Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within [Paperback]

Uri Davis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1842773399 | ISBN-13: 978-1842773390 | Publication Date: May 7, 2004

Uri Davis explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and charges that Israel has acted in blatant violation of most UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, including amassing weapons of mass destruction in violation of international law. Based on his conclusions, Davis then debates whether Israel deserves its reputation in the West as the Middle East's democratic exception.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Uri Davis's new book is a devastating critique of Israel's internal apartheid system and by extension the entire ideology of political Zionism. It is difficult to do justice to such an impassioned and detailed work, but I would particularly draw attention to its dedication to universal moral principles, unassailable logic and attention to factual detail that I believe are the distinctive hallmarks of this brilliant book.' - Hisham Sharabi 'Based on the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, and borrowing from his long years in the peace movement, Uri Davis presents, what is for me, the only sensible way forward in the present deadlock -- a roadmap based on civil rights, human dignity and international justice. It ... has the moral strength to convince victimizers and victims alike that there is a valid alternative to the present Israeli system of discrimination and occupation.' - Ilan Pappe, historian and author of the Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951 (London and New York 1992). 'Apartheid Israel represents the most thorough critique to date of Israel's legal and political structure from a human rights perspective. At the same time it points towards an alternative vision for conflict-ridden Israel/Palestine, building on the author's own exceptional experience as an Israeli academic and human rights activist for decades. Current developments make this book more urgent reading than ever before.' - Nils Butenschon, Director, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo

About the Author

Uri Davis is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies at University of Durham, and at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Zed Books (May 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842773399
• ISBN-13: 978-1842773390
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,238,868 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A contribution to the understanding of the Israel system, October 6, 2004

By 

S. N. (Toronto, CANADA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (Paperback)

Uri Davis has been at the forefront of the defence of human rights in Israel since the mid-1960s; at the cutting edge of critical research on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the mid-1970s; and an Observer Member of the Palestine National Council (PNC) since the mid-1980s.

In this book, a sequel to Israel: An Apartheid State first published by Zed Books one and a half decades ago, Uri Davis provides a critical insight into such questions as how was it possible for a people, the Jewish people, victims of Nazi genocide during the occupation of Europe in World War II, to subject the Palestinian people, beginning with the 1948-49 war, to such war criminal policies as mass deportation, transfer and ethnic cleansing, followed by military government, prolonged curfews, roadblocks, and economic, social, cultural, civil and political strangulation, punctuated by Apache helicopters strafing civilian residences and targeting civilian individuals.

Since its establishment in 1948 Israel has acted in blatant violation of most UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, amassing weapons of mass destruction in flagrant violation of international law. How is it then possible for Israel, her rogue governments and apartheid legislation notwithstanding, to still largely maintain her projection of "the only democracy in the Middle East" and effectively veil the apartheid cruelty it has perpetrated against the Palestinian people?

In the course of outlining answers to these and related questions, Uri Davis follows the progressive departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its declared political programme as articulated in the Palestinian Declaration of Independence of 1988; the demise of the PLO, beginning with the "Oslo peace process"; and the struggle within Israel against Israeli apartheid, assisted by a worldwide mobilization of Palestine solidarity, in support of the rights of the Palestinian people.

The object of this book is to contribute to the development of a moral understanding, a political framework and a climate of opinion in the West that will support in politically responsible terms international sanctions against the rogue government of the state of Israel, with the aim to dismantle the apartheid structures of the state of Israel as a Jewish state in the political Zionist sense of the term (for Jews only), and assist with the establishment of a democratic (confederal, federal or unitary) state of Palestine in conformity with the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the standards of international law.

Uri Davis is Honorary Research Fellow, Institute for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies (IMEIS), University of Durham and Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies (IAIS), University of Exeter; Coordinator, Regional Editorial Group for the Middle East, Citizenship Studies; Chairman, Al-Beit: Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel, Arara; Founder Member of the Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP).


Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, Zed Books, London, 2003 Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Preface

Chapter One: Zionism
Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
Transfer and Massacre
World Zionist Organization and its Political Goals
Achieving the Goals of Political Zionism
Regularizing the Irregular: The Regulation of Apartheid in Israel
The Veiling of Israeli Apartheid
The Case of the South African Forest, Golani Junction

Chapter Two: Israel
The Establishment of the State of Israel as a Jewish State
Israel and the UN
Who is a Jew and the Question of Palestinian Return
Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue
The Female Snake and The Taste of Mulberries

Chapter Three: Israeli Apartheid
Israel and South Africa: Two Forms of Apartheid
Jewish Presence, Arab Absence: Registration of Births, Citizenship and Residence
The Histadrut: Continuity and Change
The Case of Sa'ad Murtada, First Egyptian Ambassador to Israel

Chapter Four: Political Repression in Israel
Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945
The 1980 Knesset Legislation
The 2002 Knesset Legislation

Chapter Five: Possibilities for the Struggle Within
The Defeat of the PLO in Oslo
Assessing the Danger of Palestinian Defeat at the Peace Negotiations
Israel's Zionist Society
Kibbutz, Moshav and Community Settlement: The Masquerade
The Movement against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP)
Who is a Hebrew
The Story of Qatzir and That's One Small Step for Adil and Iman Qaadan and
One Giant Leap Towards the Democratization of the State of Israel

