African Migrants "A Cancer" In Israeli Society

Most Likud ministers on the panel voted in favor of a bill sponsored by MK Miri Regev. The bill would mean annexation of a large part of Judea and Samaria. Photo by Tomer Appelbaum

May.27, 2012 | 2:34 PM
Courtesy Of "Haaretz"

Likud MK Miri Regev, who came under fire last week after calling African migrants "a cancer" in Israeli society, apologized for the first time for her comments on Sunday, opting, however, to leave the migrants out of her apology.

Regev's controversial comments came during a violent rally staged by residents of Tel Aviv's south – where many African migrants live – to protest rising crime rates in the area. In the rally, the Likud MK said "the Sudanese are a cancer in our body."

She was later criticized for inflaming the protesters, with angry demonstrators later going on to attack African passers-by and journalists, breaking into and looting shops associated with the African migrant community and shattering car windshields.

At the time, Regev condemned "any violence from any side, but I understand the rage and hurt of the residents, of the families that live there. They tell us: 'Help us. We are being humiliated, look how we live, we are afraid to leave the house.'"


However, speaking to Israeli media outlets over the weekend and on Sunday, Regev chose to apologize for calling the Sudanese a cancer, opting however, to direct her apology to Holocaust survivors and cancer patients.

"When I compared the migrant worker phenomenon to cancer I was referring to the way the phenomenon had spread, and not anything else. If anyone took it otherwise and was consequently offended, I apologize and I surely did not intend to hurt either Holocaust survivors or cancer patients," she said.

Regev told Maariv that she was very "attuned to the issue of the Holocaust. The memory of the Holocaust is seared deeply into my heart back from my time in high school when I prepared a paper on the subject."

"Up until a year ago I did not set foot in Germany, and made it a point not to purchase German-made products," the Likud MK and former army spokesperson said, adding: "When I was with an IDF delegation in Auschwitz I didn't stop crying, and so if someone attributed a wrong interpretation of my comments or was offended by them, I apologize."

Regev added that "she didn't talk about people as being cancer but of an infiltration phenomenon that was spreading."

The Likud MK also added that she was sensitive to the feelings of cancer patients, adding that she was herself involved with the care given to a boy with cancer, telling the website of Israeli daily Maariv that she understands the emotions involved with ta mention of the disease.

Israeli Apartheid "More Terrifying" Than South Africa Ever Was

'When we built up the sanctions campaign it was not with governments in the West.'


Reverend Allan Boesak 

By Dr. Hanan Chehata
Thursday, 17 November 2011 16:50
Courtesy Of "The Middle East Monitor"

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

The Reverend Allan Aubrey Boesak is a veteran of the South African anti-apartheid struggle. He is the former president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and is a signatory of the South African Christian response to the Kairos Palestine Document. This year he gave expert testimony at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine session in Cape Town, at which he spoke to MEMO's Hanan Chahata.

Hanan Chahata: You were one of the signatories of the South African Christian response to the Kairos Palestine Document. In this you said that the Palestinian experience of apartheid is "in its practical manifestation even worse than South African apartheid". Can you explain what you meant by this?

Allan Boesak: It is worse, not in the sense that apartheid was not an absolutely terrifying system in South Africa, but in the ways in which the Israelis have taken the apartheid system and perfected it, so to speak; sharpened it. For instance, we had the Bantustans and we had the Group Areas Act and we had the separate schools and all of that but I don't think it ever even entered the mind of any apartheid planner to design a town in such a way that there is a physical wall that separates people and that that wall denotes your freedom of movement, your freedom of economic gain, of employment, and at the same time is a tool of intimidation and dehumanisation. We carried passes as the Palestinians have their ID documents but that did not mean that we could not go from one place in the city to another place in the city. The judicial system was absolutely skewed of course, all the judges in their judgements sought to protect white privilege and power and so forth, and we had a series of what they called "hanging judges" in those days, but they did not go far as to openly, blatantly have two separate justice systems as they do for Palestinians [who are tried in Israeli military courts] and Israelis [who are tried in civil, not military courts]. So in many ways the Israeli system is worse.

Another thing that makes it even worse is that when we fought our battles, even if it took us a long time, we could in the end muster and mobilise international solidarity on a scale that enabled us to be more successful in our struggle. The Palestinians cannot do that. The whole international community almost conspires against them. The UN, which played a fairly positive role in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, takes the disastrous position of not wanting to offend its strong members like the United States who protect Israel. So even in the UN, where international law ought to be the framework wherein all these things are judged, where international solidarity is not an assumption but is supposed to be the very foundation upon which the UN builds its views on things and its judgements as to which way it goes, the Palestinians don't even have that.

Palestinians are mocked in a way that South Africans were not. In a sense, the UN tried in our case to follow up on its resolutions to isolate the apartheid regime. Here, now, they make resolutions against Israel one after the other and I don't detect even a sense of shame that they know there is not going to be any follow up. Under Reagan the United States was pretty blatant in its so called constructive engagement programme and in its support for the white regime in South Africa, but what the United States is doing now in the week that UNESCO took the decision to support the Palestinian bid for a seat in the United Nations, to withdraw all US financial support; to resort immediately to economic blackmail, that is so scandalous. So in all those ways I think we are trying to say that what is happening in Israel today is a system of apartheid that in its perfection of that system is more terrifying in many ways than apartheid in South Africa ever was.

HC: During an event celebrating black history month earlier this year you likened the US Civil Rights Movement to the South African struggle against apartheid. Would you liken both of those struggles to the Palestinian struggle today?

AB: I have just finished a chapter for a book that I hope will be out next year in which I speak of the similarities between the civil rights struggle, the anti-apartheid struggle, and the Arab Spring and the lessons we can draw from them.

