Time to dissect the Israel apartheid accusation

 

Lots of talk about apartheid, especially in Israel. What is apartheid? Where do we find it in Israel?

Apartheid is another word for  segregation. Apartheid was practiced in South Africa. Segregation, in America, was the practice of requiring separate housing, education and other services for people of colour.

Laws concerning segregation were established under the Black Codes which were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation  and also under the Jim Crow Laws. Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation.

Legislators segregated everything from schools to residential areas to public parks to theaters to pools to cemeteries, asylums, jails and residential homes. There were separate waiting rooms for whites and blacks in professional offices and, in 1915, Oklahoma became the first state to even segregate public phone booths.

There were separate water fountains and restaurants and hotels. For an excellent overview of this life in the South, watch the movie the “Green Book.”

Colleges were segregated and separate black institutions like Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee were created to compensate.

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional. The ruling established the idea of “separate but equal.”

During the Great Migration, a period between 1916 and 1970, six million African Americans left the South. Huge numbers moved northeast and reported discrimination and segregation similar to what they had experienced in the South.

As late as the 1940s, it was still possible to find “Whites Only” signs on businesses in the North. Segregated schools and neighbourhoods existed.

The remnants of segregation live on today. It takes a long time to remove innate endemic and systemic hate.

Now let’s look at apartheid in South Africa.

After the National Party gained power in South Africa in 1948, its all-white government immediately began enforcing existing policies of racial segregation under a system of legislation that it called apartheid. Under apartheid, nonwhite South Africans (a majority of the population) would be forced to live in separate areas from whites and use separate public facilities, and contact between the two groups would be limited.

Racial segregation and white supremacy had become central aspects of South African policy long before apartheid began. The controversial 1913 Land Act, passed three years after South Africa gained its independence, marked the beginning of territorial segregation by forcing black Africans to live in reserves and making it illegal for them to work as sharecroppers.

By 1950, the government had banned marriages between whites and people of other races, and prohibited sexual relations between black and white South Africans. The Population Registration Act of 1950 provided the basic framework for apartheid by classifying all South Africans by race, including Bantu (black Africans), Coloured (mixed race) and white. A fourth category, Asian (meaning Indian and Pakistani) was later added. In some cases, the legislation split families; parents could be classified as white, while their children were classified as colored.

See the similarities?

Now I defy you to find apartheid/segregation in Israel as declared by organizations like the SAIA, the Students Against Apartheid in Israel, SJP, Students for Justice in Palestine, and those who stand with BDS – the call for the economic ruin of a democratic state for separating peoples based on race, colour, creed or religion.

Show me.

Show me the separate housing, separate hotels, restaurants, water fountains, hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, buses, trains, work places.

Show me the laws that promote segregation or apartheid. Where are they? What are they?

Show me a place in Israel that says no Muslims allowed, no Gentiles allowed, no black people allowed.

Show me.

But, I can show you a water fountain that says Muslims only. I can tell you that there is one place Jews are not allowed to pray in Israel – the Temple Mount –the Al Aksa Mosque which sits ON TOP of two Jewish Temples. Jews and Christians are not allowed to pray there. But Muslims can pray everywhere. Perhaps that is the apartheid to which these BDS and SAIA people are referring.

I can show you signs in Israel that state no Jews allowed – on roads. Interestingly, while Arabs can travel freely throughout Judea and Samaria, Jews are limited in which roads they can travel.

Under Israeli law, it’s illegal for Jews to enter any territories labeled as Area A, or under full Palestinian Authority security and administrative control. Large red signs warning Israeli citizens not to enter these areas have dotted the entrances to Palestinian Authority-controlled towns and villages.

There are two sets of laws on the Temple Mount: one for Muslims and one for Jews. There are laws that deny Jews freedom of worship and freedom of movement on the Temple Mount and they are enforced by the Israeli Police.

While Muslims can ascend to the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem, any time they please, Jews cannot. Jews are permitted to ascend to the Temple Mount only during the specified times.

In order to enter, both men and women need to be dressed modestly. At the entrance Jews must pass through metal detectors and submit to being searched for sacred Jewish objects. Israeli police lecture Jews not to pray, not to be seen doing anything that could be construed as praying, not to rip clothing or show any other signs of mourning for the lost Jewish Temple. Jews are also prohibited from praying, conducting any religious rituals including the exchange of wedding vows, or circumcision ceremonies. Yehuda Glick, former member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, was arrested on the Temple Mount for “walking in an unauthorized zone.”

Then there are  the Murabitun and Murabitat – Palestinian male and female “defenders of the faith” – who are paid to harass and scream at Jewish visitors.

So how did this happen that Jews in Jerusalem have their freedom restrained?

At the behest of the Jordanian Waqf, the Islamic trust which has run the holy site since the Hashemite kingdom’s illegal occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1948, Israeli authorities have limited Jewish access to the Mount for years, barring Jews and other non-Muslims from approaching the southern end of the Mount, where the Al Aqsa Mosque is located, or the Dome of the Rock at the center of the Mount.

Want to talk about segregated water fountains?  You can find them on the Temple Mount. Muslims only! When a three-year-old Jewish child attempted to drink from the fountain, an officer ordered his father to remove the boy from the fountain and to find a bottle or water fountain at a different location – preferably one at which non-Muslims are permitted to drink.

Video of the incident was uploaded by the Temple Mount Institute to social media showing the officer requesting the father find another source of water for his son – off of the Mount.

 

If that is not enough, let’s talk about dhimmitude. Now that is real second class treatment; by Islam.

The word “dhimmitude” as a historical concept, was coined by Bat Ye’or in 1983 to describe the legal and social conditions of Jews and Christians subjected to Islamic rule. Dhimmitude encompasses the relationship of Muslims and non-Muslims at the theological, social, political and economical levels.

The dhimmi is a distinctly subjugated second class non-citizen almost slave who is subjected to dictatorial deprivation of any legal and human rights since he is a non-Muslim permanent resident in a Muslim state. They must pay various taxes and tolls, must live a second class life and give deference to their Muslim neighbours.

So tell me again about the apartheid in Israel?

 

 

From the Ethics of the Fathers: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it.”