Israel is a Racist Endeavour

16/10/2018

Sem 2 Wk 12

Asad Kasim-Khan

These are the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in front of a nuclear weapons factory.

Netanyahu has been a tireless invoker of the European Holocaust as a political weapon against those who oppose the illegal acts of Israel for his decade-long tenure. Meanwhile, he has embraced openly anti-Semitic governments as long as they accept Israel’s war crimes. Calling Israel racist is apparently anti-Semitic, yet he will happily absolve Poland of its Nazi crimes.

Perhaps for the “only Middle Eastern democracy”, genocide is both an excuse for its policies and an economic opportunity. Israel knowingly supplied weapons to Myanmar during the Rohingya genocide, while helpfully ensuring that Burmese children will be learn about the Holocaust. It also profiteered from the Bosnian genocide during which 250,000 were murdered, and 60,000 women were raped.

After the European Holocaust, large-scale Jewish migration to Palestine, overwhelmingly from Europe, led to the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948. Subsequent ethnic cleansing, rape, massacre, and mass-mutilation resulted in the flight of 750,000 Palestinians. The first Israeli government then barred their return by appropriating their land for newly-arrived Jews. 500 villages were destroyed and 84% of Palestinians became refugees. Today, they and their descendants number around 5 million.

Australians should be well-positioned to understand this conflict. The use of legal manoeuvres to cover-up atrocities and declare the land terra nullius, or in Zionist phrasing “a land without a people for a people without a land” is well-documented. Cities like Tel Aviv did not rise from wastelands – they were built on destroyed Palestinian villages.

Importantly, nothing in Zionism or Jewish Orthodoxy necessitates a right to remove Palestinians. The Holocaust, among the most vile events in history, also does not give rise to any such right. No crime against humanity justifies other crimes against humanity.

Instead of reckoning with its history, Israel has constitutionalised a ‘nation-state law’, expressly providing that “the right to exercise national self-determination is unique to the Jewish people” and “Jewish settlement [is] a national value… [and that the state] will labour to encourage and promote its establishment and development”.

In September, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal to halt the destruction of Khan al-Ahmar, a village in the occupied West Bank, despite the UN saying it would constitute a war crime. The village is one of 18 at risk of demolition because they are on land designated for Israeli settlements. The settlements, the physical manifestation of Israel’s continuing colonisation, are illegal at international law.

Further, despite apartheid being a recognised crime against humanity, this law merely formalises the de facto apartheid of Palestinians within Israel. The situation is worse in the Occupied Territories. Palestinians in Jerusalem experience ethnic discrimination in accessing basic services like healthcare, employment, and residency and building rights.

The West Bank and Gaza, occupied for 50 years, are under martial law while Jewish settlements nearby enjoy civil law protections. Palestinians in these areas experience arbitrary detention (including of children), torture, collective punishment, and even murder by the Israeli Defence Force and Jewish settlers without accountability.

Israel enforces abhorrent living conditions in these territories. Civilians entering the “no-go” zone and fishermen going beyond six nautical miles are shot. They have limited access to water, electricity and schools while next-door, these services are readily available to Jewish settlers. The destruction of thousands of homes has displaced Palestinians to make way for settlements.

But never fear, Trump has a peace plan! This has included relocating the American embassy to Jerusalem to support Israel’s de facto annexation of the city, slashing the entire American budget of the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, which educates 500,000 children and gives healthcare to 9 million Palestinians. He also wants to “de-register” 90% of Palestinian refugees, thereby destroying their right to return.

On the 70th anniversary of their ethnic cleansing, Palestinians held the Great March of Return. Israel responded by unlawfully massacring 204 protestors. and injuring 17,259 – including by exploding bullets which are banned under the 1899 Hague Convention. Children protesting for their most basic human rights have been killed lost limbs.

Thanks to the efforts of First Nations Peoples, small parts of Australia have begun to grapple, albeit torpidly, with the genocidal horror of our history. Of course, this only being countenanced after Indigenous Australians were exterminated by Europeans and left as a tiny minority in their own lands. Perhaps it’s easy to recognise history when you think all you will have to do is say sorry.

