News Release

Israel’s Apartheid: Attacking Those Who Speak Out

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Rep. Rashida Tlaib has been attacked by colleagues for saying, “I want you all to know that among progressives, it becomes clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel’s apartheid government.”

Katie Halper, who had been a contributor to The Hill TV, produced a segment defending Talib.

Then Halper herself was fired; the story was broken by The Intercept.

Halper posted the commentary that got her fired.

Among Halper’s points: “Look at the Law of Return of 1950 and tell me it’s not apartheid. The law allows any Jew, which means anyone with one Jewish grandparent, the right to move to Israel and automatically become citizens of Israel. It gives their spouses that right too, even if they’re not Jewish. Palestinians, of course, lack that right. …

“Israel’s own human rights organization B’Tselem has declared, ‘The Israeli regime enacts … an apartheid regime. B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.’ B’Tselem divides the way Israeli apartheid works into four areas.” The segment breaks down Israeli policies on land, citizenship, freedom of movement and political participation.

Halper quotes Israeli leaders: “In 2007, Israel’s former education minister Shulamit Aloni wrote, ‘the state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.'”

She also quotes South African leaders like Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Tutu, in his last published piece, called on Biden to acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal, writing: “there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.”

CommonDreams reports: “Rights Groups Implored EU Leaders to Denounce Israeli Apartheid at Summit.”

Rev. GRAYLAN S. HAGLER, gshagler@verizon.net, @graylanhagler
Hagler is former chief pastor at the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C. and director of Faith Strategies.

RONNIE KASRILS, [in South Africa] rkasrils@gmail.com
Kasrils was Minister for Intelligence Services in South Africa from 2004 to 2008 and was a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era. He wrote the piece “How to Stop Apartheid Israel.”

PHYLLIS BENNIS, pbennis@ips-dc.org, @phyllisbennis
Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at Institute for Policy Studies, focusing on the Middle East.

BILL FLETCHER, Jr., billfletcherjr@gmail.com, @BillFletcherJr
Fletcher is past president of TransAfrica Forum. He said today: “There is no provision that provides for a cease and desist on criticisms of the Israeli political system. There are no provisions for a cease and desist on criticisms of the domestic and/or foreign policies of any country on planet Earth. The criticism of Israeli apartheid has been raised across the globe and cannot receive a response in the form of purges or other forms of silencing. To attempt that is to attempt to hold a bubble under water.”