I think it is fascinating in so many different ways. It's almost as if I personally lived through the difficult choices that people have to make in North Africa and in the Middle East every day. As every day goes by my admiration for them grows. I see what is happening in Syria and in Yemen and that there is still relatively little violence on the part of the protesters. You can still see that their basic fundamental goal is to get rid of the tyranny through non-violent protest and it is amazing to watch. I do believe that there is such a thing as historic moments that never disappear from which people learn. South Africa learned so much from Ghandi in India; Martin Luther King learned from Ghandi; we learned from Martin Luther King and we had our own traditions and I'm sure the young Arab people who saw some of these things happening are drawing on that. 1994 (when the first democratic government of South Africa was formed) and the 1980s are not that far behind us. Many of those people who are participating today were sat in front of their televisions watching when we were in the streets day after day after day braving the dogs and the guns and the tear gas, burying our people, funeral after funeral. When I see the funerals taking place in the Arab world I think of the time Archbishop Tutu and I buried 27 people (actually 42 were killed but the police would not release the other bodies); I think of that when I see bodies being carried out to be buried Friday after Friday in the Arab world.

Our struggle had all sorts of political ideologies but it was never completely secularised. The faith, as Archbishop Tutu said this morning, that there is a God of justice who will help us sustain the struggle is an amazing thing. When I see all those thousands of Muslims go down and bow down before Allah I must say, when I saw it for the first time I looked at my wife and I said, I tell you now, if people sustain that, all those tyrants will be quaking in their boots and they know that they will not be able to hold out against that power.

I believe that, just as a few years ago the civil rights struggle in the United States, and then more especially the anti-apartheid struggle, became the moral standard by which the world was judged in terms of its taking sides in terms of right or wrong and getting on the right side of the human revolution for humanity and for justice and for the restoration of dignity and for the future for children; that particular moment in history where the world is invited to participate in this revolution for the sake of the good and for the sake of the future and for the sake of justice; and where that decision hinges upon evil and wrong on the one side and justice and right on the other side and will mark the world in a way that says this is a litmus test for international solidarity and for international law and justice, that test today comes from the Arab Spring.

HC: The Arab Spring or Palestine?

AB: You have the Arab Spring taking place but at the hub of it all is Palestine. I believe that what is happening now would not have happened if it had not been for the perennial struggle of the Palestinian people. They may not be mentioned every time but I can tell you now that if it was not for them, nothing like the Arab Spring would ever have happened in the Middle East.

Just as we thought, when we watched Martin Luther King or when we went through our own struggle, that the face and direction of history and the world, whether they like it in the West or not and whether or not they come to it with hidden agendas for the sake of greed or whatever, it does not really matter; what is happening in the end is that something fundamental is changing in the Middle East and thereby something fundamental is changing in the history of the world. Those people, I believe, who are going through that revolution now will, for instance, never make the same mistakes that their parents and grandparents made, thinking that the West is always good and that the deals we make with the West are always for the good of our people. There is a new critical element that has come in. Never again will people think the same; what I am hoping is that the Arab revolutions will be so sustainable and so successful and morally so strong that they will force the West to think differently about themselves in terms of the viewpoints and stands they take on events.

HC: Christianity is under threat in the Holy Land. People tend to forget that this is not an issue between Jews and Muslims; there are Christian Palestinians too. There has been a disturbing trend over the years, which has seen Christian Palestinians leaving the Holy Land because of the extraordinary difficulties that Israel has placed on their lives. In what ways has the occupation affected Christians?

AB: The Christian community in Palestine has been decimated in many ways. By doing this the Israelis are doing two things: they are simplifying the presentation of the struggle as if it is only between Jews and Arabs, with the result that Christians outside think that there is nothing and nobody for us to be in solidarity with. Hence, the Christian Zionists, those ultra conservative fundamentalists in the United States who have for so long helped to dictate foreign policy under the Bush and Reagan administrations, they can say "it's not about us; it's not about Christians and Christian witness, it's about those Muslims"; that, I think, is the intention. I'm hoping that those of us who are Christians outside the Middle East will keep that fact alive and will find ways and means to inject that argument into every single political situation so that the discourse that goes forward and gives rise to action does not push aside the reality of Christians in the Middle East, especially in the Holy Land.

The second thing they are doing is that they are dislodging, not just denying, but dislodging the roots of the Christian faith in the Middle East; that's where it all started. If you dislodge that   it's like cutting off your nose to spite your face - you are cutting yourself off from the most ancient roots of Christianity and that will set the Christian church adrift, and in the end that will not be good for Israel. So I'm glad to see that the World Council of Churches is rising up again. It is not nearly as radical as it should be, it's not nearly as clear as it should be nor as hard-nosed as it should be on this issue, but at least it is taking up the Palestinian issue and responding to the situation in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere where Christians are under pressure. In doing so they must remember that this is not just a Christian cause; it's not important just because of the Christians involved, but also because the future of humanity is at stake.

HC: There are an estimated 50 million Christian Zionists worldwide. How would you council them with regards to their support for the state of Israel which is based, they would say, on Biblical reasoning?

AB: It's like with so many things, it's the way that people read and interpret the Bible and so we must just make sure that we are as clear and as enthusiastic and as open about our understanding of the Bible and as willing to engage our understanding of the Bible as they seem to be. There must be ways; we have just not been imaginative enough. I think one reason is because we have not, until very recently, realised the very dangerous nature of the views that those people hold, not just for Palestinians and for Muslims in general but also for the Christian Church itself. Now that we begin to see how deadly that kind of logic is, how absolutely anti-Christian and anti-human that logic is, we have no excuses left.

HC: Israel is demanding that Palestinians recognise it as an exclusively "Jewish state". How would you respond to this demand?

AB: They can't. There is no such thing as a specifically Jewish state. You can't proclaim a Jewish state over the heads and the bodies and the memories of the people who are the ancient people who live there. That is Palestinian land we are talking about. Most of the Jews who are there come from Europe and elsewhere and have no claim on that land and we mustn't allow it to happen to the Palestinians what happened to my ancestors who were the original people in this land (South Africa) but now there are hardly enough of them to be counted in the census. That is Palestinian land and that should be the point of departure in every political discussion.

HC: In the past you urged Western countries to impose economic sanctions on the South African apartheid regime. Would you support a similar call for sanctions against the state of Israel?