Australian racism has changed. While Australian policies lead to mass-incarceration, and state-sanctioned murder, no major party or politician openly calls for Indigenous Australians to be removed, killed, or rejects their indigneity. The Israeli government does. Israel and its supporters must recognise the full scale of its atrocities and reject ethno-nationalism. Food for thought while enjoying your Very Good Falafel.

29 Comments

Your best work

16/10/2018 07:43:56 pm

Asad I've disagreed with you often and think some of your views are misguided but not so here. Israel is absolutely a terrorist state.

Thank you for this post, I'm surprised to say an Asad article is my favourite one of the week, but I honestly feel like if you aren't sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians you are so far outside the realm of mainstream, reasonable politics and are a genocide apologist.

Thank you for sharing.

Minor point

16/10/2018 08:01:18 pm

International Law does not exist.

History

16/10/2018 08:54:58 pm

Some critique of your selective use of facts and resources.

1. Gaza had thriving industries and promising economic prospects when it was handed back to the Palestinians yet these industries were quickly destroyed by the PA who sought to divert their efforts and resources into building tunnels and perpetuating war with Israel.

2. Your claim regarding limited access to water, electricity and schools needs to be contrasted against the millions of dollars in aid given to the PA and taxes collected by Israel for those living in the West Bank and re-routed to the PA in Gaza. These funds are spent at the discretion of the PA and instead of going to ensuring water, electricity and schools are funded, are used to build tunnels and reward the families of martyrs.

3. Finally this entire recent-history debate must be seen in the context of more than just the Holocaust occurred and then 1948 the State of Israel was proclaimed as this article has done - the impact and circumstances the British Mandate cannot be overlooked.

Huh

16/10/2018 10:13:52 pm

wtf is the go with this comment.
this is not a critique. these are irrelevant statements.

Why do the actions of the PA or the fact of the mandate reduce the legitimacy of the palestinian struggle or lessen the atrocities committed by the occupying power?

Hmm, really makes you think

16/10/2018 09:08:57 pm

"After the European Holocaust, large-scale Jewish migration to Palestine, overwhelmingly from Europe, led to the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948."

Hold on, I thought open borders and mass immigration was always a good thing, and here you are telling me it led directly to the overthrow and oppression of the Palestianian people and the establishment of a new majority in Palestine.

Can someone pclear up this feeling of cognitive dissonance I am experiencing please?

Life of Quirrell

16/10/2018 10:15:18 pm

Trolls go home

Thought you ought to know

16/10/2018 10:46:56 pm

One day you will learn that you will atually have to reason with arguments that you don't like as to why they are wrong, instead of lazily dismissing them as troll arguments.

Or perhaps you won't, in which case good luck with law school.

YHWH (No. 2)

16/10/2018 09:25:20 pm

Jews first occupied the area interchangeably reffered to as Israel or Palestine nearly 2000 years before it was occupied by an Muslim, or before such a thing as Islam even existed. On that basis the regular champions of indigenous people and adherants to anticolonial movements should be celebrating the overthrow of the Islamic colonisation of Israel and its return to the control of the traditional owners of the land, being the Jewish people.

Religion, ethnicity and indigeneity

17/10/2018 01:34:45 am

Establishment of a religion constitutes the origin of an indigenous population? As if 'such a thing as Islam' brought with it an 'introduced' population.

Hair splitter

17/10/2018 07:39:44 am

Islam was carried in to Israel/Palestine by the Islamic conquests and by the gradual Arab colonisation that followed it, whose religion was Islam. Also it has been well recognised that ‘Jewish’ can denote both a religion and an ethnic group and the two almost always coincide.

Funny how Arabs always fly under the radar with the colonisation thing, even though they colonised and dispossessed native populations stretching from Morocco to Iraq. It’s almost as though people who ignore it have some sort of agenda.

DNA

19/10/2018 07:28:28 am

Actually DNA evidence shows conclusively that the Jews are an ethnic group

16/10/2018 09:28:15 pm

thank you for writing this!

Question

16/10/2018 09:32:07 pm

There is a lot of food for thought in this article!

