EU's Hostile Fixation on Israeli Settlements

Really, Advocate, if you're going to be a spokesperson for the Zionist entity at least try to be more ethical in what you post.

Why do you think it is, MiT, that the US doesn't have an embargo on the portion of its "aid" to Israel that goes to the Communist kibbutzes?

You keep talking about how much you know about a number of things, but you never illustrate it, Oralboy. You just stamp your feet and claim to know a bunch of things.

Nope. I post with great knowledge all the time.

This unprecedented and hostile EU fixation with Israel and its settlements is based on a series of long-standing and deliberately misleading and flawed legal and political assumptions regarding the illegality of Israel's settlements and the status of the pre-1967 armistice lines as Israel's border.

Notice that in his entire 2,200-word article, the ambassador does not cite any accepted principle of international law by which Israel does have a valid claim on the West Bank. Funny how this oversight happened.

Quote:

Moreover, recoognizing the WB and Gaza as a separate country would be tantamount to the creation of a terrorist state.

That would be a perfect counterbalance to the Israeli terrorist state, A.

Quote:

Since the Pals have been implacable in their unwillingness to recognize the right of Israel to exist

Here you go again, Advocate, with the propaganda. I posted a link showing how Hamas had said it supported Israel's right to exist. "However, to talk of Hamas/Palestinians "recognizing Israel" is simply to use sloppy, confusing, and deceptive shorthand for the real demand being made of the Palestinians. To demand that Palestinians recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans unworthy of basic human rights publicly proclaim that they are subhumans. It would imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them. The original conception of the phrase "Israel's right to exist" and of its use is an excuse for not talking with any Palestinian leaders who still stand up for the rights of their people as Hamas does in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority does in Ramallah"

Really, Advocate, if you're going to be a spokesperson for the Zionist entity at least try to be more ethical in what you post. There are some of us who follow closely events in the Middle East, especially regarding the Palestinians Israeli conflict, and are not easily deceived by the exhortation of extremists whose observations seem distorted.

See MiT's post; I agree 100% with the opinions posted by MiT.

That Israel defends itself (although often waiting too long to do this) makes Israel, in your mind, a terrorist state.

What you don't seem to understand about me is that I'm an advocate for all peoples who are discriminated against and are not treated equally. It's because before, during, and after WWII, I personally experienced discrimination. Although I'm third generation American, I was told to "go back to your own country" by many whites.

I hate homophobes, racial bigots, and people who treat women and minorities in any discriminatory way.

Ambassador Baker, as quoted by Advocate, wrote:

This unprecedented and hostile EU fixation with Israel and its settlements is based on a series of long-standing and deliberately misleading and flawed legal and political assumptions regarding the illegality of Israel's settlements and the status of the pre-1967 armistice lines as Israel's border.

Notice that in his entire 2,200-word article, the ambassador does not cite any accepted principle of international law by which Israel does have a valid claim on the West Bank. Funny how this oversight happened.

Quote:

Nope. I post with great knowledge all the time.

Just did a quick sweep of this thread, Oralboy. There was zero knowledge posted by you. There was quite a bit of foot stamping and some outrageous lies but that was to be expected.

How come neither you nor Advocate have responded to Thomas's post, [see below] which came right before this reply of yours to me?

I note Thomas' presence in the thread now.

More lies and foot stamping.

You ignored Thomas's post

If you had a better memory, these are things I have posted before on other threads about Israel.

Mira Nair – the Indian film maker behind the Reluctant Fundamentalist, Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay – revealed that she was rejecting an invitation to the Haifa International Film Festival because she was respecting the Palestinian call to Boycott. She stated: “I will go to Israel when the walls come down. I will go to Israel when occupation is gone. I will go to Israel when the state does not privilege one religion over another. I will go to Israel when Apartheid is over….. I will go to Israel, soon” Her principled action has been applauded internationally.

As the world has reflected on Nelson Mandela's legacy and his fight against apartheid in South Africa, some have recalled his famous observation: "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."


That special bond between two peoples and their national struggles has in recent times contributed to increasing South African efforts to challenge continuing Israeli human-rights abuses and systematic discrimination.

A few weeks ago, the outgoing South African ambassador to Israel used the opportunity of his departure to make striking criticism of Israeli policies, calling them a "replication of apartheid". Ismail Coovadia also rejected a gift of 18 trees planted in his name by the Jewish National Fund, a body that has played an important role in the displacement of Palestinians.

Not many countries find ambassadors talking of their policies in terms of apartheid, but coming from a senior South African diplomat, the charge stings all the more. It is a reflection of how South African politicians and civil society have increasingly embraced solidarity with Palestinians and taken the lead with regards to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)-related initiatives.

Pretoria has required the labelling of settlement goods, despite significant pressure not to do so, while there have also been notable expressions of support for the Palestinian boycott call in universities and trade unions.

These developments come as Israeli policies towards the Palestinians are increasingly talked about in terms of apartheid by observers on the ground and internationally.

In South Africa, there is the memory of Israel's historic relationship with the apartheid regime (a superb reference point for which is Sasha Polakow-Suransky's The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa).

Israel's warm ties with the apartheid regime began in earnest in the mid-1970s, with military technology and intelligence-sharing central to the alliance. For some officials on both sides, there was also an ideological component. The South African prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, for example, believed that "the Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for 1,000 years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state".

Over a period of about 15 years, examples of the close relationship included a 1975 pact signed by Shimon Peres and then-South African defence minister PW Botha, while in the mid-1980s, the Israeli defence industry was helping the isolated apartheid regime circumvent international sanctions. Israel's "collaboration with the racist regime of South Africa" was condemned in the UN's General Assembly.

Yet what has really struck many in South Africa, and elsewhere, are the similarities between the historical apartheid system, and Israel's current policies towards the Palestinians.

In 2002, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote an article called Apartheid in the Holy Land, saying that his recent trip to Palestine/Israel had reminded him "so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa". In 2007, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur John Dugard, a South African legal professor and apartheid expert, said that "Israel's laws and practices" in the Occupied Territories "certainly resemble aspects of apartheid".

The common element of both systems is the consolidation and enforcement of dispossession, securing control of and access to land and natural resources for one group at the expense of another. Yet there are also important differences.

While the apartheid system required the labour of black South Africans, Zionist settlement in Palestine viewed the local non-Jewish population very differently: as a group to be expelled rather than exploited. The reason why there is today, inside Israel's pre-1967 borders, a clear Jewish majority is because the majority of Palestinians who would have been citizens of the new state were ethnically cleansed, their villages destroyed, and their land expropriated.

Though there are numerous examples of de facto segregation and institutionalised discrimination within pre-1967 Israel, the apartheid comparison really began to take hold as Israel expanded its colonisation and control of the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.