Israel is once again ramping up its ethnic cleansing and murder of Palestinians. Not only that--this time Israel has even targeted the headquarters of international media outlets in order to obscure coverage of its crimes.
May 15:
"An Israeli airstrike on Saturday destroyed a high-rise building that housed The Associated Press office in the Gaza Strip, despite repeated urgent calls from the news agency to the military to halt the impending attack. AP called the strike “shocking and horrifying.”
[...]“We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building,” AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. “This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”
Pruitt described the news agency as “shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.” He warned: “The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.”
[...]The building housed a number of offices, including those of the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera. Dozens of residents who lived in apartments on the upper floors were displaced.
A video broadcast by Al-Jazeera showed the building’s owner, Jawwad Mahdi, pleading over the phone with an Israeli intelligence officer to wait 10 minutes to allow journalists to go inside the building to retrieve valuable equipment before it is bombed.
“All I’m asking is to let four people ... to go inside and get their cameras,” he said. “We respect your wishes, we will not do it if you don’t allow it, but give us 10 minutes.” When the officer rejected the request, Mahdi said, “You have destroyed our life’s work, memories, life. I will hang up, do what you want. There is a God.”"
Some have suggested this escalation of Israeli terrorism is an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold on to power. Over the past few years, his party has had difficulty forming a parliamentary majority, making it uncertain how much longer he will be able to remain Prime Minister. In addition, he was indicted on corruption charges in 2019 and will presumably face trial once the Covid pandemic is deemed under control. The presumption is that, by creating an artificial crisis by escalating violence with Palestinians, he can use the excuse that it is inadvisable to change leaders during a time of crisis. In addition, ramping up the ethnic cleansing will gain him popularity among fiercely tribalist voters (many of whom have received prime real estate in Jerusalem from Palestinians who were recently ethnically cleansed).
What Netanyahu's motives are for this escalation are irrelevant. Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism have been ongoing for an entire lifetime now. There have been ebbs and flows in the intensity of the ethnic cleansing, but it has been continuous and unceasing.
More troubling, US support for this rogue nuclear-armed apartheid state has been ongoing for an entire lifetime.
***
Without giving an exhaustive history of the US's relation with Zionism, it is suffice to say that the Zionist lobbying groups have been one of the most powerful political interest groups in the US since their inception.
Since the 1950s, Presidents and other politicians repeatedly attempted to make political groups whose entire purpose is to support Israel register as foreign agents--to no avail. (Meanwhile, groups as benign as the Japan National Tourism Organization and Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions are required to register).
In 1967, Israel attacked the USS Liberty as part of a false flag operation. Admiral Thomas Moorer (Chief of Naval Operations--the highest-ranking Naval officer, who serves as head of the Navy--from 1967-1970 and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--the highest-ranking military officer in the US, serving as an advisor to the President--from 1970-1974), US Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1961-1969), and numerous other military and civilian leaders who have investigated the incident over the past 50 years have rejected the US and Israeli governments' official coverup story of the incident. Nevertheless, politicians, historians, and journalists are expected to accept the alternative facts of the coverup--so powerful is the Israel lobby's hold on the discourse in the US.
Since the creation of Israel, the US has given it over $250 billion dollars in aid, largely in funds explicitly earmarked as military aid. Currently, this is over $3.8 billion per year, despite the fact that Israel is a highly-advanced and nuclear-armed state!
In other words, US taxpayer dollars are directly funding Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing. For reference, the yearly budget NATO member states pay to NATO is less than $2 billion, of which the US and other members pay only a fraction. Yet Trump successfully spread the Russian talking points that the NATO budget was too high! Why aren't more Americans talking about how we have a literal apartheid budget to fund a foreign nation?
For the longest time, it has been career suicide for journalists or politicians to criticize Israel in the US. Throughout her career, the highly-respected journalist Helen Thomas had at times asked questions as to why the US administration was supporting Israeli tyranny, but she took the gloves off in 2010 and took and firm stance by openly criticizing Zionism. Her career was ended and Zionist groups attempted to tarnish her journalistic legacy.
Now, just a decade later, we have not only multiple mainstream news reporters, but a number of politicians(!), who are willing to state the plain fact that Israel is an apartheid state. The wind of change is here.