I was wondering, however, why Very Good Falafel is referred to? Is it just a reference to how falafel is a contested food/cultural symbol, or is there something about that particular business that is relevant?

Laura

16/10/2018 10:51:07 pm

Ha. Probably both - one of the owners grew up in Israel.

Canaanites

16/10/2018 10:14:09 pm

The Canaanites were the true indigenous inhabitants of Israel.

Israel the only democracy in the Middle East

16/10/2018 11:39:30 pm

I’m glad you got to write this piece because as much as I don’t agree with it and think your sources are questionable and many important facts have been overlooked it demonstrates you value debate and arguement - something denied to those in many countries of the Middle East.

The Palestinian Authority in the other hand routinely arrests and detains journalists, activists and opposition members. In doing so the PA violated its legal obligations that the state of Palestine (if you believe it exists) assumes after it ratified the ICCPRC against Torture in 2014.

Asad Kasim-Khan

18/10/2018 02:49:50 pm

Your comment bizarrely suggests that my sources are questionable without actually substantiating that.

Your comment – apropos of nothing – suggests that I support the regimes that deny freedom of expression in the Middle East. Anyone who knows me knows I constantly advocate against these regimes – which are with few exceptions supported in their endeavours by the United States, Australia, and increasingly Israel. Israel yesterday supported the discredited theory that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by accident. Israel is allowing a despotic regime, empowered originally by the British and now propped up by the United States, to murder people calling for freedom of expression.

I am not going to get into a tit for tat. I do not support human rights abuses on any side. I do note that, embarrassingly for you, what is often said of our First Nations Peoples after their genocide is that they "should have fought back harder if they didn't want their land stolen". When Palestinians do fight back, they are crazy animals deserving of colonisation. There is no convincing people like you, with a singleminded agenda that doesn't care about human dignity or the equal worth of humans.

Good luck being a coward not willing to argue your view in public.

Jonathan link

17/10/2018 06:38:24 am

You’re article is full of misinformation.

You mention that “rape” and “mass-mutilation” occurred, for example, but in the source you cite, there is no mention of rape and nothing that can reasonably be described as mass-mutilation.

You have made up facts and pretended to support them with evidence.

This might serve you well as a polemicist but not as a future lawyer.

17/10/2018 08:46:18 am

Couldn’t have said it better myself. This entire piece is delusional in the sources it has used and conclusions drawn from those.

++1

17/10/2018 10:39:16 pm

Totally agree.I find the article itself to be a racist endeavour.

Extremely unbalanced and just purely written from an emotional bias given that the author is a Muslim.

West Asia needs Israel.

18/10/2018 02:44:48 pm

IF the article I linked to doesn't include mentions of rape and mutilation, I note that Israeli Jewish historians like Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe have both recorded that rape was a weapon used to remove Palestinians. I'm sure you have access to their books and to peer review articles that cite them and your comment is an attempt to slur me and detract from having to respond to the substance of my article. Such strategies may serve you well as a lawyer, but you are such a coward you cannot put your name to your comments while you justify murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing. I have no doubt also that you will suggest Pappe and Morris are somehow not good historians even though they draw on IDF sources. I refuse to be drawn into your ill informed attempts to discredit me and the Palestinians and I answer only so that others know that your comment is such an attempt.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20070527093509/http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2006/Spring/article03.htm

2. http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm

Unsurprising

17/10/2018 09:00:32 am

"No crime against humanity justifies other crimes against humanity."

And yet you fail to engage with the horrors committed by Palestinians against Israelis. Sounds like a balanced perspective.

18/10/2018 02:55:02 pm

As above, I do not support any abrogation of human rights.

I encourage you to get read more on this issue and see the difference between a people fighting against their colonisation, murder, torture, and impoverishment and the people doing those things.

You sympathise, abhorrently, with the torturer, the murderer, the coloniser, the land thief. You suggest that a people driven to desperation should not defend themselves, should let themselves be pushed out of their country, be left to live in rubble with no prospects of a normal life or prosperity. I disagree with you.

The last 10 years shows what Israeli efforts to engage means. History is against you, facts are against you, and still you choose the oppressor.

