You wouldn’t know it from reading the New York Times, but Amnesty International, one of the world’s leading human rights organizations, recently issued an exhaustively researched report accusing Israel of the crime of Apartheid.  Maybe the Times didn’t cover the Amnesty report because it wasn’t really news. After all, the other leading international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, came out with a report last year reaching similar conclusions. HRW’s report, in turn, was preceded by one from B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, which also called called Israel out for Apartheid.  But, um, the Times didn’t cover those reports either.  Maybe the maintenance of ‘an institutionalized regime for the purpose of the systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups” isn’t such a big deal if the oppressor/dominator is one of the US’s favorite allies. The Washington Post, by contrast, did a decent story on the AI report, as did NPR.

The Times is probably better than most, but its reticence on the subject of Israeli state criminality is typical of our mainstream media, which is why so few Americans have more than the faintest idea of what our Israeli ally is up to.

Palestinians have been applying the Apartheid label to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank for decades. Over 20 years ago Israeli PM Ehud Barak warned that Israel was headed to Apartheid if it didn’t reach a general peace settlement with the Palestinians.  That warning has been repeated many times since, both by establishment Israelis and by former US president Jimmy Carter. Israeli officials bridle at the term, but if anything, it is overly mild. (Years ago, I argued that even the term “occupation” was a misleadingly mild characterization of Israeli rule on the West Bank.) The term Apartheid originated of course with South Africa, but I’m pretty sure that South African Blacks were generally better treated than Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza today. Consider this account from Israeli human rights activist David Shulman:

November 10, 2021: Twenty Israeli settlers, armed with guns and clubs, their faces masked, descend upon the hamlet of Halat al-Dab’ in the South Hebron hills. They attack the Palestinians who live there, smash windows, cars, and whatever else they find. Six Palestinians are wounded, at least one from gunshots. There are Israeli soldiers nearby who make no attempt to interfere and who leave the area while the pogrom is going on. I use the word deliberately. What happened that day in Halat al-Dab’ is not different in kind from the pogrom in Nikolayev, in Ukraine, in the early years of the twentieth century, when my grandmother’s brother was killed by Cossacks.

September 28, 2021, Simchat Torah, the end of the Sukkot holiday: Dozens of masked settlers storm the tiny Palestinian encampment of Mufagara, also in the South Hebron hills, wreaking havoc. Basil al-Adraa, an activist from the nearby village of at-Tuwani, reported that the settlers went from house to house, and broke windows, smashed cars with knives and hammers. A large stone they threw hit a 3-year-old boy, Mohammed, in the head, who is now in the hospital. The soldiers supported them with tear gas. The residents fled. I can’t forget how the villagers left their houses, terrified, the children screaming, the women crying, while the settlers entered their living rooms, like they were possessed with violence and wrath.

September 17, 2021: A convoy of activists from the Israeli-Palestinian NGO Combatants for Peace and other organizations is bringing a water tanker to a village near at-Tuwani, which has no access to running water. The army violently attacks the convoy with tear gas and stun grenades. Six activists and a journalist are wounded; one of the activists is thrown to the rocky ground by the senior officer in command and has to undergo surgery on his eye. Seven Palestinians are arrested.

No one should think that these events—a random selection—are aberrations or exceptions to the rule. They are now the norm in the occupied Palestinian territories. Settler violence, backed up by Israeli soldiers, happens every day. Government ministers and high-ranking officers, including the army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi, make bland statements condemning the violence but do nothing to stop it. Some of them actively support it.  The goal, by no means a secret, is to expel Palestinians from their homes and lands and, eventually, to annex as much of the West Bank as possible to Israel. “

Shulman’s whole chilling article is very worth reading, if you can get past the firewall.  I wish it could be read by every member of the US Congress.

Of course, the ever-ready excuse for Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians is “security”: keep the lid on or else the terrorists will start in again!  But the endemic settler terrorism against Palestinians described by Shulman can hardly be justified on grounds of security. Nor can a whole range of measures that make life miserable for the nearly 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.  No, Apartheid in Palestine isn’t mainly about security.  It’s mainly about keeping Arabs in their place—and, when opportune, removing them from their places, with expulsions and home demolitions—to make room for the ever-expanding Israeli population in occupied Palestine.

B’Tselem closes its report with an observation and an exhortation: “There are various political paths to a just future here, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but all of us must first choose to say no to apartheid.” I’m not so sure that there really are many options for a just future in Israel/Palestine.  I’ll ponder that question in an upcoming post.

Note: If you are interested I exploring any of the three reports cited, I would recommend starting with either the B’Tselem or the HRW reports, which I think are organized in a more concise and accessible way than the weighty AI report.