***
This change was quite sudden. Even at the beginning of May, when politicians began meekly criticizing Israel for their renewed campaign of carnage in Gaza, it was almost unthinkable that they would use the term apartheid. Here is an opinion headline from May 9, 2021:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/9/should-palestinians-be-mad-at-aoc
On April 27, the organization Human Rights Watch declared that Israel was an apartheid state. The following morning, this headline was retweeted by Rashida Tlaib:
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1387389549752553473
Then, it started happening. Heroically led by Tlaib, a wave of politicians and mainstream news sources began using the term apartheid.
May 5:
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1389992893083947012
May 8:
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1391086428852006915
May 10. Tlaib went on an interview and once again called out apartheid.
https://twitter.com/MehdiHasanShow/status/1391895162666815489
https://twitter.com/People4Bernie/status/1391897106927919106
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1391727202006339589
Ilhan Omar was the next politician to join in. A few years ago, Omar courageously stated the fact that US politicians serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee should not be required to put obedience to Israel above their loyalty and duty to the American people. It almost ended her career--both parties wanted to remove her from the committee. But she has stayed strong and every day more people join her in speaking out against Zionist racism and the grip it has over US politics.
May 11:
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1392298753852383234
On May 13th, a number of Congress members gave speeches criticizing Israel. Some explicitly called it an apartheid state, while others simply implied it.
The entire legislative session from May 13 can be seen in the following video. At 6:10:19 Representative Mark Pocan begins the one-hour session regarding Palestinian issues.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?511625-1/house-passes-comprehensive-debt-collection-improvement-act-215-207
Pocan said Israel "all too often looks like a former South Africa", without explicitly saying apartheid.
https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1392997006642237440
Tlaib began her speech at 6:14:09 and called out apartheid multiple times.
https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1392993406318784515
Omar began her speech at 6:25:12 and mentions the Human Rights Watch report called Israel an apartheid state.
https://twitter.com/OmarSShakir/status/1393094591612547077
Representative Ayanna Pressley began her speech at 6:43:12:
"We cannot stand idly and complicitly by and allow the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people to continue.
We cannot remain silent when our government sends $3.8 billion of military aid to Israel that is used to demolish Palestinian homes, imprison Palestinian children, and displace Palestinian families.
A budget is a reflection of our values.
I am committed to ensuring that our government does not fund state violence in any form, anywhere.
[...]The question at hand is should our taxpayer dollars create conditions for justice, healing and repair, or should those dollars create conditions for oppression and apartheid?
[...]If our budgets are a statement of our values, what do we value? Whose lives do we value?"
https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1392985435547254787
Representative Cori Bush began her speech at 6:52:41:
"We are anti-war. We are anti-occupation. And we are anti-apartheid. Period."
https://twitter.com/RepCori/status/1392991612364591107
(Unfortunately, war may be the only thing capable of ending apartheid and stopping Israeli crimes).
A number of others spoke during this session to criticize Israeli tyranny and the fact that US funds it, but they were not courageous enough to call out apartheid. Many were even cowardly enough to say Israel deserves to exist while at the same time attempting to defend Palestinians. Would Abraham Lincoln, MLK, or BLM declare that a Jim Crow Dixieland has a "right" to exist? No, because justice is incompatible with the existence of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and the existence of a state which is founded upon tyranny.
On May 14, Tlaib continued.
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1393162154535231488
***
Thanks to Tlaib's unceasing courage, a new milestone occurred on May 15. Mainstream news reporters began calling out apartheid.
On the morning of May 15th (US time), Israel destroyed a building serving as the headquarters of AP news, Al Jazeera, and others.
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1393548019971284992
Instead of silencing news reporters, Israel's deliberate targeting of the media emboldened people to stand against it.
Soon after Tlaib's tweet, news reporter Ali Velshi on MSNBC says:
“Palestinians are at best third-class citizens in the nation of their birth. The idea that it’s even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable.”