There is no convincing someone like you. You are the supporter of Apartheid South Africa, you are the supporter of locking asylum seekers in indefinite detention, you are the white coloniser rooting for the destruction of the First Nations Peoples, you are the apologist for extermination when it suits your agenda.

Double Standards

17/10/2018 02:22:50 pm

I'm almost in disbelief at your sheer arrogance in thinking you've added *anything* new to the discourse, when all you've done is parrot one-sided criticisms of Israel that were already repeated to death before you were old enough to know this debate even existed. Seriously, your article is little more than a list of curated news and opinion pieces — congrats on being the human equivalent of the Facebook newsfeed algorithm.

But let's put that aside for now, because the substance of your 'argument', sparse though it may be between the endless links to variably questionable articles, should be addressed for at least a bit of clarity.

Suppose Netanyahu was voted out and replaced by a left wing leader who advocated for both Palestinian self-determination and Jewish self-determination through a two state solution. Would Israel no longer be a racist endeavour in that scenario? If so, congratulations your article has some semblance of coherence. If not — and I suspect not, considering your sleight of ‘ethno-nationalism’ at the end there — if you think Israel would STILL be a racist endeavour, then what you’re saying is that, come what may, Jews do not deserve self-determination and Israelis don't deserve a country. Rejecting Jewish self-determination is an anti-semitic double standard.

Let me be clear, I agree with virtually none of Netanyahu’s policies. I find a lot of what his government does despicable. But when the Israeli government does horrific things, I don’t call Israel as an ‘endeavour’ into question; I don’t question its existence or the ‘endeavour’ of the Jewish people for self determination. When Russia perpetrates abhorrent abuses of human rights in Chechnya, no one calls into question Russia as an ‘endeavour’ or the Russian people's right to self-determination. The same goes for China, or the USA, or Australia, or several other Middle-Eastern countries, or the rest of the long list of countries that have committed and continue to commit terrible human rights violations. Holding Israel in particular to different consequences to any other country is an anti-semitic double standard.

Maybe I'm misreading you and you were in fact only attacking the Israeli government, not Israel per se. If so, I suggest thinking about your wording more carefully.

And fyi, saying that the Holocaust was an ‘opportunity’ for Jews is one of the most disgusting insults you can conjure up and I’d wager you’d never dare say the same, mutatis mutandis, about any other persecuted group that has endured an event like genocide.

The Mûmakil in the room

17/10/2018 02:33:04 pm

I think we all know that the desire of the author and his fellow travelers if for Israel to cease to exist as a State and geopolitical entity. I would not even call that a 'barely concealed' goal, it is usually trumpeted quite loudly and proudly and is official government policy of about 95% of States with an Islamic majority. Its also a common refrain of feral leftists the world over. Whether they have thought about what would happen to the Jewish population after such an event is unclear.

18/10/2018 03:14:11 pm

Australia is a racist endeavour.

Canada is a racist endeavour.
 The United States of America is a racist endeavour.

China is a racist endeavour in its colonisation of Tibet and East Turkestan.

Russia is a racist endeavour in its colonisation of the entirety of the Russian East.

Israel is a racist endeavour. It is a settler colony formed within living memory. It is particularly egregious for that reason. You know that, and you choose to ignore it. Instead you divert to easy accusations of anti-semitism.

I note that you haven’t included your name because you are unwilling to stand by your opinion.

I included these links to these articles for one reason – because they are more accessible than book titles. I can encourage you to read “Enemies and Neighbours” by Ian Black, the works of people like Ilan Pappe, but we both know you’re going to read Zionist authors.

You have retreated into a pathetic excuse for a response. Anti-Semitic to call a settler colony based on the supremacy of the rights of one ethnicity? Anti-Semitic then to call out blatant racism. An interesting argument.

Self determination does not mean the right to push out a people, kill them, displace them en masse, and claim a geographic location as your country. It does not mean the right to make one ethnic group (or rather collection who adhere to a religion) have greater rights than political minorities. That is true in Australia, Iraq, America, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and every single other country on Earth. Self determination does not involve at all the right to expel or transfer or destroy.

