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The real reason for banning The Big Ride was that supporting the event might breach the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism because of references on the Big Ride’s website to apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
In other words calling Israel what it is – an apartheid state and referring to ethnic cleansing is considered to be ‘anti-Semitic’. What this really means is that telling the truth is now anti-Jewish! The IHRA is effectively saying that Jews are racist, because if you are anti-racist you are anti-Jewish.
There is no doubt that Israel is a racist and apartheid state:
It is a state where the Chief Rabbi of Safed, a government employee, backed up by dozens of other rabbis, issued an edict forbidding Jews to rent homes to Arabs.
It is a state where hundreds of demonstrators come onto the streets in Afula to protest the sale of a house to an Arab.
It is a state where hundreds of Jewish communities are legally entitled, under the 2011 Admissions Committee Law to bar Arabs from their communities.
It is a state where education is segregated and according to the 2006 Israeli Democracy Institute Survey, 62% of Israelis wanted the government to encourage local Arabs to leave the country and 75% of Jews didn’t approve of sharing apartments with Arabs.
It is a state where not one single Arab village or town has been created since 1948, whereas hundreds of Jewish communities have been created.
As for ethnic cleansing it is the official policy of the Israeli government, of whatever political hue, to increase the number of Israeli Jews and reduce the size of the Arab population. That is why no Palestinian refugees are allowed to return whereas any Jew is allowed to ‘return’ regardless of whether they have been there before.
It is a state where the Ministry of Education can ban a book, Borderlife, about a relationship between Jewish and Arab teenagers because it gives the wrong message.
Snippets from Tony Greenstein's blog.
Yes, and supporting secure borders or a wall in Israel or in the United States is considered anti-immigrant and therefore "racist" now, too.
ReplyDeleteThe Jews and Arabs are both Semitic peoples.
Building a wall on the Southern border may be expensive and ineffective but it's not racist. If it was then every country with secure borders would be racist too.
ReplyDeleteThe comparison with Israel's Apartheid wall doesn't fly: the Palestinians aren't 'immigrants' trying to sneak into green line Israel.
Also, where are the Americans settling beyond the wall?
ReplyDeleteNo, you're right, there are major differences. Those trying to sneak into Israel via tunnels from Gaza want to blow things up. They are committed to the destruction of the Jewish State. So calling them racists or an apartheid state are inappropriate mischaracterizations. They are "enemy combatants" in a civil war.
ReplyDeleteAs for the settlements, they are a "crime" against the UN, but no one else. In any other country, the "occupied territories" would be legitimately settled as the fruits of war.