AB: Absolutely! Pressure, pressure, pressure from every side and in as many ways as possible: trade sanctions, economic sanctions, financial sanctions, banking sanctions, sports sanctions, cultural sanctions; I'm talking from our own experience. In the beginning we had very broad sanctions and only late in the 1980s did we learn to have targeted sanctions. So you must look to see where the Israelis are most vulnerable; where is the strongest link to the outside community? And you must have strong international solidarity; that's the only way it will work. You have to remember that for years and years and years when we built up the sanctions campaign it was not with governments in the West. They came on board very, very late.

It was the Indian government and in Europe just Sweden and Denmark to begin with and that was it. Later on, by 1985-86, we could get American support. We never could get Margaret Thatcher on board, never Britain, never Germany, but in Germany the people who made a difference were the women who started boycotting South African goods in their supermarkets. That's how we built it up. Never despise the day of small beginnings. It was down to civil society. But civil society in the international community could only build up because there was such a strong voice from within and that is now the responsibility of the Palestinians, to keep up that voice and to be as strong and as clear as they possibly can. Think up the arguments, think through the logic of it all but don't forget the passion because this is for your country.

Click here to read the full South African Response to the Kairos Palestine document:

http://www.oikoumene.org/gr/resources/documents/other-ecumenical-bodies/south-african-response-to-kairos-palestine-document.html

Why Israel Can't Be A 'Jewish State'

1.6bn Muslims and 2.4bn Christians regard Jerusalem as holy, which is about 55 per cent of the world's population [EPA]


The Israeli Demand To Be Recognised As A "Jewish State" By The Palestinians Is An Inherently Problematic Concept

By Sari Nusseibeh
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2011 17:58
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

The Israeli government's current mantra is that the Palestinians must recognise a "Jewish State". Of course, the Palestinians have clearly and repeatedly recognised the State of Israel as such in the 1993 Oslo Accords (which were based on an Israeli promise to establish a Palestinian state within five years - a promise now shattered) and many times since. Recently, however, Israeli leaders have dramatically and unilaterally moved the goal-posts and are now clamouring that Palestinians must recognise Israel as a "Jewish State".

In 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry concluded that the demand for a "Jewish State" was not part of the obligations of the Balfour Declaration or the British Mandate. Even in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, when Zionists sought to "establish a home for the Jewish people", there was no reference of a "Jewish State". The Zionist Organisation preferred at first to use the description "Jewish homeland" or "Jewish Commonwealth". Many pioneering Zionist leaders, such as Judah Magnes and Martin Buber also avoided the clear and explicit term "Jewish State" for their project of a homeland for Jews, and preferred instead the concept of a democratic bi-national state.

Today, however, demands for a "Jewish State" from Israeli politicians are growing without giving thought to what this might mean, and its supporters claim that it would be as natural as calling France a French State. However, if we consider the subject dispassionately, the idea of a "Jewish State" is logically and morally problematic because of its legal, religious, historical and social implications. The implications of this term therefore need to be spelled out, and we are sure that once they are, most people - and most Israeli citizens, we trust - will not accept these implications.

Many Implications

First, let us say that confusion immediately arises here because the term "Jewish" can be applied both to the ancient race of Israelites and their descendants, as well as to those who believe in and practice the religion of Judaism. These generally overlap, but not always. For example, some ethnic Jews are atheists and there are converts to Judaism (leaving aside the question of whether these are accepted as such by Ultra-Orthodox Jews) who are not ethnic Jews.

Second, let us suggest also that having a modern nation-state being defined by one ethnicity or one religion is problematic in itself - if not inherently self-contradictory - because the modern nation-state as such is a temporal and civic institution, and because no state in the world is - or can be in practice - ethnically or religiously homogenous.

Third, recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" implies that Israel is, or should be, either a theocracy (if we take the word "Jewish" to apply to the religion of Judaism) or an apartheid state (if we take the word "Jewish" to apply to the ethnicity of Jews), or both, and in all of these cases, Israel is then no longer a democracy - something which has rightly been the pride of most Israelis since the country's founding in 1948.

Fourth, at least one in five Israelis - 20 per cent of the population, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics - is ethnically Arab (and are mostly either Muslim, Christian, Druze or Bahai), and recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" as such makes one-fifth of the population of Israel automatically strangers in their own native land and opens the door to legally reducing them, most undemocratically, to second-class citizens (or perhaps even stripping them of their citizenship and other rights) - something that no-one, much less a Palestinian leader, has a right to do.

Fifth, recognising a "Jewish State" as such in Israel would mean legally that while Palestinians no longer have citizens' rights there, any member of world Jewry outside of Israel (up to 10 million people perhaps), should be entitled to full citizens' rights there, no matter wherever they may be in the world today and regardless of their current nationality. Indeed, Israel publicly admits that it does not hold the land for the benefit of its citizens but holds it, in trust, on behalf of the Jews of the world for all time. This is something that happens in practice, but that obviously Palestinians in the occupied territories - including Jerusalem - do not see as fair, especially as they are constantly forcibly evicted off their ancestral homeland by Israel to make way for foreign Jewish settlers, and because Palestinians in their diaspora are denied the same right to come and live.

Sixth, it means, before final status negotiations have even started, that Palestinians would have then given up the rights of about 7 million Palestinians in the diaspora to repatriation or compensation; 7 million Palestinians descended from the Palestinians who in 1900 lived in historical Palestine (ie what is now Israel, the West Bank including Jerusalem, and Gaza) and at that time made up 800,000 of its 840,000 inhabitants; and who were driven off their land through war, violent eviction or fear.

Seventh, recognising a "Jewish state" in Israel - a state which purports to annex the whole of Jerusalem, East and West, and calls Jerusalem its "eternal, undivided capital" (as if the city, or even the world itself, were eternal; as if it were really undivided, and as if it actually were legally recognised by the international community as Israel's capital) - means completely ignoring the fact that Jerusalem is as holy to 2.2 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims, as it is to 15-20 million Jews worldwide.