My article is unequivocal. Ethnic cleansing is racist by definition. Apartheid is racist by definition. If Israel were now to allow Palestinians a right of return to their own country, to decolonize its institutions, to give all of its citizens equal rights –– there is no doubt that it would be addressing its legacy of racism. I very clearly leave that open. I am not Palestinian, and it is their collective choice – not yours and not mine. A coloniser should respect its colonised people and empower them to negotiate things like treaties and other fair outcomes. I argue that in Australia, that was rightly argued for South Africa, and that is the only way forward for other states founded on settler colonialism – including Israel.

I hold Israel to account as much as I hold the US, Australia, and the UK to account. The difference is that Israel is a settler colony in the Middle East, whereas the other countries meddle from outside. There is clearly a difference. It is not anti-Semitic to point that out.

A Muslim holding Israel to account is not anti-Semitic. We have a different history with Israel than the West. The European Holocaust and the racism and radicalisation of Jews, the disgusting levels of anti-Semitism, did not originate in the Muslim world. The Muslim world has high levels of anti-semitism – which I disagree with – as a direct result of the creation of the state of Israel. This is well established, despite the conspiracy theories of Netanyahu.

Israel has also facilitated genocides against Muslims in both Myanmar and Bosnia. It is supporting Egypt in its disgusting destruction of any semblance of democracy and hope in the future, as it is doing with Saudi Arabia. Israel is reviled in particular for these reasons and its treatment of Palestinians. You know this and yet still chose to call me an anti-Semite. Good on you.

I also did not use the word “opportunity”. How disgusting that your only way to slur me is to put words in my mouth. If you actually followed my links, you would have seen that, again from a Jewish person, Zionism went from being a heretical position to becoming Orthodoxy as a direct result of the Holocaust. It is regrettable in the extreme that you would dare to suggest I am saying genocide is an opportunity.

I will not, after the mass murder of Muslim peoples, the displacement, the weapons sales to regimes literally perpetrating genocides against Muslims, be lectured by someone who doesn’t even know those facts, nor slurred as an anti-Semite. You are incapable of debate so you call me a racist. I am the racist, while you defend these horrific crimes against humanity against Palestinians, with your meek “I don’t support Netanyahu”. You don’t support Netanyahu, but you’ll support a leftwing government in a Knesset built from the bones of Palestinians? Give me a break.

‘I believe I am more aware than most of the profound Jewish religious attachment to the Land of Israel. I was raised in a deeply Zionist and religiously observant home. Moreover, I am old enough to have experienced personally what it meant to live under the Nazis. On the last ship to bring a small, fortunate number of Jewish refugees to the US in 1942, this 11-year-old was writing poems on deck about

18/10/2018 05:59:02 pm

>‘I note that you haven’t included your name because you are unwilling to stand by your opinion.’

I haven’t included my name because I’m Jewish and so, sad as it might be, fear for the repercussions of revealing my identity in the current political climate where, believe it or not, anti-semites do exist, and apparently people at this law school will call me a filthy racist supporter of crimes against humanity if I so much as voice support for the existence of a Jewish state. Call me a coward if you want, but (a) to imply that my identity makes any difference to my argument is an ad hominem fallacy; and (b) If you don’t want people commenting on your article anonymously then don’t post to a forum with anonymous comments.

>‘Australia is a racist endeavour. Canada is a racist endeavour. The United States of America is a racist endeavour. China is a racist endeavour … Russia is a racist endeavour.’

Have you ever written anything criticising all these countries and demanding they do such and such to redress the racism that lies at their foundations? Is that such and such equivalent to what you’re asking of Israel? This isn’t a completely rhetorical question; I’m genuinely interested to hear what you think the specific proper recourse for every human-rights-abusing country would be, and why you’ve chosen to write on Israel instead of any other country.

>‘Anti-Semitic to call a settler colony based on the supremacy of the rights of one ethnicity? Anti-Semitic then to call out blatant racism.’

If Palestinians were given true self-determination, and the Palestinian Authority built a state on the land currently inhabited by Israel, and this Palestinian state was built expressly for the Palestinian people to the specific exclusion of Jews (among others), would that Palestinian state also be blatantly racist?

