So said Prof. John J. Mearsheimer in a recent address at the Palestine Center: Apartheid is inevitable. While the Israeli right wing government under Netanyahu’s Likud party shows the intent to keep confiscating more and more of what remains of original Palestine, the 40% that is left, visionaries like Mearsheimer (also read articles on the topic by Jeff Halper, ICAHD) can only see disaster for Israel in the making. The Two-State Solution, for all practical purposes, is dead, Palestine is wiped off the map (to paraphrase Ahmadinejad), and a new chapter of Middle East history is opening: Apartheid.
Prof. John J. Mearsheimer addresses the current status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A few days ago, Professor John J. Mearsheimer delivered the Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, seen above, at the Palestine Center. It appeared to constitute the most extensive and up-to-date summary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict made by Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Mearsheimer discusses the inevitability of full-fledged Apartheid in Israel-Palestine.
A brief excerpt from the speech sums up the current situation:
“Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy. Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a Greater Israel,which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term. In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream.”
The full text of Mearsheimer’s talk is available on Sabbah’s Blog.
Juan Cole also has an interesting review of the dismal outlook for Israel now fully under the influence of right wing extremists, to which Likud and Netanyahu pander.
Tanya Reinhard on Why Israeli Apartheid is Inevitable
The dead can still speak through their writings. And no one’s writings are more relevant to what is going on today in Netanyahu’s Israel and the Palestinian territories than the late Tanya Reinhart’s.
Tanya Reinhart, a former Professor at Tel Aviv University, Utrecht University, and New York University, is now dead. But before her death, she established herself as one of the most insightful analyst/writers about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her capacity to take apart historical agendas, to relate past to the present, and to deconstruct realities were widely appreciated by the public, as in her last book, The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003.
If I may paraphrase a review, The Road Map to Nowhere is essential reading to understanding the state of the Israel/Palestine crisis since 2003 and the propaganda that infected its coverage. It argued that the Bush Road Map failed to bring real progress and that, under the cover of diplomacy, Israel was using the Road Map to strengthen its grip on the remaining occupied territories. Israel not only failed to give any attention to the required freeze on settlements, but settlement building, as in the 90s, accelerated. Reihart’s book was called “an urgent and searing exposé of the “peace process” by a prominent Israeli thinker.”
Today, this scenario is repeating itself under the Obama administration.
Tanya Reinhart, if she were alive today would merely say, I told you so, years ago.
Sorry about the length. It was an old diary that is slowly speaking to the reality.
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Hu, Ahmadinejad, Putin have been designated as enemies of freedom of the press and endangering journalists in performing their task in some form of democracy for people within a state. Seems like Israelis have held on to their East-European habits of a totalitarian regime …
(Haaretz) – More than half of Jewish Israelis think human rights organizations that expose immoral behavior by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely, and think there is too much freedom of expression here, a recent survey found.
They found that 57.6 percent of the respondents agreed that human rights organizations that expose immoral conduct by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely.
Slightly more than half agreed that “there is too much freedom of expression” in Israel.
The poll also found that most of the respondents favor punishing Israeli citizens who support sanctioning or boycotting the country, and support punishing journalists who report news that reflects badly on the actions of the defense establishment.
Another 82 percent of respondents said they back stiff penalties for people who leak illegally obtained information exposing immoral conduct by the defense establishment.
“Israelis have a distorted perception of democracy,” said Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor at the university’s school of education, and one of the conference’s organizers. “The public recognizes the importance of democratic values, but when they need to be applied, it turns out most people are almost anti-democratic.”
The survey, commissioned by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, will be presented Wednesday at a conference on the limits of freedom of expression.
Etnicity and Nationalism in Divided Societies
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
I think the appropriate expression is, oy vey.
But we have seen democracies turn fascist in the past and then authoritarian, based purely on the fact that ethnocentricism (or racism) can turn negative then go awry.
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(BBC News) – Israel says goods restrictions are a ‘tool of war’.
An exposé by the BBC has shed a little light on Israel’s restrictions on the entry of civilian goods into the Gaza Strip.
The BBC saw documents that for the first time delineated what Israel will and will not allow into the tiny territory under its three-year-old comprehensive blockade, which Palestinians call a “siege.”
What is allowed into Gaza? Canned tuna fish, but not canned fruit. Bottled water but not fruit juice. Tahina but not jam.
Indeed, far more items are banned than are allowed in. An itemized list released by the BBC, based on information supplied by international organizations and UN agencies, lists just 81 items, which in total are thought by Israeli military planners to be sufficient to sustain all life in Gaza.
In court documents filed by in response to a petition by the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, the Israeli state also argued that these restrictions are a tactic of war. In Israel’s own words, the curbs are “a central pillar in the armed conflict with Hamas.”
Israel Weakening Gaza Infrastructure ahead of Next War (pdf)
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
“Weakening Gaza Infrastructure ahead of next war” is the purpose of keeping the Gazans at a bare subsistence level? It’s a military tactic?
The so-called Gaza war, which was nothing more than a turkey shoot against a civilian population that killed 1,400 most innocent people, was no war. It was a life-costly publicity stunt to show the Israeli people that Kadima and Labor were not soft on Palestinians, as Netanyahu charged. Soft on Palestinians? Since 1948, the Palestinians have suffered under abject poverty and progressive ethnic cleansing of what was left of original Palestine.
The absurdities with which Israel has maintained Hamas as a red herring while it continues its occupation and colonization of the other territories is just incredible. And the international press is letting them get away with it.