New Law Confirms Israel as Apartheid State

Editor

Dhu al-Qa'dah 19, 1439 2018-08-01

Editorials

by Editor (Editorials, Crescent International Vol. 47, No. 6, Dhu al-Qa'dah, 1439)

Thieves and hustlers like to give legal cover to their acts of larceny. This is what the Zionist racist entity (aka Israel) has just done. The Palestinians and people of conscience — whether of Jewish or non-Jewish origin — know this all too well since the illegal implantation of Israel on the land of the Palestinian people. Yet whenever Israeli apartheid is mentioned, apologists for the racist entity go berserk. They accuse Israeli critics of “anti-Semitism.” The new “Nation State law” confirms Israel is an apartheid state. Let us take a closer look.

Passage of the Nation State law on July 19 has codified into law the racist policies and practices of the Israeli State. It is not just any law; it is the Basic Law that defines the state. It is officially named “Basic Law — Israel as The Nation State of the Jewish People” and has become one of the state’s Basic Laws. In the absence of a constitution, it has constitutional standing (Israel is the only country in the world that has no defined borders, leaving room for perpetual theft of others’ land to expand!).

To be sure, the law was hotly debated. Such hardcore Zionists as Benny Begin (son of the former terrorist and Likud prime minister Menachem Begin) and another Likudnik, former defence minister Moshe Arens, initially supportive of the law, opposed it in its final form because the revisions were too toxic even for their taste. It was approved by 62 votes to 55, with two abstentions.

Let us examine some of its features. It says, “The purpose of this Basic Law is to secure the character of Israel as the National State of the Jewish People in order to codify in a basic law the values of Israel as a Jewish state” (emphasis added). Palestinians, who constitute 20% of the population inside pre-1967 borders, have been rendered stateless and without any rights.

“The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” says the new law. Palestinians are excluded from exercising self-determination in Zionist Israel, something guaranteed under International Law. This is what blacks suffered in the US during slavery. Reflective of the toxic environment, Palestinian members of the Knesset who protested the law were physically ejected from the chamber!

Another article of the Basic Law states, “The state sees developing Jewish communities as a national value and will act to encourage, promote and establish them.” This provides not only legal cover to racism, inequality and exclusion of Palestinians but gives carte blanch to Zionist squatters (aka Jewish settlers) from North America and Europe to forcibly evict Palestinians from their homes, villages, and towns and take over their land to set up exclusively Jewish communities. How else does one define apartheid?

It goes beyond that. While Palestinians are rendered second- or third-class citizens, they are coerced into participating, without their consent, in the promotion of discrimination against them. They continue to bear all the tax obligations as citizens/residents but the Basic Law serves the interests of only the Jewish population. Again, like slaves in the US whose sweat and blood built the country, the white slave masters and the state acted to negate their identity and status. The Zionists are doing the same to the Palestinians.

We must also emphasize that the “Jewish population” does not refer merely to those living in Israel today. It includes Jews worldwide. Thus Palestinians who have lived on the land for thousands of years are denied basic rights, while Jews living anywhere in the world have full rights under the new law. They can come and occupy the Palestinians’ land by evicting them but the latter have no recourse to legal remedy anymore!

The “Basic Law” also imposes Hebrew as the sole state language. Arabic — language of 20% of the population as well as that of all other indigenous Palestinians — is being systemically erased. Again, like European colonialists in North America and Australia, the European usurpers of Colonized Palestine are also wiping out the identity, status, culture, and language of indigenous Palestinians.

The new “Basic Law” claims further that the entire unified Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. This violates international law as well as UN resolution 181 that call for the holy city to be an entity on its own whose future status must be determined through negotiations. As with its other practices, Zionist Israel is simply creating facts on the ground. That such acts are illegal is no bar to its racist expansionist drive.

The new law confirms Israel as an apartheid state, even worse than what existed in South Africa prior to its abolition in 1994.