>‘Self determination does not mean the right to push out a people, kill them, displace them en masse, and claim a geographic location as your country … Self determination does not involve at all the right to expel or transfer or destroy.’

What you conveniently left out of this line of thought, of course, is that Jews don’t really have a geographic location to call their own, do they (at least under your historical narrative)? If the entirety of the land which Israel occupies in fact belongs to Palestinians, and since all other lands on earth are essentially settled and occupied today, then following your logic the only just recourse would be for Israel to dissolve completely and for there to be no Jewish state, since there’s nowhere else for Jews to go but to already-occupied lands. I shouldn’t have to explain to you why there are significant practical problems for Jews when a geographical Jewish homeland doesn’t exist.

>‘A coloniser should respect its colonised people and empower them to negotiate things like treaties and other fair outcomes. I argue that in Australia, that was rightly argued for South Africa, and that is the only way forward for other states founded on settler colonialism – including Israel.’

I believe a two-state solution would be fair. If you don't, please explain why.

>‘I hold Israel to account as much as I hold the US, Australia, and the UK to account. The difference is that Israel is a settler colony in the Middle East, whereas the other countries meddle from outside. There is clearly a difference.’

You’re correct, there are differences (although I'm not sure why Israel being in the Middle East is important if you're arguing against colonisation in general). However one difference you’ve failed to mention is that where the US and Australia were created unilaterally by the UK (and other European powers and their colonising peoples), Israel was created with the support of the UN. What that means exactly I don’t know, but it surely makes makes Israel per se a different breed of ‘colonisation’ to the sort that occurred in earlier centuries at the hands of European settlers. Your failure to recognise that leaves your historical narrative lacking in nuance which, as any historian will tell you, means it’s probably an inaccurate narrative.

>‘It is supporting Egypt in its disgusting destruction of any semblance of democracy and hope in the future, as it is doing with Saudi Arabia. Israel is reviled in particular for these reasons and its treatment of Palestinians.’

I’ve already explained I don’t agree with Netanyahu’s policies, so this is just a straw man.

>‘I also did not use the word “opportunity”.’

Quoting from your article: ‘Perhaps for the “only Middle Eastern democracy”, genocide is both an excuse for its policies and an economic ’OPPORTUNITY’.’ (emphasi

Double Standards (cont.)

18/10/2018 06:00:05 pm

(cont.)
>‘I also did not use the word “opportunity”.’

Quoting from your article: ‘Perhaps for the “only Middle Eastern democracy”, genocide is both an excuse for its policies and an economic ’OPPORTUNITY’.’ (emphasis added)

>‘I am the racist, while you defend these horrific crimes against humanity against Palestinians, with your meek “I don’t support Netanyahu”. You don’t support Netanyahu, but you’ll support a leftwing government in a Knesset built from the bones of Palestinians? Give me a break.’

I support the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, and self-determination includes the right to have a government. I don’t care about the building from which the government operates. I also support the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the rights flowing from it. That you seem to support the latter but not the former is a double standard. It’s a double standard which subjugates Jews in particular, thus making it anti-semitic.

point link

31/10/2018 12:41:39 am

I agree with this article and appreciate how well-written and researched it is. I also oppose ethno-nationalism of all kinds. However, I would dispute how you've constructed the relationship between "the right of return" and "the Holocaust".

"The Holocaust, among the most vile events in history, also does not give rise to any such right." --the Holocaust absolutely does not give the right to disposes, marginalize and oppress peoples. However, what the Holocaust and the recent massacre in Pittsburgh does emphasize is that Jews are not accepted by white society. Jews are not respected or safe throughout the world. A ubiquitous, deep-seated hatred of Jews continues to be harbored and continues to emerge in the most violent ways imaginable. Jews are entitled to the safety that Israel provides them. The Holocaust reveals that when Jews are endangered they are locked out by the anti-semetic immigration programs of the rest of the world.

This is the connection between "the right of return" and "the Holocaust". The connection is not "Jews have been oppressed and therefore they have the right to oppress." I am not arguing that any of Israel's many and horrific injustices against Palestine are justified.

Israel is a Racist Endeavour

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