In other words, this would be to privilege Judaism above the religions of Christianity and Islam, whose adherents together comprise 55 per cent of the world's population. Regrettably this is a narrative propagated even by renowned Jewish author and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who, on April 15, 2010, took out full page ads in The New York Timesand The Washington Post and claimed that Jerusalem "is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture - and not a single time in the Qur'an". Now we do not propose to speak for native Palestinian Arab Christians - except to say the that Jerusalem is quite obviously the city of Jesus Christ the Messiah - but as Muslims, we believe that Jerusalem is not the "third holiest city of Islam" as is sometimes claimed, but simply one of Islam's three holy cities. And, of course, despite what Mr Wiesel seems to believe, Jerusalem is indeed clearly referred to in the Holy Qur'an in Surat al-Isra' (17:1):

"Glorified be He Who transported His servant by night from the Inviolable Place of Worship to the Aqsa Place of Worship whose precincts We have blessed, that We might show him of Our tokens! Lo! He, only He, is the Hearer, the Seer."

Moreover, Muslims wanting to take a similar, religiously exclusive narrative, could point out that while Jerusalem is mentioned 600 times in the Bible, it is not mentioned once in the Torah as such - a fact that any Biblical Concordance will easily confirm. Of course we do, however, recognise the importance of the land of Israel in the religion of Judaism - this is even mentioned in the Qur'an, 5:21 - we only ask that the Israeli government reciprocate this courtesy and allow Muslims to speak for themselves in expressing what they consider, and have always considered, as holy to them.

There is another reason, more serious than all of the seven mentioned above, why Palestinian leaders - and indeed no responsible person - can morally recognise Israel as a "Jewish State" as such. It has to do with the very Covenant of God in the Bible with Ancient Israelites of the promise of a homeland for Jews. God says to Abraham in the Bible:

On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying:

"To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates - the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites." (Genesis, 15:18-21; NKJ)

The ancient Israelites then go on to possess this land in the time of Moses, upon God's command, as follows:

"When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. (Deuteronomy, 7:1-2; NKJ)

"Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said: 'Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?' Therefore understand today that the LORD your God is He who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you." (Deuteronomy, 9:1-4; NKJ)

The fate of many of the original inhabitants is then as follows:

And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword. (Joshua, 6:21; NKJ)

And this continues even later on in time, as follows:

Samuel also said to Saul: "The LORD sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Samuel, 15:1-3; NKJ)

Now it is very easy to cherry-pick quotes from scripture permitting or enjoining violence. One could cite, out of context, verses such as the "sword verse" in the Holy Qur'an:

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and establish prayer and pay the alms, then leave their way free. God is Forgiving, Merciful. (Al-Tawbah, 9:5)

One could even cite verses - again out of context - from Jesus Christ's own words in the Gospel, as follows:

"But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.'" (Luke, 19:27; NKJ)

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword." (Matthew, 10:34; NKJ)


Democracy Or A Jewish State?

Nevertheless, it remains true that, in the Old Testament, God commands the Jewish state in the land of Israel to come into being through warfare and violent dispossession of the original inhabitants. Moreover, this command has its roots in the very Covenant of God with Abraham (or rather "Abram" at that time) in the Bible and it thus forms one of the core tenets of Judaism as such, at least as we understand it. No one then can blame Palestinians and descendents of the ancient Canaanites, Jebusites and others who inhabited the land before the Ancient Israelites (as seen in the Bible itself) for a little trepidation as regards what recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" means for them, particularly to certain Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox Jews. No one then can blame Palestinians for asking if recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" means recognising the legitimacy of offensive warfare or violence against them by Israel to take what remains of Palestine from them.

We need hardly say that this comes against a background where every day the Israeli settler movement is grabbing more land in the West Bank and Jerusalem (there are now 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank alone) - aided, abetted, funded and empowered by the current Israeli government - and throwing or forcing more and more Palestinians out, in so many different ways that it would take volumes to describe. Moreover, there are credible reports that despite the almost universal agreement in Rabbinical texts throughout the ages that the divine command to kill the Amalekites was a unique and isolated historical incident that applied only to the race of the Ancient Amalekites, there are now, in certain religious schools in Israel, people who draw parallels between the Palestinians of today and the ancient Amalekites and their like (this was apparently the opinion of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a former chief Rabbi of Israel; see also, for example: Shulamit Aloni's article 'Murder Under the Cover of Righteousness', CounterPunch, March, 8-9, 2003).

In short, recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State" in Israel is not the same as, say, recognition of Greece today as a "Christian State". It entails, in the Old Testament itself, a Covenant between God and a Chosen People regarding a Promised Land that should be taken by force at the expense of the other inhabitants of the land and of non-Jews. This idea is not present as such in other religions that we know of. Moreover, even secular and progressive voices in Israel, such as former president of the Supreme Court of Israel, Aharon Barak, understand the concept of a "Jewish State" as follows:

"[The] Jewish State is the state of the Jewish people … it is a state in which every Jew has the right to return … a Jewish state derives its values from its religious heritage, the Bible is the basic of its books and Israel's prophets are the basis of its morality … a Jewish state is a state in which the values of Israel, Torah, Jewish heritage and the values of the Jewish halacha [religious law] are the bases of its values." ('A State in Emergency', Ha'aretz, 19 June, 2005.)

So, rather than demand that Palestinians recognise Israel as a "Jewish State" as such - adding "beyond chutzpah" to insult and injury - we offer the suggestion that Israeli leaders ask instead that Palestinians recognise Israel (proper) as a civil, democratic, and pluralistic state whose official religion is Judaism, and whose majority is Jewish. Many states (including Israel's neighbours Jordan and Egypt, and countries such as Greece) have their official religion as Christianity or Islam (but grant equal civil rights to all citizens) and there is no reason why Israeli Jews should not want the religion of their state to be officially Jewish. This is a reasonable demand, and it may allay the fears of Jewish Israelis about becoming a minority in Israel, and at the same time not arouse fears among Palestinians and Arabs about being ethnically cleansed in Palestine. Demanding the recognition of Israel's official religion as Judaism, rather than the recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State", would also mean Israel continuing to be a democracy.

