Yossi Schwartz, ISL the section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 30.08.2023
For many years the Zionists were able to present Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East. A democracy that is forced to defend itself against the only Jewish state against terror aiming to destroy the only democracy in the region. A terror motivated by anti-Semitism.
Even today you can find in the capitalist newspapers this projected image of Israel. For example, in the British Telegraph: “You may have read by now that the situation in Israel is dire. Here is the Middle East’s only democracy, and our most important ally in the region, falling apart before our very eyes. In recent years, the country has painstakingly built up a reputation for an (almost literally) bulletproof economy, a high-tech miracle that continues to deliver growth and secure investment opportunities despite the threat of war and terror. Now, people are talking of the end of democracy” [1]
The claim that Israel is a democracy raises the question: what is democracy? Was the U.S after it won the war with Britain, a democracy based on slavery? If it was for whom? Was South Africa a democracy? After all there was a parliament, all white men and women could participate in the election and there was division of power between the government, the court and the parliament.
May the existence of a constitution characterized democracy? The Stalinist Russia had the best constitution and yet it had a totalitarian regime.
Is democracy the opposite of dictatorship? Ancient Athina had a very advanced democracy for the 50,000 citizens that ruled over 500,000 slaves. For the citizens it was democracy, but for the slaves it was a dictatorship.
It is the same for bourgeois democracy: it is a democracy for the capitalist class and dictatorship for the working class. Those who doubt that this is the case have only to think, is there a democracy in the place of work? In the army? How much money a person needs to run for elected position?
The state apparatus – the police, army, courts, bureaucracy and similar institutions–is set up and controlled by this capitalist class. These big businessmen–the bourgeoisie, or monopoly capitalists–consistently use the police, army, national guard, courts and bureaucracies to break workers’ strikes and generally to put down the rebellions of the poor who own no means of production. The police, army and national guard are never called out against the class of bankers and corporation executives.
In short, this state is a bourgeois dictatorship. This does not mean there is a dictatorship of one or several men. It does mean there is a class dictatorship, where a tiny handful of profit-makers rule society and use the state as their machine to suppress the working people.
The liberal democracy we are told, is a regime that all are equal before the law. But this is a myth in the real world. A rich person can use the laws in his defense, hire very skilled lawyers and have connections in high places. This is not the case for the workers and the poor.
Israel has never been a liberal democracy. Before the war of 1967 the Palestinian citizens of Israel lived under military regime. After 1967 the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza lived under military regime and their lands and water have been stolen under military regime and are attacked by the settlers defended by the Zionist army and police and by raids by the Israeli army. The Palestinians citizens of Israel are discriminated against by hundreds of laws.
Thus, Israel is an apartheid state. According to Article 1(1) of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (the ‘Convention’), ‘[the] Convention declares that apartheid is a crime against humanity and that inhuman acts resulting from the policies and practices of apartheid and similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination… are crimes violating the principles of international law, in particular the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and constituting a serious threat to international peace and security’
Article 1(2) of the Convention goes on to declare ‘criminal those organizations, institutions and individuals committing the crime of apartheid.’ The crime of apartheid as defined in the Convention includes, among other things, ‘denial to any members of any racial group the right to life and liberty of person: by murder of members of any racial group, by the infliction upon members of any racial group of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and by arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of members of any racial group or groups.’
The opposition to Netanyahu in the streets for the last 34 weeks says that the government of Netanyahu is destroying the democratic regime of Israel! Thus, for them apartheid regime under a different racist government is democracy.
The deniers of the nature of Israel as an apartheid state claim that in the late 20th and early 21st centuries much of what is purported to be criticism of Israel is in fact tantamount to demonization of Israel. The proponents argue that anti-Zionism and demonization of Israel, or double standards applied to its conduct amount to antisemitism.
However, this propaganda is losing ground. Growing number of trade unions, cities, people of the academia and even high officers of the Zionist army are speaking openly about Israel as an apartheid state.
Amos Goldberg, a leading professor of the Holocaust at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has published an article saying that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as “apartheid” is not anti-Semitic, in a guest post in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). The Israeli government, Goldberg stated, fights against human rights, democracy and equality and propagates the opposite: “authoritarianism, discrimination, racism and apartheid” [2]
“Felix Klein, Germany’s commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism, said using “apartheid” in such scenarios is “an anti-Semitic narrative” in an interview with Die Welt, one of Germany’s most-read newspapers.