Appendices

Appendix I: Vladimir Jabotinsky, "The Iron Wall" (Excerpts);
Appendix II: David Ben-Gurion, "Statement of Introduction of the Law of Return Before the Knesset" (Excerpt);
Appendix III: Naim Khader: "The Democratic State" and "Armed Struggle" (Excerpts);
Appendix IV: AL-BEIT: Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel;
Appendix V: The Palestinian Declaration of Independence.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Apartheid, March 3, 2007

By 

David (Albany New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (Paperback)

Both South Africa and Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. In the late 1880's Palestine was ninty eight percent Arab. Even after waves of colonial settlers, Arabs were about 90 percent of the population. When the European powers decided to partition Palestine, two thirds of it's inhabitants were Arab. They were provided with only 45 percent of the land. No one would find that acceptable. In the ensuing conflict, the Zionists engaged in systematic ethnic cleaning. Most of the indeginous population was driven out. While the Israelis have claimed for years that the Arabs willingly abandoned their land, we know from documentary evidence sealed in Israeli archives for half a century that that was not the case. The land belonging to the Arabs was expropriated for the exclusive use by Jews. The Arabs who did not flee also had most of their land expropriated. Many of the Arabs ended up as stateless people living in Gaza and the West Bank. Although the Geneva Conventions provides that civilians who flee during war time are the right to return to their land, this right was denied to them by the Israeli government. The destuction of there farms and villages was a violation of the forth Geneva Convention. Denying Palestinians the right to return is also a violation of UN resolutions. A Jew from any where in the world can come to Israel and live on the land expropriated from the ethnically cleansed Arabs. An Arab cannot return to the very land on which he was born and raised. To a Zionist, this is perfectly reasonable.
The claim that their were no massacres of Arab civilians is preposterous. These massacres are well documented by Israeli historians such as Morris and Pappe.
South Africa also engaged in massive ethnic cleansing, forcing Africans into nominally independent countries that were not economically viable. The Israelis have adopted the same approach. The West Bank and Gaza are essentially Bantustans that will be surrounded by Jewish settlers. Much of the land on the West Bank is already under permanent Israeli control. The Israeli's control the water, taking 80 percent of the water from the aquafir under the West Bank for themselves.
Israelis non Jewish citizens don't have the same rights as Jews. They cannot marry someone from the West Bank or else where and live in Israel. A Jew can marry from outside the country and have the person be a citizen. Unlike Jews, they cannot have a family member come from another country to live with them. Non Jews are educated separately from Jews, just like American blacks were before the Brown decision. Arab schools are provided with far fewer resources than the schools for Jews. To a Zionist, separate and unequal is a good thing as long it as it is the Arab who is getting the short end of the straw. Jews living in the West Bank can vote in Israel. Palestinians pay taxes to Israel but can't vote or use the Jews Only roads. Arab towns are starved of resources. Of the sixty one poorest towns in Israel, forty eight are Arab. Arabs make up only 3.7 percent of the government work force. Of the 5000 university professors in Israel, only around 50 are Arab. Arabs are not permitted to serve in the armed forces by law. The government makes service in the armed forces a requirement for receiving social services. This effectively deprives them of the same benefits enjoyed by Jews.
Just like in South Africa, all citizens have to carry cards that identify their religion.
There is both overt legal discrimination against Arabs as well as de facto discrimination. I have know Jews who grew up in South Africa who left Israel because they found it to be more racist than South Africa was under apartheid.
This book is important because it will deepen the world communities understanding of the apartheid like practices of the Zionist state.

0 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Self hate and fabrication, November 16, 2004

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (Paperback)

This book must beg the question first of "What is Apartheid". Apartheid was a system of racial segregation practiced in South Africa, a term like `Ethnic cleansing, that jumps from one conflict and is now used with haste to explain other conflicts and unjust behavior, in this instance Israel. But Apartheid is a term that really invokes what happened in South Africa where 90% of the population was kept from the government, and given barely 17% of the land. In South Africa everything was segregated, from hotels to toilets.

This is in stark contrast to Israel where nothing is segregated, where Jews and Muslims live side by side and where the majority of the people also own a majority of the land. In Israel all political parties are represented in the Knesset and although this book doesn't admit it, the Arabs have three political parties that have members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. So from the first page this book is Disingenuous to the topic.

But beyond the fabrications in pretending that Israel in any way models South Africa one must delve deeper into the fabrications that exist in this text. This book is honest in explaining that Israel was and is a Jewish state, for Jews and that the `Right of Return' applied to those who had at least one Jewish grandparent. What this book doesn't explain is that for this reason the law of return granted any persecuted Jew a place to go as a refugee, something no nation had done for the millions of Jews trying to flee Germany in 1939. Beyond these many fabrications or simply twisting of history this book also claims that 1948 was a `massacre'. But the truth is the only massacre of the 1948 war in Israel took place in Gush Etzion where 150 Jews who surrendered where massacred by the Arab Irregular forces. This of course is not mentioned and this book merely parrots the propaganda.

This is a sad testimony to how history can be changed, how facts can be twisted and how pure propaganda can pass for academic scholarship.

Seth J. Frantzman