Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 14.05.2026
The flag parade planned for Thursday of this week is reminiscent of Kristallnacht. A show of force, violence, hatred and racism that takes place every year as part of the Occupation Day celebrations, known in Israel as “Jerusalem Day.” It is expected to go up a notch this year: instead of marching “only” through the Jaffa Gate (the girls) and the Damascus Gate (the boys) directly into the heart of the Muslim Quarter, in order to riot against the Palestinians. The organizers want to bring in more processions through the Flower Gate and the Lions’ Gate. The police and the Jerusalem Municipality are laundering this spread of violence with the words “crowd dispersal.” This is just another symptom of the expansion of the regime of oppression and supremacy that is deepening in the apartheid state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Jerusalem is an apartheid city par excellence. Forty percent of Jerusalem’s residents are Palestinians with permanent resident status, and the bureaucracy makes their lives miserable, with the purpose to cause them to leave. The ethnic cleansing did not end in 1948.but has continue since 1948.
In recent decades, Palestinians in Jerusalem have become an integral part of the city’s economy: they are the drivers of public transportation throughout the city, they are sold in shopping malls, they are the nurses, nurses and doctors who treat hospitals and clinics, and they are the ones who perform other essential jobs for the most part. The return they receive under the apartheid regime. It is a chronic lack of housing, plus house demolitions; they live in neighborhoods where the infrastructure is disgraceful, with almost no public buildings, open spaces, shelters, or essential services; their children are crowded into schools that do not have enough classrooms and teachers, or are thrown out of the system altogether; their cultural institutions are repeatedly attacked, and they are also evicted en masse from their homes to make room for settlers.
The Zionist liberals are protesting verbally without any attempt to physically defend against the rioters against the racist and violent apartheid policy and they are calling for Jerusalem to be turned into a tolerant city. A cry accompanied by crocodile tears. For the State of Israel cannot be anything other than the state of apartheid.
Therefore, it must be demolished and replaced by a red, democratic Palestinian state from the sea to the river. A state to which the Palestinian refugees will return to. A government of workers and fellahin, with the Jewish minority having civil rights.