Tom
UPDATE 11/17/11
I forgot to mention a few other things about using the term "Apartheid" when referring to Israel. I don't remember the details, but there are laws that make it very difficult for married couples to live in Israel if one of them is from certain parts of the Middle-East (including the Occupied Territories) and the other one is an Israeli citizen. (UPDATE 1/12/12 More on that here)
And it's not just buses that are basically segregated, there are also roads that are segregated, too. (UPDATE 12/3/12 More on segregation here (In all fairness, they canceled that policy, see this)) UPDATE 3/9/20 An article about this is here, and here are some more of my thoughts on this. I'm not saying there aren't legitimate security concerns among settlers, but A) the hostility from Palestinians is largely because of their treatment by Israel, and this is just one more reason that needs to end; B) if they don't want to be around Palestinians, maybe they should live somewhere else, besides what used to be called Palestine, and C) these policies of segregation only reinforce the anti-Arab bigotry that, to one degree or another, most Jewish Israelis are afflicted by.
And then there is the fact that the State is officially defined by a Jewish identity. People who support that should be asked if they think there will ever be an Palestinian-Israeli Muslim or Christian or Druze President or Prime Minister in Israel (according to the Israeli government at some point in recent years around 17% of Israel's population is Muslim). More generally, the Palestinian-Israeli population does experience a fair amount of inequality.
UPDATE 11/27/11
As the article I link to above says, Israel says that keeping Palestinians without permission outside Jerusalem is for security reasons. But instead of banning the small minority of Palestinians who Israel could credibly consider security risks, the burden is placed on all Palestinians to get permission. In a similar situation (both areas include natives and a settler populations of one sort or another) even the British didn’t go that far in relation to N. Ireland (they only banned a small number of nationalists from Britain, which was bad enough). The policy that Israel has is very similar to the S. African Apartheid laws about controlling the movements of Blacks and generally keeping them out of white cities unless they had permission to be there.
(UPDATE 12/5/12 I forgot to mention that, whether they're going to Jerusalem or somewhere else in Israel, Occupied Territories Palestinians have to pass through some number (probably around five) of security checkpoints)
If security is the motivation, I’d also have to ask, what about extremist settlers? MANY of them FREQUENTLY clash with the Israeli security forces (in both the West Bank and in Israel), and it was a supporter of settlers who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Are any of them, for security reasons, not allowed into Jerusalem? I didn’t think so. (UPDATE 12/15/11 here's a recent article about this sort of thing) (UPDATE 8/7/15 After a Palestinian baby was killed by settlers Israel has announced that measures usually reserved for Palestinian suspects will be used against suspects in this case; see this) UPDATE 2/12/20 A relavent article is here. See another article about hate crimes against Palestinians and the response of the police.
So, security is not the reason. Bigotry is. (UPDATE 12/4/12 Another article about anti-Palestinian racism (I believe the idea behind the loyalty oath is to discourage Palestinians from trying to get citizenship and to encourage Palestinians who are currently in Israel to leave; The thing is, in a self-defined Jewish State, the Palestinians are 2nd Class citizens and would likely and reasonably feel uncomfortable swearing loyalty to such a state)
UPDATE 2/5/12 To be fair, SOME action is NOW taking place against the settlers, but it's new and seems pretty limited- there is still a huge gap between how specific Israelis suspected of militancy are treated, and how pretty much the entire Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories is treated. The article is here.
UPDATE 1/23/16 An update from the US Ambassador on (among other things Israel is doing wrong) how the Israeli criminal justice and security systems are treating Palestinian and Jewish settler militants differently.
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UPDATE 12/11/11 Juan Cole wrote a great essay about the Palestinians, largely aimed at the idea that their identity is invented and therefore they have no claim to Palestine.
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UPDATE 12/5/12 There is also something Apartheid-esque about the withdrawal of settlers and soldiers from Gaza- the South Africans created several ostensibly independent states for blacks, but they weren't really independent.
UPDATE 3/2/14 I need to nail this down, but an Israeli leftist said that when she visits her Palestinian friends in the Occupied Teritories, she is breaking the law.
UPDATE 3/17/14 An article about why the Palestinians won't recognize Israel AS A JEWISH STATE.
UPDATE 4/29/14 An article that goes into some detail about the Apartheid comparison (That article includes a link to another important one here).
UPDATE 11/13/14 A post at Informed Comment about talk by the Israeli PM suggesting that Palestinian-Israelis should be stripped of their citizenship. UPDATE 3/5/20 Articles here and here explain that Israel's longtime and current and maybe future PM believes, essentially, that Palestinian-Israeli MKs (MPs) shouldn't be counted when it comes to forming a government. An opinion column here is also worth reading (the author is described here).
UPDATE 3/28/15 Another relevant article about the treatment of Palestinian-Israelis.
UPDATE 5/27/18 A couple days ago I was at an event about Palestine when a member of the audience said that it's illegal for Palestinians to convert to Judaism. I did a search and might do more and found an article here (I've been told the site is both conservative and pro-Israel). If this is true, to any degree, that is sickening and completely racist.
UPDATE 8/3/18 The biggest piece of evidence in favor of using the word Apartheid- see this. This also has some important things to say.
UPDATE Feb. 2020 One more article, this one about suppressing the Palestinian vote inside Israel.