Of course, the media wouldn't allow this to be published without him prefacing things by wrongly saying Israel has "right" to exist.
https://www.msnbc.com/ali-velshi/watch/velshi-the-right-to-exist-goes-both-ways-112015941899
The day after this aired, the official MSNBC Twitter retweeted Velshi's segment:
https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1394028137445482498
>We may hope that soon, journalists will be able to defend Palestine and speak out against apartheid without pretending like the government implementing the apartheid and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in the first place has a "right to exist"... (Like, seriously, how does it make any sense to claim to support justice if you say in the same breath that a settler-colonialist apartheid state should be able to exist???)
***
Unfortunately, by the evening of May 15th, the message started getting muddied with poor rhetoric.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted:
"Apartheid states aren’t democracies."
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1393673695433043976
Cori Bush and (unfortunately) Rashida Tlaib soon repeated her statement:
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1393693207792439299
This is such an absurd and counter-productive talking point. Israel IS a democracy. Israel IS an ignoble, tyrannic, and apartheid state. Not in spite of being democratic, but BECAUSE IT IS DEMOCRATIC.
Zionists in Israel vote to continue apartheid and ethnic cleansing, just as tribalists in the US voted to continue slavery, voted to disenfranchise "blacks", and voted to continue the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. Oh yeah, and US democracy gave us Trump, US democracy has voted to make BDS illegal, and US democracy has voted to give Israel billions of dollars in military funding each year, enabling their crimes...
Moreover, what would happen in a democratic One State Solution? Zionists (including non-Jewish perpetrators of "Zionist privilege" such as "Israeli Arabs") would outvote the Palestinians and we would be right back to where we started from. (I have actually seen many dedicated anti-Zionists who know the One State Solution is the only ethically-justifiable conclusion, yet doubt that it will ever be practical, because they are so Westernized that they are unable to think of the future state of Palestine as anything other than a democracy where millions of Zionists are allowed to vote!)
The Zionist argument that "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East" should only serve to heighten Israel's obvious ignobility and the fact that democracy is a supremely ethically-unsound form of government.
Democracy is tyranny of the majority. Israel is an excellent example of democracy, and if Israel becomes "more democratic" in the future, it will only continue its apartheid system. Democracy prevented re-establishment of apartheid in South Africa only because "non-whites" were the vast majority and much of the world was committed to boycotting and sanctioning South Africa, preventing the wealthy "whites" from trying to re-seize power.
Meanwhile, democracy in the US gave us slavery, a civil war over the continuation of slavery, Jim Crow (i.e. apartheid), and systematic racism in the police force--with minimal ability for the victims of this tyranny to seek any recourse, since they were the electoral minority!!! Democracy in Israel has consistently supported apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and will continue to do so in the future.
***
Tlaib's other tweets on May 15 were much more focused:
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1393618761454952454
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1393731483601448960
On May 16th, MSN news patronized AOC for using the term apartheid, causing AOC to double-down on her wording:
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1393957534663417857
May 16, Omar defends the use of the term apartheid:
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1394124282645581826
On May 16 the journalist-comedian John Oliver also joined in:
"On Sunday night, John Oliver dedicated the opening portion of his late-night program Last Week Tonight to the ongoing crisis in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
[...]“One side has suffered over 10 times the casualties, something which speaks to both the severe power imbalance at play here and how that often gets obscured by how we choose to talk about it,” said Oliver on his program.
Oliver said he wasn’t going to “try and recap the history” or “propose a solution,” instead vowing to explain why the incidents of the past week were “just wrong.”
Those on the ground, like Palestinian writer and Sheikh Jarrah resident Mohammed El-Kurd, have called it “forced ethnic displacement” conducted by “heavily armed police.” And then there’s the matter of the Iron Dome, Israel’s air defense system that intercepts missiles—and is largely funded by the U.S.
“Israel has a so-called Iron Dome,” explained Oliver, “so the point is, this isn’t tit-for-tat. There is a massive imbalance when it comes to the two sides’ weaponry and capabilities. While most of the rockets aimed toward Israeli citizens this week were intercepted, Israel’s airstrikes were not. They hit their targets, including a house in a refugee camp, a building housing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, and [a] 13-story office and apartment building. And while Israel insisted that there were military targets in that building and they destroyed it as humanely as possible, even warning people to evacuate it beforehand, destroying a civilian residence sure seems like a war crime, regardless of whether you send a courtesy heads-up text.”
