Memo to the Washington Post:

You need to hire more columnists to refute the references to Apartheid with regards to Israel and the Palestinians.

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has come out with a series of new periodicals, fact sheets and analysis that draws on the history of references to the Apartheid regime enforced by the Israeli government. You can see those here.

In its introduction to the new “Framework” (seems everyone has her or his own dog-eared copy of George Lakoff’s book these days) the Campaign announced:

By adopting an anti-apartheid framework we are making a significant shift, one that compliments rather than supplants the occupation paradigm. The shift indicates a number of developments on the ground that necessitate a re-framing of the conflict. These include a realization that in the aftermath of the failure of Oslo, the lack of international support for Palestinian self-determination, as afforded by international law and human rights, during the six plus years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and most recently the advent of Israeli unilateralism (Gaza disengagement and the Apartheid Wall which effectively annexes Israeli settlements in contravention of international law with U.S. sanction). As the situation and the U.S’s role change dramatically we can not afford to not reframe the conflict and our role in it, as U.S. taxpayers.

All well and fine and very agreeable. I do wonder about the jargon. The point is to use Don’t Think of an Elephant rather than rewrite it. Still, the resulting items such as a set of clear fact sheets and posters and a solid round-up of strong quotes are well worth the download for those looking for point-by-point, logic-based tools.

Link to resources

In fact from the onset Zionism aimed at the dispossession of the indigenous population so that Israel could become a wholly Jewish State. As the Palestinians became aware of these intentions they quite naturally began resisting. At Israel’s independence in 1948, based on the UN Partition Plan—approximately 56% of the land went to the Jewish state and 44% to the Palestinians—Israel acquired the power, aid and resources to expand to 78% of the former territory, expelled Palestinians and with American backing became regional superpower.

With the illegal Jewish settlements, security road network, and construction of the monstrous wall around the militarily occupied West Bank, the remaining Palestinians are ghettoized within 12% of their original territory. This dispossession is reminiscent of Apartheid and its 13% of Bantustan homelands. For many this is the fundamental cause of the conflict…

May Israelis wake up and see reason, as happened in South Africa, and negotiate peace. Finally, let us learn from what helped open white South African eyes: the combination of a just struggle reinforced by international solidarity utilizing the weapons of boycott and sanctions.”

—Ronnie Kasrils, Mail and Guardian,
Johannesburg, on 1st September 2006.
(Kasrils is Minister of Intelligence in the
South African Government)

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