The New York Times (12/7/17) ran an article about whether Trump’s declaring Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel would eliminate the possibility of a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict. The Times’ Mark Landler, David Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner wrote that while the PLO was now saying that Israel and Palestine should be
a single state, but with Palestinians enjoying the same civil rights as Israelis, including the vote…Israel would be unlikely to accede to equal rights, because granting a vote to millions of Palestinians would eventually lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
One could imagine the New York Times in the 1980s writing similarly about the ANC’s insistence on equal rights for blacks, including one person, one vote, in apartheid South Africa:
South Africa would be unlikely to accede to equal rights, because granting a vote to millions of blacks would eventually lead to the end of South Africa as a white state.
The Times could easily have written that, but it would have been wrong. It would be wrong as a prediction, of course: Under international pressure, South Africa did accede to one person, one vote, and today is a functioning multiracial democracy. But it also would have been wrong in the ethical sense for the Times to implicitly accept as normal politics a refusal to allow democracy to undermine ethnic supremacy.
It may be true, as the actual Times article states, that Israel is determined not to allow Palestinians equal rights. It certainly bolsters that determination when the United States’ most powerful paper suggests it’s a normal thing for a “Jewish state” to rule over a population that is roughly 50 percent non-Jewish.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter: @NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Thank you for stating the morally obvious truth here, though few others are courageous enough to say it. If apartheid was morally reprehensible in South Africa, why is apartheid acceptable in Israel/Palestine? If white racial supremacy is deplorable in the U.S. and Europe, why is Jewish religious/ethnic supremacy acceptable in Israel/Palestine?
The rest of the world clearly sees this hypocritical double standard. Unfortunately our mainstream corporate media in the U.S. are too worried about upsetting their hawkish pro-Israel corporate owners to be honest on this topic, or the journalists themselves bear a clear pro-Israel bias themselves.
Thank you for being a voice of fairness and truth. I hope the net neutrality gutting won’t affect your readership.
The end of apartheid in South Africa only marked the beginning of a new phase in the struggle for justice.
The same will be true should that ever occur in historic Palestine.
Problems in getting/keeping better and more competent people in power continue aswel. Although not a part of apartheid, it is critical to resolving/preventing problems generally.
At least, assuming you’re not an anarchist and those people exist. But even anarchists frequently suggest local organizations or federations of them, it may still be an issue.
I think he was refereeing to the fact that though racial apartheid was abolished, economic apartheid wasn’t and real justice and accountability was replaced by a bogus truth & reconciliation commission and South Africans where subjected to the shock doctrine and the ANC abandoned much of what was in their freedom charter. check out John Pilger’s epic documentary “Apartheid did not die” and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine which one chapter explored on Post Apartheid South Africa. http://www.johnpilger.com go to videos you’ll find it there.