The genie, however, is finally out of the bottle and a massive edifice of intellectual, historical and legal discourses are quickly building up an irrefutable case against Israel’s apartheid. No amount of Israeli propaganda and smear campaigns can turn the tide back in favor of Israel.
www.palestinechronicle.com
On April 27, one of the world’s largest and most credible rights groups, Human Rights Watch (HRW), concluded, in a comprehensive 213-pages report, that Israel is an apartheid state.
“Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power and land has long guided government policy,” the
report entitled “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution” read in part.
More specifically, HRW wrote that Israeli “authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity.” This led it to unequivocally conclude that “these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
While, on their own, HRW’s conclusions carry a significant legal and potentially political weight, the report is hardly an isolated event. Only a few months ago, in January, a leading Israeli rights group, B’tselem, reached a similar conclusion.
“In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians,” B’tselem’s
report, entitled “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid”, read.