Sari Nusseibeh is a professor of philosophy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.

Jewish Israelis 'Marginalise Arab Citizens'

Source "AFP"
Courtesy Of "Yahoo News"

A survey by an Israeli think tank published on Sunday said while most of the country's Jews deny claims of discrimination against its Arab citizens, one third view them as outside Israeli society.

"The data show that at present the Arab population feels discriminated against to a great extent, while a majority of the Jewish population rejects the allegation," the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) said in its annual survey.

It said that asked if they considered "Arab citizens of Israel" as "part of Israeli society," 67.9 percent of Jewish respondents and 86.1 percent of Arabs answered in the affirmative.

It said that 77.6 percent of Arabs interviewed felt "discriminated against compared with Jewish citizens," but 52.5 percent of Jews disagreed.

Israeli Arabs, who make up nearly 20 percent of the population, are Palestinians who remained in the Jewish state following the 1948 war that attended its creation, along with their descendants.

While they are guaranteed full equality under Israeli law they say that in practice they are short-changed in job opportunities, education and public funding, among other areas.

The far-right Yisrael Beitenu party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman won 15 seats in Israel's 120-member parliament in the 2009 general election, becoming the legislature's third-largest party, on a platform which included revoking Israeli Arabs' nationality unless they swear allegiance to the state.

In March this year parliament passed a bill penalising Arab commemoration of Israel's founding as a "catastrophe," in a move condemned by local rights groups.

The legislation imposes fines on any publicly funded bodies, such as local authorities or educational institutions, that mark the date as one of mourning or support other activities defined loosely as "contrary to the principles of the state."

The IDI said that its Israel Democracy Index was compiled from interviews conducted in March with a representative sample of 1,200 Israeli adults; 85 percent of them Jews and 15 percent Arabs.

It had a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.

Do Not Speak, Do Not Resist

Israel Rules Out Non-Violence

Jonathan Cook
Jul 18, 2011
Courtesy Of "The National"

It was an Arab legislator who made the most telling comment to the Israeli parliament last week as it passed the boycott law, which outlaws calls to boycott Israel or its settlements in the occupied territories. Ahmed Tibi asked: "What is a peace activist or Palestinian allowed to do to oppose the occupation? Is there anything you agree to?"

The boycott law is the latest in a series of ever-more draconian laws being introduced by the far-right. The legislation's goal is to intimidate those Israelis who have yet to bow down before the majority-rule mob.

Look out in coming days for a bill to block the work of Israeli organisations trying to protect Palestinian rights; and another draft law investing a parliamentary committee, headed by the far-right, with the power to appoint supreme court judges. The court is the only, and already enfeebled, bulwark against the right's ascendancy.

The boycott law, backed by Benjamin Netanyahu's government, marks a watershed in this legislative assault in two respects.

First, it knocks out the keystone of any democratic system: the right to free speech. The new law makes it illegal for Israelis and Palestinians to advocate a non-violent political programme - boycott - to counter the ever-growing power of the half a million Jewish settlers living on stolen Palestinian land.

As the Israeli commentator Gideon Levy observed, the floodgates are now open: "Tomorrow it will be forbidden to call for an end to the occupation [or] brotherhood between Jews and Arabs."

Equally of concern is that the law creates a new type of civil, rather than criminal, offence. The state will not be initiating prosecutions. Instead, the job of enforcing the boycott law is being outsourced to the settlers and their lawyers. Anyone backing a boycott can be sued for compensation by the settlers themselves, who - again uniquely - need not prove they suffered actual harm.
Under this law, opponents of the occupation will not even be dignified with jail sentences and the chance to become prisoners of conscience. Rather, they will be quietly bankrupted in private actions, their assets seized either to cover legal costs or as punitive damages.

Human rights lawyers point out that there is no law like this anywhere in the democratic world. But more than half of Israelis back it, with only 31 per cent opposed.

The delusional, self-pitying worldview that spawned the boycott law was neatly illustrated this month in a short video "ad" that is supported, and possibly financed, by Israel's hasbara, or propaganda, ministry. Fittingly, it is set in a psychiatrist's office.

A young woman, clearly traumatised, deciphers the images concealed in the famous Rorschach test. As she is shown the ink-splodges, her panic and anger grow. Gradually, we come to realise, she represents vulnerable modern Israel, abandoned by friends and still in profound shock at the attack on her navy's commandos by the "terrorist" passengers aboard last year's aid flotilla to Gaza.

Immune to reality - that the ships were trying to break Israel's punitive siege of Gaza, that the commandos illegally boarded the ships in international waters, and that they shot dead nine activists execution-style - Miss Israel tearfully recounts that the world is "forever trying to torment and harm [us] for no reason". Finally she storms out, saying: "What do you want - for [Israel] to disappear off the map?"

The video - released under the banner "Stop the provocation against Israel" - was part of a campaign to discredit the recent follow-up flotilla from Greece. The aid mission was abandoned after Greek authorities, under Israeli pressure, refused to let them sail.

Israel's siege mentality asserted itself again days later as international activists staged another show of solidarity - this one nicknamed the "flytilla". Hundreds tried to fly to Israel on the same day, declaring their intention to travel to the West Bank.

Israel threatened airlines with retaliation if they carried the activists and it massed hundreds of soldiers at Ben Gurion Airport to greet arrivals. About 150 peaceful protesters who reached Israel were arrested moments after landing.

Echoing the hysterical sentiments of the woman in the video, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denounced the various flotillas as "denying Israel's right to exist" and a threat to its security.

Although Mr Netanyahu's comments sound delusional, there may be a method to the madness of measures like the boycott law and the massive overreaction to the flotillas.

These initiatives, as Mr Tibi points out, leave no room for non-violent opposition to the occupation. Arundhati Roy, the award-winning Indian writer, has noted that non-violence is essentially "a piece of theatre. [It] needs an audience. What can you do when you have no audience?"

