Harry Shannon
A few weeks ago, Amnesty International (AI) issued a report that concluded that Israel is guilty of apartheid in its treatment of Palestinians. Of course, the term apartheid is loaded, and you can agree or disagree with AI’s conclusion. Notably, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli NGO B’Tselem have also accused Israel of apartheid.
The fact is that on the West Bank there are separate roads for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, as well as major differences in infrastructure, legal rights, and access to land and resources between Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians have to cross road blocks and checkpoints to get to work or school, and so on. Israelis living in settlements vote in Israeli elections; Palestinians do not. Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza cannot become Israeli residents via marriage.
[For the record, here’s my view: Much of the debate on the topic fails to define apartheid. There are detailed definitions in international law (see section 4.1.1 in the AI report) but a simpler example will do. The online Cambridge Dictionary first refers to apartheid in South Africa and then defines apartheid as: ‘a system of keeping groups of people separate and treating them differently, especially when this results in disadvantage for one group.’ There’s no doubt what happens on the West Bank meets this definition. Whether Israeli behaviour in “Israel proper” does is likely though less certain.]
Following the AI report, Toronto Star columnist Shree Paradkar wrote an article headed ‘Report slams Israeli government.’ (At least that’s the title in the newspaper; online there’s a longer heading.) She carefully listed specific Israeli policies and practices described in the AI report, with relatively little of her own comment. Paradkar has previously written about Israel and has been criticized by pro-Israel groups. In one case, a letter from the vice-president of the (Canadian) Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs attacked her and the Star, patronizingly demanding “Do better!”
So after Paradkar’s column on the AI report, I wrote a letter to the Star which was published with a small edit at the end. Here is the version I sent:
I congratulate Shree Paradkar for her courage in describing Amnesty International’s report on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. As she notes, Israel often claims its procedures are necessary for security. Yet the report describes many policies and practices that make lives very difficult for Palestinians and do nothing to protect Israelis.
Israeli officials have already criticized the report, claiming with no evidence that it is antisemitic. I fully expect lobby groups such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs to do the same. Yet is it too much to hope that for once they will put themselves in the place of Palestinians? They could, for example, read the columns of Israeli journalists Gideon Levy and Amira Hass to begin to understand life on the ground.
Maybe then they will, like Paradkar, show some courage and speak truth to power. They should urge the Israeli government to obey Jewish religious law: e.g., stop the collective punishment of Palestinians and pursue justice.
Harry Shannon, Dundas