[...]“They’ve been living under a suffocating blockade for 14 years, and in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinians are essentially being governed by a form of apartheid—an assessment echoed by both international and Israeli human rights groups,” said Oliver. “Life in Gaza is hard even when they’re not being bombed, and the U.S. government has implicitly co-signed on the brutally hard line Israel’s been taking.”"
On May 17th, Tlaib called out the hypocrisy of Biden and the US for claiming to want a ceasefire, but blocking a UN resolution demanding a ceasefire!
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1394469408249163776
The US's defense of Israel in the UN has been a major international issue and another example of just how strongly Zionist lobbies influence US policy. Since 1972, the US has vetoed at least 53 resolutions critical of Israel:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/19/a-history-of-the-us-blocking-un-resolutions-against-israel
The US also famously voted against the 1970s UN resolution which accurately stated the fact that Zionism is racism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_3379
Due to the courage of Tlaib and others, the discourse on Israel and Zionism has now forever changed in America.
Israel is an apartheid state. Zionism is racism. This is now a mainstream political talking point reiterated by at least a dozen mainstream politicians and journalists. There is no longer any excuse for remaining silent.
Those currently speaking out are just the tip of the iceberg.
May 17:
"Rashida Tlaib says Democrats tell her they support Palestine in secret because they’re scared of ‘intimidation’
[...]US Rep Rashida Tlaib says that some of her Democratic colleagues in Congress express empathy towards the Palestinians in private, but do not in public.
The Michigan Democrat made the observation during an interview on MSNBC’s The Reid Out on Monday evening.
“It is really hard because any of my colleagues that even have some sort of empathy towards Palestinians, they do it quietly with whispering because they continue to be intimidated and bullied by those that want to continue the status quo apartheid in Israel,” Ms Tlaib told host Joy Reid.
[...]The congresswoman also said there was more criticism of the Netanyahu government within Israel than there was from the Biden administration.
[...]She joined representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and André Carson of Indiana in signing a joint statement asking president Joe Biden to reconsider the $3bn in annual military aid provided to Israel."
May 19:
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1395066980676341763
Politicians are afraid of intimidation like this from AIPAC, the strongest pro-Israel lobby in the US (which for some reason isn't required to register as a foreign agent despite literally having Israel in their name).
https://twitter.com/jeremyslevin/status/1394749096020299778
Taking a step back for a moment, if we view people like John Brown and Malcolm X as heroic for fighting back against racist tyranny, why shouldn't we consider Palestinians heroic for fighting back against racist tyranny? If we consider people like Nelson Mandela as heroic for fighting back against South African apartheid, why shouldn't we consider Palestinians heroic for fighting back against Israeli apartheid? (In case you didn't know, Mandela was officially considered a terrorist by the US government until 2008, because beginning in the 1960s he was the leader of the military wing of the African National Congress party, which began a widespread armed guerilla uprising lasting decades against apartheid forces!!!) If American films and novels are filled with portrayals of Native Americans as the heroes for fighting back against US settler-colonialism, why shouldn't we view Palestinians as the heroes for fighting back against Israeli settler-colonialism? The framing of who we think of as the "bad guys" and "good guys" is yet another means by which apartheid supporters control the discourse.
Omar heroically spoke out against the lobby and their grip on US politics in 2019. Not only has she kept her career, but she constantly gains the support of others for being steadfast in her principles and courageous enough to continue speaking out against racism. Other politicians have a duty to join her, instead of remaining silent.
We would not be intimidated by pro-apartheid-South-Africa propaganda, since the position of the apartheid government was utterly evil. MLK, Malcolm X, JFK, and all the other supporters of ending Jim Crow apartheid in the USA were not intimidated by the KKK and other racists. So, why should we be intimidated by Zionists and Israeli apartheid supporters?
We are proudly anti-apartheid and proudly against all forms of racism, which necessitates us being steadfast anti-Zionists. Zionism is a form of racism which is fundamentally no different from the types of White Supremacy which have plagued the US for our entire history.
***
How has President Biden responded to the violence in Israel and the morally-upstanding comments from his party members? Has he recognized the shifting tide of public opinion and his moral duty to stop funding an apartheid state? No, Biden instead has just given Israel an additional $735 million in military aid so they can continue murdering Palestinians. The anti-apartheid caucus has introduced a piece of legislation attempting to stop this $735 million.
