Extremely Constraining and Extreme Policies in Focus
As the war on Gaza and Lebanon continues, despite repeated calls that Isreal is committing Genocide, Israel has expanded its attacks on innocent civilians. We can certainly condemn the attacks by Hamas on Israel as a violation of international law but their response should not be to murder innocent people on the other side. Former President Jimmy Carter once described the occupation of Palestinian land as Apartheid, “it’s based on forced separation within the West Bank of Israelis from Palestinians and the total domination and oppression.” Ta-Nehisi Coates in his new book, The Message, discussed his visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, where he says he saw a system of segregation and oppression reminiscent of Jim Crow in the United States. Coates said, “It was revelatory,” and “I don’t think the average American has a real sense of what we’re doing over there — and I emphasize ‘what we’re doing’ because it’s not possible without American support.”
What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is criminal. They have reduced the argument away from illegal occupation to “rocket fire” coming from Gaza and Lebanon. In much the same way white supremacist supported genocide of the Indigenous people in the United States, the Israeli government is doing the same thing in the Middle East. When some Native Americans attacked Whites, hordes of soldiers massacred every Native person they could find. Whole tribes were destroyed by rampaging racist lunatics. Instead of concentrating on military targets the Israeli government is attacking hospitals, schools, neighborhoods, and refugee camps killing tens of thousands. They use the racist excuse that “terrorists” have embedded themselves in the population so they can kill them all in what amounts to genocide. They don’t want to go in and fight specific targets for that would amount to many Israeli soldiers being killed and the Jewish population would increase their opposition of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Netanyahu is facing criminal charges, and once the war is over will face prosecution after the war. Trump, who wants to claim elections are rigged, is also facing prosecution if he loses the election.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the son of a Black Panther (original Black Panthers), traveled through the occupied territories and through East Jerusalem as a Palestinian would, getting a sense of what their daily life was like. What he found was racism that closely resembled the racism of Jim Crow law as it was in the United States. Coates discovered that separate roads are used by the different ethnic groups in a way that is racism to the hilt. Coates said on a Democracy Now interview, “When you are on the West Bank, there are separate roads. There are roads for Israeli settlers and citizens of Israel, and there are roads for Palestinians. These roads are not separate and equal; these roads tend to be separate and unequal. It tends to take longer to get where you want to go if you’re a Palestinian.”
Coates said it is even worse in other areas: “If you enter a city like Hebron, for instance, Hebron is quite literally segregated. There are streets that Palestinians cannot walk down. There are streets that Israeli settlers are given complete and free movement of.” Just like Blacks had to use passes during slavery and after, when traveling, Palestinians have to do the same thing. The policies of the Israeli government are racist and many Jews oppose these policies but cannot stop Netanyahu and his extremist block of politicians.
Saying this does not make one anti-Semitic, but speaks truth to power.