Mr Netanyahu and the Israeli right appear to understand this point. They are carefully dismantling every platform on which dissident Israelis, Palestinians and solidarity activists hope to stage their protests. They are making it impossible to organise joint peaceful and non-violent resistance, whether in the form of boycotts or solidarity visits. The only way being left open is violence.

Is this what the Israeli right wants, believing it offers a justification for entrenching the occupation? By generating the very terror he claims to be trying to defeat, does Mr Netanyahu hope he can safeguard the legitimacy of the Jewish state and destroy hopes for a Palestinian state?

Jonathan Cook is The National's correspondent in Nazareth, Israel. He won this year's Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism

Can Equality Exist In The Jewish State?

Arab citizens of Israel face discrimination in employment, education, and housing opportunities [GALLO/GETTY]


As Right-Wingers Dominate The Knesset, Arab Citizens Of Israel Say Institutional Discrimination Is Getting Worse.

By Kieron Monks
Last Modified: 04 Jun 2011 17:33
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

In 2005, following the arrest of several high profile Arab politicians and lobbyists living in Israel, the Shin Bet security agency made a statement justifying their actions: "The security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law."

The statement highlighted a fundamental tension between democratic freedom in Israel, and the need to maintain its Jewish character. Thwarting harm to that character has been extrapolated to require controls on Israel's Arab minority in many departments of society, from education to the right of dissent. The need to ensure Jewish demographic and institutional domination has prompted a raft of controversial policies and practises.

The conflict is most revealing at the level of political representation. Israel can point to the presence of 14 Arab Knesset members out of 120 as evidence of its civil rights credentials. Proportionally this is a reasonably fair reflection of a minority that accounts for 18 per cent of Israel's population; given that the Arab community habitually votes in lower numbers.

In practise, the mandate to represent Arab concerns dictates that they work against - rather than with - the rest of parliament. Knesset Member Haneen Zouabi of the Balad party is open about her role being fundamentally oppositional. "I was elected to speak for those who voted for me, not to reinforce the Zionist consensus," she says. "My role is to represent injustice and to make it more visible." Zouabi has long argued against the legitimacy of a Jewish state for allowing "institutionalised discrimination", instead favouring "a bi-national state not based on ethnicity".

She has suffered for her beliefs. After participating in the 2010 Gaza flotilla, aimed at breaking the Israeli siege, a seven to one majority voted to strip her of parliamentary privileges. Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon called for her to be tried for treason, and there were attempts to disqualify her party from elections. The hostility was so great that Zouabi was forced to travel with an armed escort. A year later she remains a pariah in parliament, branded a traitor and a terrorist-sympathiser.

Exiling Civil Rights

Others have suffered more. Azmi Bishara, also of the Balad party, was the leading voice of the Arab civil rights campaign. Despite attempts to disqualify him, Bishara became the first Arab citizen to run for the office of Prime Minister. Throughout his career Bishara faced numerous investigations from the Shin Bet. He was forced to resign in 2007, and went into exile abroad, in the wake of spurious charges of espionage.

Such attacks on Arab politicians are not exceptional, and some have been more serious than political expulsion. A 2002 report from the Human Rights Association of Nazareth documented nine cases of Arab Knesset Members being assaulted by security services over the preceding two years, seven of whom were hospitalised. In addition, the state had opened 25 criminal investigations against Arab Knesset Members over the same time period.

In recent years, the Jewish majority in the Knesset have been pushing for a decisive end to the debate over the legitimacy of a Jewish state. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was able to pass a bill last year requiring non-Jewish immigrants to take a loyalty oath to a Jewish state, and is seeking to make the oath mandatory for all Knesset members.

The most significant effect of the oath is to enhance Jewish demographic supremacy. It places a fresh barrier in the path of Palestinian refugees' historic right of return, as enshrined in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, effectively terminating their claims to former homes.

By contrast, the Law of Return grants any Jew the right to make their homes in Israel without challenge. The law is supplemented by aggressive marketing campaigns in the US and other nations with large Jewish populations, often through emotive appeals to religious solidarity. Naturalising diaspora Jews has been made a formality and is often granted within 48 hours, even to those with tenuous claims to Jewish ancestry or citizens from hostile nations. Financial incentives are also offered; as of 2007, Iranian Jews making Aliyah, the so-called "return" to Israel, are entitled to a payment of $5000.

Higher Education

Jewish nationalism is supplemented by a mandatory three year term in the Israeli Defence Forces. Jewish soldiers who serve are eligible for a number of benefits: a discharge payment, one-off loans of up to $3,500, and scholarships to academic institutions.

Recruitment does not extend to Arabs, who are then placed at a disadvantage in the jobs market. Najwan Beredker, a graduate in political science from the University of Haifa, quickly discovered that her degree counted for little. "I spent months looking for employment," she said. "Even for the basic service positions in shopping malls, most of the shops had a sign outside - 'after military service'. Effectively it meant 'we don't accept Arabs'." In public sector and government positions, 'loyalty' is an accepted criterion for employment. The policy helps to explain the disproportionately low Arab presence in these sectors - two per cent and seven per cent respectively.

Army service has also cemented divisions in higher education. In 2010, it was revealed that Haifa and Tel Aviv University, among others, gave preferential treatment to ex-soldiers seeking accommodation and tuition fees. Although a Haifa court had ruled the practise of favouring soldiers to be discriminatory, a central government amendment overruled the decision.

The Dirasat policy research centre in Nazareth reported the number of courses carrying an age restriction of 21 - the standard age of finishing army service - is increasing. They also report an entrenched practise of segregated accommodation for Jewish and Arab students.

The case of five-year old Tamir Hasnin in 2005 highlighted that segregation is also practised in primary schools. Technically admittance is determined solely by proximity to the institution, but Hasnin's case highlighted that ethnicity is a factor. Rather than registering him with his nearest, predominantly Jewish school, Lod Municipality enrolled him at one several kilometres away that had a higher proportion of Arab students. The Municipality justified their stance by expressing "the preference that Arab children, especially in the lower grades, attend Arab schools, in order to preserve their language and culture".

