The word apartheid was associated with the former regime of South Africa. What is the origin of the word? Apartheid is the Afrikaans word for apartness – separation which was used before the ANC (Africa National Congress and its allies under the leadership of Nelson Mandela) came into power to describe the system of racial discrimination that existed in South Africa until 1994.
Afrikaans language is not a language of the Native Africans but is a West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent in Zimbabwe. The imposition of the Afrikaans language on the black-students was one of the key factors which triggered the surety riots which happened on the morning of 16th June 1976. More than 176 students were killed by the South-African police. The student movement was led by a man called Steve Biko of the Black Consciousness movement who was assassinated on 12th September 1977 by the South-African police while being in police custody.
The term apartheid is used in international law to describe a state which is practising racism… apartheid is defined in the international convention on the suppression and punishment of the crime of apartheid-1973. In 2002 the definition was refined in article 7 of the Rome statute of the international criminal court. It is apposite to quote here the definition of apartheid as per the convention.
“Inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”.
So what are the laws that Israel has promulgated to discriminate against the Palestinians?
In 2012 ADALAH, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel published a report, the discriminatory laws database which collected and analysed more than 50 laws enacted since 1948.
Some laws are not discriminating when you look at them at a first glance but are administered in a discriminatory way. Why? Simply because they were passed to discriminate against the Palestinians.
A brief review:
- Israel has even before its existence (yes before 1948) decided to take the lands from the Palestinians (whether they are Muslims – Christians – Druze or otherwise) through a policy of genocide. First Israel took over strict control over approximately 94% of all lands within the 1949 cease fire lines and what did Israel do with the lands it seized from Palestinians? The lands were given to Jews only for development. On the other hand the Palestinians were denied any right to “buy back their own lands”, building permits and the ability to develop the remaining 6% land…
- The 1950 law about this confiscation of absentee landlord property law (laughable but serious defines persons who were expelled (through genocide policies, fled or who left the country after November 29, 1947 as “absentee”… and the biggest theft & rape of logic is that property belonging to “absentees”was placed under the control of Zionist agencies. The 1950 law continues to be used today in East Jerusalem in order for Israel to change the demographical balance in favour of Jews.
- The 1950 law of return. This law permits every Jewish person to immigrate to Israel (but not as easy for black Jews of Ethiopia) and this applies for even their grandchildren & spouses. For Palestinians no entry and those who have been allowed to re-enter are non-Muslims. There is even a ban on family reunification law which was passed in 2003 prohibiting Palestinian spouses living in the West-Bank of Gaza from reuniting with citizens of Israel.
- The land acquisition law of 1953 transferred before the very eyes (are they still blind?) land of 349 Arab towns and villages which is equal to 468 square miles to the State to be used preferentially if not exclusively, for the Jews.
- In 1952 the Israel authorised the WORLD ZIONIST ORGANISATION the Jewish agency, and other Zionist bodies set up in the early 19th century to operate in Israel as quasi-governmental entities in order to further advance the objectives, strategies, tactics of the Zionist movement. In 1953 the Israeli parliament, the Knesset gave governmental powers on the Keren Kayameth Israel (the Jewish National fund) to purchase land for exclusively Jewish use. And it is apposite to underline that all sorts of tax reliefs were given to the Jewish national fund.
- There are at least ten laws which establish separate educational system which are of course in the Israel’s logic administered unequally.
- The supreme court of Israel upheld a law passed in 2011 that empowers hundreds of Local Jewish communities to exclude applicants based on ethnicity or/and religion (meaning in essence Muslims)…
- In 2011 the Knesset passed a law prohibiting anyone or any organisation from calling for boycott of Israel, its institutions or any person (even non Israeli citizen) because of their affiliation with Israel. The law was unsurprisingly upheld by Israel’s Supreme Court on 15th April 2015… Also it is important that the Israel policies are to achieve racial purity like Hitler’s aim with Germany. And to do so Israel has systematically demonized non-Jews particularly Muslims and Christian Arabs.
Some examples of the Nazi things that Israel has done:
- No sex contract forbidden to have sex or to marry Israeli.
- Birth control without consent. The greatest example is what Israel did to the Ethiopian Jewish immigrants.
- Systematic deportation of non-Jews.
- Striping Palestinians of any form of land rights.
- Discriminatory marriage laws. Israel has no civil marriage laws. The process of marriage is left in the hands of orthodox Jewish religious clerics who work in a systematic way to prevent International marriage.
We must never forget that the 1948 Israeli war of Independence involved one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. See in that context Ilan Pappe’s book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” … Ilan Pappe has been described by John Pilger as Israel’s bravest, most principled, most incistive historian. Ilan Pappe is a Jew who was born on the 7th November 1954 in Haifa, Israel. Today, unsurprisingly he is an expatriate Israeli historian earning his living as professor with the college of Social Sciences and International studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
The more you know about the ways Israel treats or mistreats the Palestinians the “more convinced “I become that I was born as a Palestinian I could well have become a terrorist…
RAMA VALAYDEN