UPDATE Feb 2020 An article about efforts to reduce the % of the Israeli population that is Palestinian. Although it doesn't change my opinion of Netanyahu, here is an important update.
UPDATE 2/9/20 An article touching on the fact (or at leat that people including Palestinian-Israelis, can be blocked from running for office if they feel so strongly about supporting the Palestinians that they support attacks on Israeli soldiers. A very senior politician also says she should be in the Palestinian parliament, not the Israeli one (she's an Palestinian-ISRAELI). It also mentions that inciting racism can get you disqualified, but I as far as I can tell it has only been applied to members of one ridiculously small and ridiculously bigoted Zionist party.
UPDATE 2/12/20 Although this isn't news I just confirmed something I was pretty sure of anyway. Read this article about Israel demolishing the homes of Palestinian terrorists, especially the following part:
"A similar "standard" was never applied to a Jewish terrorist. For instance when a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, slayed 29 Muslim worshipers in the Cave of Patriarchs, no one suggested to demolish his home as a deterrence."
UPDATE 2/27/20 An article here about how the Israeli government is helping settlers break the law in the West Bank by not destroying illegal settlements, and at the same time destroying Palestinian structures.
UPDATE An article describing a poll showing a lack of support in Israel for key elements of a democratic society and political system. That's a reference to such things in Israel and although those who are unconcerned about, for example, civil liberties probably are anti-Arab, if they're so unconcerned about democracy for the Israeli population in general (which is 80%) Jewish, I can only imagine what they would say if they were asked about these things exclusively in relation to the Palestinian-Israeli population or the Palestinians in the West Bank.
UPDATE 2/29/20 I wish it were more explicitly about anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim bigotry, but a senior figure in the Likud party says "hate is what unites our camp," and although it appears to be hatred on several topics, I have no doubt that part of it is about Muslims and Arabs.
UPDATE 3/6/20 An article about Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza normally allowed into Israel to work, are barred on and around national and Jewish holidays, while Jewish settlers in the West Bank can continue to enter Israel.
UPDATE 3/7/20 An article about how a government minister apparently wants to expel the Palestinian-Israeli population (I am transitioning to use that term instead of the apparently inappropriate term "Arab-Israeli").
UPDATE 3/13/20 An article more or less about the Nation State Law.
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UPDATE 3/14/20
From an article about a US State Department report on Jerusalem:
The human rights report, however, did express criticism of the Jerusalem Municipality for not providing adequate services to Palestinians living in the eastern half of the city.
“The Jerusalem municipality failed to provide sufficient social services, education, infrastructure, and emergency planning for neighborhoods where the majority of residents were not Israelis, especially in the areas between the security barrier and the municipal boundary,” it said.
Even though Palestinians in East Jerusalem make up 38% of the city’s more than 900,000 residents, the Jerusalem Municipality only invests 10-12% of its budget in their neighborhoods, according to Daniel Seidemann, an expert on Jerusalem affairs.
I think that when the PA complains about using the word "Arab" instead of "Palestinian" that is largely just about resident of Jerusalem. On the other hand, I am probably going to get off my butt and change "Arab-Israeli" on my blog to "Palestinian-Israeli" which I know is to one degree or another preferred.
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UPDATE 3/1/4/20 Even the US State Department accused Likud of anti-Arab racism.
UPDATE 3/14/20 An article about an effort to change two things about how the leader of the opposition is treated by the State. The idea is to deny them intelligence briefings the usually get, and, even worse, deny them a security detail from the domestic security/intelligence agency Shin Bet and this is explicitly because that position might soon be held by a Palestinian-Israeli MK (MP). The part about intelligence briefings is just basic racism, but the part about a security detail takes it to a new level. That can't be construed in any way as a threat to national security, they just like the idea of a high-profile Palestinan-Israeli MK being killed by right-wing Zionists.
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My best post in support of the Palestinians is here.
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UPDATE 3/29/16
As you might know there is a lot of controversy about using the word "Apartheid" in relation to Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. Some part of the European Union even said it's anti-Semitic to do that. I think I do a pretty good job here of proving that it's accurate enough that it's definitely not anti-Semitic. But since I have kind of stepped up my criticism of Israel with this post, I thought I should repeat here something I've said twice elsewhere on this blog, something that might be the most important thing to explain if you want to defeat the actual anti-Semites among us Palestine supporters. And that is that Jewish-Americans are only a tiny minority of those Americans who strongly support Israel, and the rest have their own interests/agendas and not some kind of allegiance or compliance to a majority of the Jewish community as their reason(s) for supporting Israel. There are tons of Christians motivated by obscure Biblical reasons to support Israel and there are tons of people (both atheists and Christians) who support Israel for foreign policy reasons (their views of Israel's role in the Cold War and more recently the "War on Terror"). And on a related note, there is a growing minority of Jewish-Americans who are critical of Israel in support of the Palestinians.
(At the risk of being silly and patting myself on the back too much for being a good Christian ally, I want to high-light that I did a post here that you might want to note. A) in general it shows that I go to extraordinairy lengths to oppose anti-Semitism, and B) I describe the NUREMBERG LAWS (specifically and not Nazi anti-semitism in general or the Final Solution) as creating "a kind of Apartheid for German Jews")
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