Ironically, it is one of the most long-standing grievances of Arab civil rights campaigners that they are unable to preserve their culture through control of their children's education. All schools in Israel are bound to a strictly vetted syllabus that gives close attention to material that could be taken as incitement. In 2010, a group of Palestinian and Israeli academics submitted a ground-breaking text, Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative, to the Ministry of Education. The book featured both sides' accounts of historic events on the same page with a blank column for the students own thoughts. It was immediately rejected.

Beredker, the political science graduate, received little education of her own culture growing up in Nazareth, home to Israel's largest Arab community. "In my Nazareth school I learned Jewish history but I never saw the word Palestinian," said Beredker. "Until I was 16 I had no awareness. We were even made to study our language wrong, with many mistakes in the words and grammar."

Nurit Peled, co-founder of Bereaved Parents for Peace and lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, believes that text books are selected to support feelings of Jewish superiority. "We never teach about the state of Israel, we teach the land of Israel, which includes all of Palestine. It is recognition by denial," she said.

Peled's research also revealed common stereotyping of Arabs in text books; "I could not find one picture of an Arab human being," she said. "They are all of types. They are presented as primitive terrorists or farmers who reject modernity."

Democratic Rights?

History has been targeted through the signing into law of the Nakba bill this year, forbidding commemoration of the Palestinians' displacement in 1948. In practise, schools were already prevented from mentioning the term, in an attempt to prevent new generations of Arabs from becoming aware of this dark chapter in their history.

The Nakba bill also touches on another thorny conflict between the "Jewish and democratic state". A cornerstone of western democracies has always been the acceptance of dissent. By contrast, Israel's violent suppression of the May 15 marches in Jerusalem, Qalandia and Gaza, highlighted intolerance of even peaceful protest.

That intolerance has been shown consistently through the six years of non-violent Palestinian protests that began in Bil'in, the village which has suffered injury or arrest of over half of its population.

New bills proposing the criminalisation of boycott movements indicates a further step towards the intolerance of dissent, taking Shin Bet's diktat to a new extreme. Human rights groups operating inside Israel have expressed concern at the proposal of a new bill to deny funding to organisations that produce critical reports.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel responded to the new laws with the worrying claim that this Knesset is "the most racist in history". Their latest reports document the link between discriminatory legislation and deepening intolerance within Jewish society in Israel. Certainly, the discreet recent law allowing town councils to selectively admit members has been taken up enthusiastically in areas with high Arab populations. Tolerance of religious leaders calling on landlords not to rent homes to Arabs has exacerbated the trend. In 2010, polls conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute found 53 per cent of Israeli Jews thought it acceptable to demand that Arabs leave the country, and 46 per cent would not live next to an Arab family.

For decades, Israel has been able to defend the scandals with the justification that quality of life is higher for Arabs living in Israel than it is in the Occupied Territories. Knesset Member Zouabi argues the claim is disingenuous. "We should not be compared with the West Bank after 40 years of Israeli Occupation has destroyed its economy, any more than we should be compared with Britain or the US," she said. "We demand equality with Jews, not to live as second class citizens."

In a recent address Netanyahu took another opportunity to stress the fortune of Arabs living in Israel. "Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights," he said during his Congress speech. That may be changing: with the wave of revolutions across the Arab world, democratic reforms are being demanded and accepted. Israel seems to be heading in the opposite direction. While ethnicity continues to dominate society, there is little space for other ideals.

Kieron Monks is content manager of This Week in Palestine magazine. His freelance articles have appeared in The Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, Tribune, Ma'an News and many others.

Worse By The Day In Jerusalem

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours,
June 03, 2011
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

JERUSALEM – As thousands of right-wing Israeli settlers descended on Jerusalem to celebrate the so-called unification of the city this week, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem were confronted by extreme provocations and the stark reality that their city remains very much divided.

"My shop was broken into a couple of times, a few times, when I’m here on Jerusalem Day," explained East Jerusalem resident Basem Hallak, who has owned an antique shop in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City for 25 years.

"You will see kids – by the meaning of kids (I mean) from the age of 16, 17 – and what they are doing is carrying machine guns, carrying guns, walking like, ‘This is our city and you (Palestinians) are out of the game. You are out, completely out’," Hallak told IPS.

Jerusalem Day is an annual event that commemorates the "reunification" of Jerusalem in 1967, when Israeli forces captured East Jerusalem from Jordanian control during the Six Days War.

The international community doesn’t recognize the Israeli government’s claims to East Jerusalem. Still, Israel has maintained the position that Jerusalem cannot be divided in the advent of a peace agreement with the Palestinian leadership, which aims to make East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state.

On Wednesday Jun. 1, thousands of right-wing Israelis, including a large number of Israeli settlers from the occupied West Bank, participated in the annual Flag March through East Jerusalem for Jerusalem Day.

Waving Israeli flags, dancing and singing, participants marched from the hotbed Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, an area in which extremist Israeli settlers have taken over Palestinian homes and continue to threaten residents – through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City on their way to the Wailing Wall. It was reported that approximately 3,000 Israeli police officers, including border police and undercover units, were on patrol to secure the march.

The municipality of Jerusalem contributed 100,000 shekels (approximately 30,000 dollars) to pay for the event, which Palestinian Jerusalemites – who number approximately 300,000 residents – viewed as an extreme act of provocation.

"I remember from the first time they started with a very small number (of marchers) and then every year it started getting bigger and bigger. They started blocking all the streets, all the roads, isolating the city of Jerusalem, making the city of Jerusalem under the Israeli authority just for the settlers, for the really fanatic Israelis," Hallak, who lives on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, told IPS.

"This is all under the protection of the soldiers and the police; (the marchers) can do whatever they want. They can burn shops, they can burn cars and this is what they have been doing for the last good number of years."

He explained that every year, Israeli police and soldiers pressure him to close his shop early on Jerusalem Day, but that his decision to remain open is a form of resistance. "It’s resisting because they want to clear us from the city, like we don’t exist anymore in the city," Hallak said.