For those of us living in the US, Biden's relative sanity compared to Trump makes him seem like a breath of fresh air. For the Palestinians and others who continue to be murdered thanks to US political, economic, and military support, nothing has changed for the past 70+ years.
Not even 12 hours after Israel supposedly agreed to a ceasefire, Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque again... And why wouldn't they, when the US shields them from any international criticism and consequences for their actions, and when Biden just gave them nearly a billion extra dollars as a reward for their actions?
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1395790179609288706
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1395507514377134084
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1395450244461211648
***
***
What is to be done about all this?
Apartheid South Africa collapsed because of the global movements to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS)--which was strongly supported by the US government. For example, in 1986, Congress voted 391-104 to override Reagan's veto on the Comprehensive Apartheid Act, which mandated US sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Less than a decade later, apartheid was dismantled. In contrast, when it comes to Israeli apartheid, US political parties have been passing "anti-BDS" laws, Unconstitutionally making it illegal for businesses to attempt to boycott Israel. Since 2015, 35 states have passed such laws, despite over 70% of Americans opposing them.
(Remember this when Zionist propagandists try to tell you the Israel lobby in the US isn't actually powerful, and in the same breath tell you you're a racist for being against apartheid. LOL.)
The fact that BDS worked to stop apartheid South Africa shows that it can work to bring down Israeli apartheid. The fact that Zionist lobbies in the US and elsewhere have desperately attempted to make BDS "illegal" show that it is already working.
In terms of divestment, the first thing the US needs to do is immediately cease giving Israel billions of dollars in yearly military funding to continue their ethnic cleansing. How do we convince politicians to do this? Public outcry against Republican politicians who supported the Coup Vote was enough to get many businesses to stop donating to their campaign funds. The same needs to happen for businesses who donate to Joe Biden and other apartheid supporters. Strategically, this should be focused on the Democrat party and Democratic party politicians--since the Republican party has a near-zero chance of ever turning against apartheid.
As individuals, we have an ethical duty to boycott businesses which do business with Israel or profit in any manner from the exploitation of Palestinians. Here is a targeted list of a select few businesses which are currently being focused on by the main BDS movement website:
https://bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-to-boycott
Other groups maintain much more extensive lists, such as this one. We encourage you to follow this list as much as you possibly can. However, in order for boycotts to work, they must have a targeted focus and be upheld with consistency by many people. For this reason, at the very minimum you must boycott the organizations whose names are being amplified by the main BDS movement (above), in addition to boycotting organizations currently targeted by local BDS movements in your school, state, city, and region.
As individuals, we must also band together to threaten to boycott companies unless they cease donating to Biden and other Democratic party apartheid supporters. For example, here are some of the major donors to the Biden campaign:
https://www.investopedia.com/top-donors-to-biden-2020-campaign-5080324
Once this pressure is applied, it may be possible that the political climate begins to change and the US will cease vetoing every UN resolution critical of Israel and derailing international attempts to hold Israel accountable for its crimes. Once this is done, it will be much more difficult for the US to create a pretext to start wars which further Israeli geopolitical goals (see: Iraq, Libya, Syria, and next up: Iran).
But simply hoping that this change will happen spontaneously is not enough. We also need more young and courageous individuals to run for political office and make that change directly! We need others to follow in the footsteps of Americans like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Tlaib said many Democratic politicians have told her they support Palestine but are too cowardly to come forward. Well, Palestinians cannot wait for these cowards. There is no excuse for elite politicians living a life in wealthy comfort to be "scared" of coming out against apartheid. We will replace you.
And as courageous as Omar and Tlaib are for taking a stand against apartheid, even they come far short of advocating a complete and fundamentally True Left solution to Israel: a heroically autocratic One State of Palestine where Zionists cannot merely vote to re-implement tyranny of the majority, as they most assuredly will in any democratic "solution". Anyone who has studied US history has seen that time and time again, democracy has resulted in nothing but tyranny of the majority.
Any democratic "solution" regarding the future of Israel and Palestine will end up no different than the democratic "solution" the US applied to Native American nations.
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