The Israeli state has renewed its murderous assault on Palestinian youth. In December 2021, military-grade Jewish National Fund (JNF) bulldozers razed olive trees and wheat fields around the Naqab village of Sa’wa, under plans to ‘reforest’ the land. The widespread resistance of Palestinian youth, led by young Bedouin women, put the brakes on this wave of colonisation. Israeli forces arrested hundreds, 40% of whom were children. On 14 March 2022, Zionist Housing and Construction minister Zeev Elkin announced that the state would recommence the JNF forestation plan.
‘Forestation’ is a historic Zionist tactic whereby the JNF plants trees as a cover for building new settler-colonies. Even before Elkin’s announcement, land belonging to the villages of Al Naqe and Al Atrash had been bulldozed. Immediately following his statement, Zionist forces launched a murderous attack on Palestinian youth in the Naqab and West Bank, killing three young men on the morning of 15 March.
Released on 1 February, an Amnesty International report labelling Israel an apartheid state offered further damning evidence of the systematic oppression faced by Palestinians. Entitled Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, the report described Israeli rule in detail:
‘Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximising its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while minimising the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights and obstructing their ability to challenge this dispossession.’
The report saw the purpose of Israeli apartheid as consistently ‘oppressing and dominating Palestinians for the benefit of Jewish Israelis, who are privileged under Israeli civil law regardless of where they reside.’ Amnesty called for ‘dismantling this cruel system of apartheid’ as the precondition for the freedom of Palestinians, mentioning explicitly the right of return of the millions of Palestinians in the Middle East region.
Immediately upon publication of the report, Amnesty faced the coordinated attacks of the Zionist state and its international backers. In the US, a joint statement by pro-Israel groups, led by the rabid American Israel Public Affairs Committee, accused Amnesty of seeking to ‘demonise and delegitimise the Jewish and democratic State of Israel.’ Pro-Israel groups were aghast that the Zionist state could be compared with apartheid South Africa – seemingly oblivious that they had supported white settler rule there too.
Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid said that ‘Amnesty quotes lies spread by terrorist organisations.’ Accusing Amnesty of libel against Israel, a Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that the organisation had allied itself to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. In reality, Amnesty has acted to undermine all three and condemned Gaza’s armed resistance to the brutal May 2021 onslaught as ‘indiscriminate.’ Nevertheless, any criticism of Israel is too hard to stomach for Zionist demagogues and Lior Haiat, spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry, concluded that ‘this whole report is anti-Semitic.’
In Britain, a Foreign Office statement agreed with others trashing the investigation:
‘We do not agree with the use of this terminology … As a friend of Israel, we have a regular dialogue on human rights. This includes encouraging the government of Israel to abide by its obligations under international law and do all it can to uphold the values of equality for all.’
At the press conference launching the report in occupied Jerusalem, Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard was at pains to point out that, ‘We recognise the existence of the Jewish State of Israel.’ Reported remarks by Amnesty US director Paul O’Brien opposing Israel’s status as a ‘state for the Jewish people’ were jumped on by Zionists as supposed evidence that Amnesty was calling for Israel’s destruction. In reality, the comments were little more than a call for the state to shed its racial exclusivity.
The report’s findings were undermined by Amnesty’s own liberal Zionist ‘activists’, with Molly Malakar, programme director at Amnesty International Israel complaining that the report represented a ‘punch to the gut’ to the Israeli state. A key part of Malakar’s assertion is that some Palestinian citizens of Israel are in ‘key positions’ in ‘campaigning and influencing.’ For a Britain-based NGO that has attacked Palestinian resistance, vilified the struggle for socialism in Latin America and called the cops on Kurdish protesters in London, there are limits to what can be expected by way of solidarity.
US activists have pointed out that campaigns for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli state are ‘the floor not the ceiling’. The same could be said of labelling Israel an apartheid state, which does not nearly go far enough to explain Zionism’s ongoing campaign of terror against the Palestinian people. Indeed the Amnesty report’s 280 pages do not mention Zionism, other than passing references to the World Zionist Organisation. Colonialism is likewise absent, as is imperialism, the bedrock of Israel’s existence. References to the British Mandate occupation (1929-48) mention Britain’s supposed obligation to administer and assist, and not the terror unleashed by British imperialism during the 1936-39 Palestinian revolution, which disarmed the indigenous population and paved the way for the Zionist ethnic cleansing of 1948.
In Britain, the Labour Party has led a wave of attacks on Zionism’s anti-racist opponents. Labour allies in Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Palestine Action avoid the word Zionism in their campaign materials, revealing a similar politics despite differences in tactics. Self-censoring liberalism from opportunist sections of the European left has allowed France to ban the Collectif Palestine Vaincra campaign and Germany to expel leading revolutionary Khaled Barakat. In February 2022, the Manchester University-run Whitworth Gallery sacked director Alistair Hudson after pressure from UK Lawyers for Israel to remove an exhibition which included a statement of solidarity with Palestine. They won’t stop there.
The day after the Amnesty report was released, the British government launched a new consultation on improving trade with Israel. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party gave no reaction to any of these events, let alone to the murder of Palestinian activists. Alongside intensifying confrontations in the Naqab and across historic Palestine, political prisoners are renewing hunger strikes for freedom and justice. The fight for their liberation demands that we take a stand against Zionist racism.
Victory to the intifada!
Louis Brehony
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 287, April/May 2022
