Image by Mohammed Ibrahim.

Apartheid –“inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” -International Criminal Court (ICC)-Rome statute (2002)

Defined by the United Nations as a crime against humanity, the term once synonymous with an abhorrent white supremacist South African regime, now inhabits a lexicon of incriminatory language regularly used by human rights experts to describe Israel and its actions.

In January 2021, Israel’s largest human rights organisation B’tselem, released a report titled “Not a “vibrant democracy”.  This is Apartheid”.  Within a year, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other experts followed suit, all documenting in detail the systematic oppression Palestinians were and are being subjected to.

On July 19th, 2024, the world’s top court, the International Court of Justice, validated the findings of the global human rights community, declaring Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories illegal and in violation of international law, adding “that Israel’s legislation and measures violate the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid.”

The conclusions arrived at by multiple reputable legal experts should have been a major blow to Israel.  The opportunity for “law abiding” nations to demonstrate their professed commitment to a “rules based international order”, has been all but ignored, enabling “a cruel system of domination” to proceed unencumbered.  The failure to acknowledge Israel’s decades long breach of international law while maintaining political and military support, suggests a sinister Western agenda driven more by geopolitics than a genuine desire for peace and security or the ceasefire Israel’s biggest supporters claim to “tirelessly” be seeking.

In “Self Defense”

On July 24th a group of 45 doctors and nurses signed an open letter to President Biden stating “every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them.  Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest.”

On Oct 10 the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that, “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities”.

As record numbers of women, children, journalistsmedical staff and humanitarian workers continue to be killed by Israel, and evidence of war crimes and atrocities, some posted by soldiers, continue to surface, claims of Israeli “self defence” ring increasingly hollow.

The decades of Israeli criminality that preceded Oct 7th and their current off the scale barbarities, should make Israel an international pariah much like its’ predecessor South Africa.   An aversion, across the political spectrum, to provide the public with the historical context required to understand the events of Oct 7th has paved the way for the uncontested annihilation of Palestine and its people.

Drowning in propaganda

The media and political establishment’s complicity in allowing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza has stifled what should be a massive public outcry for an immediate ceasefire and the cessation of military aid to a nation currently on trial for Genocide.  The inability of the public to discern Israel’s protagonist role in the endemic violence of the region is not a result of its complexities, but rather the outcome of a manufactured narrative that serves powerful interests.  Attempts to hold Israel to account have floundered largely thanks to an obstructionist West and its willingness to obfuscate Israel’s crimes.

Multiple studies along with first-hand accounts by journalists working within the establishment media,  including at the CBC, have described the inherent pro-Israel media bias the public is immersed in.   Leaked memos from the New York times demonstrate the lengths powerful editors go to, including censorship, to shield Israel from legitimate criticism, often conflating it with antisemitism.

The path to peace

The elusive peace Israeli’s and others seek will not be accomplished through the barrel of the gun nor through the elimination of Hamas.  Israel’s response to the attacks of Oct 7th, described by UN experts as, “a full-on assault against the biggest open-air prison of our time.”, has widened into the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran, and will undoubtedly produce the willing martyrs of the future.  Like all systems of oppression, the control and subjugation of the Palestinian people, ostensibly in the name of self-defense, only serves to create the breeding grounds that will spawn the hate fuelled resistance of a new generation of terrorists/freedom fighters.

Peace will only be attained through a ceasefire and negotiations that include the dismantling of Israeli Apartheid and its illegal settlements along with an end to a decades long military occupation.  Israelis will only know peace when Palestinians know justice.

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