the half million party members to take actual control of their local parties and boot out the old sheepdogs who do their gang enforcement to make sure only the appointed candidates are chosen and kept in place.
If each member recruits one other that’s a million and if the doubling of local membership are prevented from expressing their views than they would physically need to take over their local offices and elect new local party officers.
Starmer is groomed.
The Tory sleaze back story is in play.
Bozo having delivered the hard BrexShit is ready for his billionaire lifestyle place at the Table and is visibly itching to go off to it and make more babies with more harridans leaving his Churchillian bare armed hand clasped behind back poseur image to be cast in gold and erected in Parliament…
He is and has always been a lazy duplicitous entitled slob and will throw a wobbly if not allowed to bugger off to eat his cake!
Years ago I was talking to an old man in a London pub he said to me one day Hitler would become a saint at the time I thought that was awfull now I am not so sure
To put this BS in context, consider this:
“… Far from an independent organization, HRW has historically functioned as force multiplier for US imperial goals, advancing regime change against politically independent and socialist states behind the guise of moral concern.
Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 as Helsinki Watch, a US outfit dedicated to undermining the governments of socialist Eastern Bloc countries with an unrelenting stream of abuse allegations. With offices across the West, including in New York City’s Empire State Building, HRW has grown thanks to a $100 million cash injection from George Soros, an anti-communist hedge fund billionaire who has deemed China a “mortal danger” to humanity.
For the past 27 years, HRW has been led by Kenneth Roth, an obsessive antagonist of China’s government and cheerleader for regime change operations against virtually any state that defies Washington. … “
Ref. https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/30/xinjiang-forced-labor-china-uyghur/
The United Nations isn’t fit for purpose.
Resolutions against the Israeli State regarding the human rights abuses of the Palestinians are ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel
Way back in 1979, UN Resolution 3379 said Zionism was a form of racism and racial discrimination, but it was revoked in 1991 when Israel said it wouldn’t be party to the Madrid peace talks, unless the Resolution was cancelled. Talk about dirty tactics and the spineless UN.
260. General Assembly Resolution 46/86, Revocation of Resolution 3379, 16 December 1991, and statement by President Herzog.
“One of Israel’s conditions for the participation of a UN observer in the Madrid Peace Conference was the revocation of the infamous resolution 3379 equaling Zionism with racism. The revocation was the culmination of a long struggle. Following is the text of the original resolution 3379 and the voting record, the voting record of the countries on the decision to revoke that resolution and a statement by President Herzog, who was Israels ambassador to the UN at the time.”
https://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/mfadocuments/yearbook8/pages/260%20general%20assembly%20resolution%2046-86-%20revocation.aspx
Yes. The UN has shown itself to be a USA dominated, gutless, enfeebled, NATO supporting talking club. A gravy train for its delegates. The UN Security Council even worse. That this sickly, reactionary country should have a permanent seat is laughable.
Best to remain sceptical. It is most likely a deceptive gesture, a leftward feint akin to the one Biden is performing. By now most of us should have learned that US foreign and domestic policy are at the most fundamental level immune to change.
“Meet Simon Cobbs, founder of Sussex Friends of Israel” What a nasty man.
I’ll stick with BDS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_irmCd_nI9A
The video is blocked where I am, but you can find it on vimeo. Very aggressive.
But be careful. I think it was Bertrand Russell who pointed out, “an executioner must be a horrible man” is not a valid argument against the death penalty. I am not meaning to compare the topics. My point is that just because someone behaves badly does not mean he is necessarily wrong.
The American saw that the Jew didn’t welcome the Arab as his neighbor.
The Jew cited as an excuse that before the Arab didn’t want to have a Jew as his neighbor.
The European sided with the American.
The Jew recalled that the European also had previously refused to see him as a neighbor.
The European nods to the Russian, who did’nt want the Crimean Tatar as his neighbor.
The American admits that the Turk’s unwillingness to see the Armenian as his neighbor was inhuman.
The African reminded the American and the European of that for a very long time the both of them were perhaps even more inhuman.
The Native American tried to comment, but their voice was small and nobody noticed it.
And so they walked and walked in circles in this strange wheel of Samsara, and more and more deaths occured, and peace is still not established.
Fools, can’t you see a way out? *an outside observer might think*
But this observation would be erroneous.