Goldberg’s standpoint was not an outlier, he urged Klein to understand. Rather, it represented a growing chorus of voices, including leading Israeli academics propagating the term apartheid to describe the treatment of Palestinians by the current regime.
In fact, if Klein were right, Goldberg wrote, then some of the best-known Holocaust and anti-Semitism researchers from Israel, the United States, Europe and worldwide would be anti-Semites” [3]
He referenced a petition co-initiated by Omer Bartov, the Israeli-born historian and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, titled The Elephant in the Room, which states: “There can be no democracy for Jews in Israel while Palestinians live under an apartheid regime”.
The petition has been signed by more than 2,000 academics, clergy, and other public figures. The petition includes illustrations that include a large elephant with the words “Israeli occupation” alongside a speech bubble that reads “Let’s just ignore it”, and surrounded by dozens of people freely waving placards for various social justice movements.
“Palestinian people lack almost all basic rights, including the right to vote and protest,” the petition reads, “Settler vigilantes burn, loot, and kill with impunity.”
Ex-Israeli army general likens military control of the West Bank to Nazi Germany. “Amiram Levin accuses the IDF of being a ‘partner in war crimes’ when it stands by as settler extremists attack Palestinians, says situation in West Bank is ‘absolute apartheid’
“Amiram Levin, who headed the IDF Northern Command, commanded the elite Sayeret Matkal unit and served as deputy director of the Mossad spy agency, told Kan radio on Sunday morning that the military is not only suffering harm to its preparedness because of reservists’ threats and refusals to serve amid the government’s judicial overhaul, but is also “rotten to its core” due to Israel’s ongoing presence in the West Bank.
“It stands on the side, looks at the rioting settlers, and begins to be a partner in war crimes,” Levin told the public broadcaster. “It’s 10 times worse than the issue of [military] readiness… and I say honestly, I am not angry at the Palestinians, I am angry at us. We are killing ourselves from the inside.” [4]
To defend Israel from the accusation of being apartheid state a pathetic Zionist minister stated that Israel is only a prison for the Palestinians:
“Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that Israel isn’t an apartheid state. The reason, he said, is that one has to view the Palestinians in the West Bank as prisoners “[5]
And while the Zionist propaganda is failing, the government of Netanyahu is seeking a conflict with Hamas, Hezbollah and even Iran in order to unite all the Zionists
Yesterday early morning the Zionist air force attacked an airport in Syria:
“Israel launched an airstrike against an international airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo before dawn on Monday, putting it out of service, Syria’s state-run media reported.” [6]
On Friday, Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’s politburo, told a Lebanese news outlet that any Israeli targeted killings of the group’s leaders would spark a regional war.
“At the outset of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he “heard the verbiage by the senior Hamas official Arouri, from his hiding place in Lebanon. He knows very well why he and his colleagues are in hiding. Hamas, and the other Iranian proxies understand very well that we will fight with all means against their attempts to use terrorism against us – in Judea and Samaria, Gaza and everywhere else,” Netanyahu said, referring to the West Bank and the Palestinian coastal enclave ruled by Hamas. “Whoever tries to hurt us, whoever finances and organizes, whoever dispatches terrorists against Israel, will pay the full price.” [7]
Thus, we live in a short period of calm before the storm. In a time of a cold war between Israel and its enemies.
Unlike the war in the Ukraine that has two aspects – first, a war between Ukraine and imperialist Russia and the other between Russian imperialism and Western’s imperialism – in a war between Imperialist Israel and the non-imperialist Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, there is only one aspect which calls for the defeat of the Zionist state.
Down with the Zionist apartheid imperialist state.
Defend the Palestinian resistance.
Endnotes:
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/29/israel-proving-still-democracy-middle-east/
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/27/accusing-israel-of-apartheid-is-not-anti-semitic-holocaust-historian
[3] Ibid
[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-idf-general-likens-military-control-of-west-bank-to-nazi-germany/
[5] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-756471
[6] https://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-says-israel-struck-aleppo-airport-putting-it-out-of-service/
[7] https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-warns-hamas-iranian-proxies-theyll-pay-full-price-for-any-escalation/