The Israeli government passed a law in July 1980 which stated that, ”Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel." More recently, in a speech before the U.S. Congress on May 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed the Israeli government’s claims to all of Jerusalem, stating that, "Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel."

Netanyahu also held a special cabinet meeting on Sunday, May 29, at the Tower of David museum inside Jerusalem’s Old City. There, he unveiled a multi-year, 100-million dollar investment package for the city and said, "The unity of the city is one of the fundamentals of the unity of the nation of Israel."

According to Sergio Yahni, Co-Director of the Alternative Information Center, a progressive joint Palestinian-Israeli activist organization, provocative Jerusalem Day events are meant to intimidate Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and reflect the policies of the current extremist Israeli government.

"Jerusalem Day became a nationalistic orgy and provocation on the Palestinian population of the city. More than anything else, it reflects current policies, national and municipal policies, towards the Palestinian population," Yahni told IPS.

"Jerusalem Day became an immediate threat to the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. It is a violent threat. It is an immediate threat of ethnic cleansing and expulsion. We see thousands of settlers dancing, jumping in the streets in a violent way that makes Palestinians in Jerusalem feel unwanted," he said.

Ali Jiddah, a longtime Palestinian political activist and alternative tour guide based in Jerusalem’s Old City, told IPS that he refers to Jerusalem Day as "Arrogance Day".

"I call it the day of (arrogance) because Israelis, on that day, (their) behavior, you will find what’s the meaning of (arrogance). You feel that in some way Israelis are totally drunk by what they have achieved concerning the Old City," Jiddah said. "They will come down in groups in the streets, (provoking) Palestinians, trying to attack Palestinians."

While Jiddah said that Jerusalem Day is miserable for the city’s Palestinian residents, he explained that Israeli provocations motivate Palestinians to keep fighting to end the occupation and regain their rights.

"What’s good about it is (that) the provocation (the Palestinians) feel from the Israeli side makes them more determined to stand firm, to go on to be strong and to be determined to go on with their fight against the occupation," Jiddah said.

"So a day will come (when Jerusalem Day) will be a joyful day. It will be a day of happiness. It will be a day of ceremonies for Palestinians (because) they got rid of the occupation."

(Inter Press Service)

Turning The 'Right Of Return' Into Reality

The May 15 Nakba protests put the issue of Palestinian refugees back on the table [GALLO/GETTY]


Myths Perpetuated By Israel As To Why The "Right Of Return" Is Impossible Are Easily Debunked When Looked At Logically.

By Ben White
Last Modified: 31 May 2011 12:02
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

After years of marginalisation in the peace process, the Palestinian refugees are back on centre stage.

On May 15, Nakba day, the refugees forced their way on to the news agenda; in the past two weeks, Israeli and Palestinian leaders have been compelled to comment on what has always been so much more than a "final status issue".  

During his remarks in the Oval Office, and in response to an op-ed in The New York Times by Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli PM Netanyahu dismissed the refugees' right of return as fatal to "Israel's future as a Jewish state". But the permanent expulsion of one people to make way for another is a hard sell, which is why Netanyahu and others rely on oft-repeated myths about the refugees. 

One myth is that the "creation" of the Palestinian refugee "problem" (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) was a consequence of the Arab countries' war with Israel. This claim was undermined - almost despite himself - by Israeli historian Benny Morris, who though joining the attack on Abbas' op-ed, noted that 300,000 Palestinians had lost their homes before 15 May 1948. 

In fact, as serious historians and research have shown, Palestinians left their homes and villages through a combination of attacks, direct forced removals, and fear of atrocities.

The expulsion of the refugees was ultimately realised by the forcible prevention of their return, the destruction of villages, and the legislative steps taken to expropriate their land and deny them citizenship. 

A second myth manipulates the question of the Jews from Arab countries, around 850,000 of whom left between 1948 and the 1970s. Israel's apologists try and suggest that these "Jewish refugees" somehow "cancel out" the Palestinian refugees, as if the residents of Ramla or Deir Yassin were responsible for events in Baghdad and Cairo.

More than a hint here of "all Arabs are the same". 

In fact, most scorn the link, such as Israeli professor Yehouda Shenhav who wrote that "any reasonable person" must acknowledge the analogy to be "unfounded". When the US house of representatives in 2008 called for linking the issues of Jews from Arab countries and Palestinian refugees, The Economist wrote that the resolution showed "the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington".

Put simply, one right does not cancel out another. Ask those pushing this propaganda if they support restitution and redress for all refugees, Jewish and Palestinian, and they fall strangely silent.

What Kind Of Return?

But it is the exposure of a third myth that is the most explosive: that a literal return is unfeasible. 

In the words of the excellent arenaofspeculation.org, engaging "in new ways with the spatial, political and social landscapes of Israel-Palestine" means that instead of asking "can we return?" or "when will we return?" Palestinians are suddenly allowed to ask "what kind of return do we want to create for ourselves?" 

A discussion on what implementing the right of the return would look like is taking place. There is the long-standing work of Salman Abu Sitta and the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), as well as studies by Badil and Decolonising Architecture Art Residency. Recently, the Israeli group Zochrot published in their journal Sedek a fascinating collection of articles on realising the return. 

Many people are familiar with the words of Israeli military chief of staff Moshe Dayan at a funeral in 1956, when he reminded those present that Palestinian refugees in Gaza had been watching the transformation of "the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate."

Less well known are the thoughts of his father, member of Knesset Shmuel Dayan, who in 1950 admitted: "Maybe [not allowing the refugees back] is not right and not moral, but if we become just and moral, I do not know where we will end up." 

There can be no doubt that the obstacle to a resolution of this central injustice is the insistence on maintaining a regime of ethno-religious privilege and exclusion.

After 63 years of dispossession, the refugees have been once again revealed to be at the heart of the issue, for it is they who best exemplify what it means to create and maintain a Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians.

Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer, specialising in Palestine and Israel. His first book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide, was published by Pluto Press in 2009, receiving praise from the likes of Desmond Tutu, Nur Masalha and Ghada Karmi.