Our Wednesday News Analysis | Opinion | For Decades, I Defended Israel From Claims of Apartheid. I No Longer Can

Black students rally after the funeral of a 16-year-old black student who died in jail, in Soweto, South Africa in 1976.Credit: AP

Israel 2023, South Africa 1948.

"In 2001, I joined Israel’s government delegation to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban.

The Sharon government invited me because of my expertise after a quarter-century as a journalist in South Africa; my specialty was reporting apartheid close up."

I’ve lived through it before: grabbing power, fascism and racism, destroying democracy. Israel is going where South Africa was 75 years ago. It’s like watching the replay of a horror movie.

In 1948, as a teenager in Cape Town, I followed the results of the May 26 election on a giant board on a newspaper building. The winner-takes-all electoral system produced distorted results: the Afrikaner Nationalist party, with its smaller partner, won 79 parliamentary seats against 74 for the United Party and its smaller partner.

But the Nats, as they were called, in fact won only 37.7 percent of the vote against the opposition’s 49.18 percent. Although the opposition got more than 11 percent more votes, the Nats said they had a majority and could do what they wanted...

Read more: Opinion | For Decades, I Defended Israel From Claims of Apartheid. I No Longer Can

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ZIONISM’S ETHNIC CLEANSING HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH THE SWORD AND THE GAVEL

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/zionisms-ethnic-cleansing-has-been-accomplished-through-the-sword-and-the-gavel/

By Amjad ALQASIS
Published August 8, 2023

Since its founding, Israel has crafted legal tools to advance the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The current judicial overhaul is part of this process and shows the state's colonization plans are accelerating.

A VIEW OF THE JEWISH SETTLEMENT MA’ALEH LABOUNA TAKEN FROM THE WEST BANK TOWN OF LABAN NEAR NABLUS, AUGUST 28, 2018. (PHOTO: SHADI HATEM/APA IMAGES)

"Today, Israeli ministers openly discuss the takeover of holy places, the erasure of whole Palestinian villages, and the deportation of large parts of the population.

It seems that Israel’s leaders, more than 75 years after the original accomplishment of Zionism,
the creation of a state, are trying to complete the Zionist vision in their own lifetimes."

Political Zionism, as laid down in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, has been brutal from the beginning — a colonial racist movement aimed to take someone else’s land for its own exclusive use. The only way to accomplish this goal was through forced population transfer. This crime, so hideous that it is deemed a war crime and a crime against humanity, served as the foundation of Zionism as well as Israel, where the forcible removal of Palestinians and the installment of its own identified privileged settler group on that same land formed the basis of the state.

While Zionist forces have used military might over the decades to advance this goal, the Zionist movement has also sought to mask this process by placing its atrocities under a legal umbrella. In Zionist logic, not just the mighty sword but also the mighty gavel of the judge would hammer down on Palestinian rights and existence...

Read more: Zionism’s ethnic cleansing has been accomplished through the sword and the gavel

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NETANYAHU'S VISION FOR 2-STATE SOLUTION: NO PALESTINIAN SOVEREIGNTY INVOLVED

Source: Daily Sabah
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/netanyahus-vision-for-2-state-solution-no-palestinian-sovereignty-involved

By Najla M. Shahwan
Published July 19, 2023

Israel's legalization of West Bank settlements has hindered the two-state solution and Palestinian aspiration for an independent and sovereign state

A boy holds a Palestinian flag during a march against the construction of a section of Israel's separation barrier in the outskirts of the village of Iskaka, near the Jewish West Bank settlement of Ariel, Palestine, Jan. 25, 2005. (AP File Photo)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced that Israel must block the path to establishing an independent Palestinian state.

During a closed-door meeting with the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, Netanyahu stated, as the Israeli state-owned television Kan reported, "We are making preparations for the post-Abu Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) era."

It is important to highlight that Abbas currently does not have a clear successor.

Regarding the Palestinians' hopes of establishing a sovereign state, Netanyahu also reiterated that their ambitions "must be eliminated."

Netanyahu’s remarks came amid an escalation of Israeli military and settler violence in the occupied West Bank and the decision by the Israeli government to expand its illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"According to the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, more than 13,000 settlement homes have advanced in the territory in the last six months – about three times as many as last year.

'The Israeli government is pushing us at an unprecedented pace
towards the full annexation of the West Bank,' the organization, Peace Now said in a statement.

'We affirm that all settler colonialism in all the occupied Palestinian territories
is illegitimate and illegal,’
Peace Now said."

Read more: Netanyahu's vision for 2-state solution: No Palestinian sovereignty involved