As it assumes that the participants want Peace.
When in fact everyone wants to be the King of the Hill.
it was an off-topic, thatt’s why it was deleted, IMO
welcome to the discussion section, I’ve started one just for you *sorry for mistyping the penname!*
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/soothermother-for-you-on-john-goss/
Happy Easter!
So why am I still seeing apartheid state fruit and veg in UK shops from that dump?
Noticed recently, when looking at oranges in one of the main supermarkets, that the labels, which show the country of origin etc. , were printed with very small lettering. I had to ask a member of staff to decipher the label, and was told that they were Israeli oranges. I decided that I didn’t want their produce and said so. Besides, Spanish or North African oranges are far superior!
Well, I will say this Mr. Murray, for one who claims to be a historian, you sure do not really know the history, but I guess that this comes from an anti-Semitic Foreign Office and British Government. So where did you get the information, what is your source?
So answer me this, when and who was the last Palestinian king or ruler? What was the currency? Just what constitutes a Palestinian person? And most of all have any of you lived there? Sure is easy to write things of hate, from the comfort of your living room.
I am sure that I will get beat up about this, but that is the way the world goes around.
How come Israelis claim their legitimacy from a military conquest of Palestine by the Hebrew tribes sometime in the Bronze Age? Military conquest is regarded as illegitimate now. That’s an equally bizarre but justified question.
“I am sure that I will get beat up about this”
Hehe, demand for sympathy from an advocate of apartheid.
Exactly Chuck Harrill what ‘goes around’ comes around and my mission is to counter, at variance with the doctrine on https://app.act-il.com/
Thankfully my Java experience allows me to write an application to empower communities to network and support the rights of Palestinians and to pressure Israel to meet it’s obligations under International law, defined as withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of the separation barrier in the West Bank, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and “respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties”.
Freedom. Justice. Equality – and my app. will create a virtual situation room of pro-Palestian experts.
.. will create a virtual situation room of propalestinian experts.
Can others join the Friends of Palestian inclusion according to the Ballfour declaration, Mark, or is designed to siff out hasbara chaf?
Yes Nevermind it is reliant on others i.e. the power of community as part of a global social movement that challenges neoliberal Western hegemony and struggles against racism essentially by organising virtual demonstrations to apply pressure on individuals and corporations to cut ties with Israeli institutions.
Chuck Harrill
” that is the way the world goes round “
The Qur’an tells us about a future Jewish state, but there is a little fly for you in the ointment: it says every Jew will recognise their prophet ‘Esa pbuh i.e. Jesus before their death. Let’s do it by the Book, not dirty politics. The book belongs to the Palestinians, which is the main reason you won’t follow it.
If you believed in all the Books and all the prophets
sent by God, you would pay homage to the Palestinians and your Muslim neighbours and participate in a free and equal society in and around the Holy Land. Will happen.
Sure as eggs is eggs. Even chocolate ones.
Chuck Harrill
” anti-Semitic Foreign Office. “
Craig got sacked for complaining about George Bush’s exceptionalism in torture rendition of Muslims against the Geneva Convention. George Bush was spending US money on the Zionist cause in destroying Israel’s neighbours.
So is the anti- Semitic complaint against Britain’s foreign office that after the disaster of Iraq Britain went soft on torture rendition and US interventionism on the side of Israel. You had Obama’s Daesh in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Obama’s Houthis attacking Yemen from.the other side, all participated in by Britain.
How much more of our willies do you want us to chop off? Don’t worry I know the answer from Nicola Sturgeon. Everything. A nice clean fisherman’s slice.
Q1: Who was the last Palestinian King or ruler?
A Irrelevant
Q2: What was the currency?
A : Irrelevant but £
Q3: What constitutes Palestinian person?
A: Anyone who lived there and their ancestors, whether Jews Druze Muslims or Beduines.
Finally, you are mixing history and mythology.
BTW I believe that first atheist was from Palestine and I want Atheist country for Atheist people in Israel. How do I achieve that?
Religious cleansing?
I forgot Christians and Others?
Thank you, now the situation is clear. It’s always best to have an idea of what is going on. Otherwise – the sudden disappearance of friends with whom you chatted in the evenings – is frightening \( ‘-‘ )/
Thank you for explaining!