I don’t have to have gone there. I can read and an ex girlfirend was from there and her family is still there suffering under the system.
My post contained only facts that should be common knowledge for anyone who feels able to take part in a GD debate. No one, not even the Israeli’s call the West Bank and Gaza a palestinian state. Anyone arguing the point that there is a palestinian state is simply disqualifying themselves from being taken seriously.
You are correct, sir. Don’t know how I managed to skip over Clinton’s name in that sentence, but I surely did.
I’d be interested to know why it’s a “piece of crap”, apart from the fact that you dislike it for political reasons. What does it claim Carter did that he can be shown not to have done? Where are the ‘factual’ and ‘logical’ errors in it of the sort that we conservatives are oblivious to?
Territorial segregation does not define apartheid as Apos attempts to claim. Please note that the tactic of smearing Israel with that phrase began with Israel’s plans to disengage and build the Fence. Now whether settlements and checkpoints are justified by security considerations or not and whether Israel has poorly stewarded the OTs are seperate issues.
The OTs are not part of Israel and there is little public support in Israel for “A Greater Israel” of Judea and Samaria. Remember that even Sharon came round to disengagement and even today, with Hamas still in control, Olmert is going on record offering massive settlement withdrawls. Israel and Palestine are not one land.
Using a word in a Tweedledeeish way is silly. Other than as a media ploy.
That’s what it’s all about, in much the same way that some people generalize “Palestinians” to equal “terrorists”.
There are several things activists can do when they perceive that their message is not getting over.
Mobilize more effectively to get the message out.
Rethink the message and the positions behind it, considering whether something needs to be changed (this is always the most difficult option).
Demonize the other side so that fewer people will accept their message.
Option (3) has been used so often in the Mideast conflict that it no longer has much impact. That doesn’t stop folks from trying it - unfortunately, as it lessens chances for meaningful dialogue.
Yeah, I know - Israel does all that shit in the West Bank because they’re adamantly against it.
Call me back when Israel ‘offers’ to withdraw its settlements from the West Bank by, um, withdrawing its settlements from the West Bank. It’s not like the Palestinians are somehow forcing Israel to keep those settlements going against its will.
Gee, I wonder. ‘Jimmy Carter did this, then this tangentially-related thing happened, then this other tangentially-related thing happened, then a war broke out, then a bunch of people died. See, it’s all Jimmy Carter’s fault!’ I’m looking forward to the author’s next expose: Evil Butterflies Responsible for Untold Thousands of Hurricane Deaths, Trillions in Damage.
By themselves, they hardly describe the fullness of it. They don’t describe the way Palestinians need to wait in line for hours to get from one part of the West Bank to another, for instance. It’s the manner of their occupation and colonization that’s a big part of the problem.
Yep.
Nope.
Yep.
I lost patience decades back with the distinction between people who do nasty things by intent, and those who “mean well” or whatever, but trash other people’s lives anyway. It’s just as bad either way.
Here, I’m sure it’s not the intent of the system of Israeli laws and restrictions in the West Bank to ensure superiority over the Palestinians, but it strongly acts towards that effect. Attempts to remain ignorant of the results of one’s actions don’t mitigate anything.
The fall of the Shah was a result of political movements within Iran, not the end of bribes to Mullahs; 2. The actions of Iranian revolutionaries in executing people are the fault of the revolutionaries, not Carter; 3. The Soviet Union’s decision to invade Afghanistan was based primarily on the Stalinist ideal of having docile countries around its perimeter, not because of any perceived weakness of Carter (you’ll notice the invasion didn’t stop when a “tough” president like Reagan came into office); 4. Carter is not responsible for Osama bin Laden, period; 5. Carter is not responsible for the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein chose to begin it, and the Reagan Administration is responsible for prolonging it due to its support of both Iraq and Iran; 6. no thinking person could hold Carter responsible for Saddam’s “human wave” tactics; 7. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had nothing at all to do with Carter, that’s another example in which the author appears to be unable to distinguish “Saddam” from “Jimmy”; 8. Carter had been out of office for a decade so there is no way that he had any say whatsoever in GHW Bush’s decision not to topple Saddam in 1991; 9. Carter’s visit to Cuba wasn’t “kissing Casto’s ass” or however it was phrased, his speech centered on criticism of the lack of free speech and promoted a dissident cause of the Varela Project; 10. there is no historical evidence whatsoever to posit that the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War had Carter been reelected; 11. the account of Carter’s role in the Camp David Accords as being nothing more than a waiter is just fabulously wrong; 12. quoting the New York Daily News and aruging its opinion should be taken seriously is a crime; 13. comparing Carter to Mugabe and Kim is not even worthy of comment.
In short, the whole article is a piece of crap with no merit. Seriously, you should know better than to get your history from a radio talk show host.
Say like she tried in Gaza, only to have it used as a launching pad for attacks murders and kidnappings supported by the same Hamas that currently heads the PA? She’ll do it but she’ll do it in a way that allows for security. In fact Palestinian sympathizers argue strongly against Israel pulling back at all until the PA says so.
Really? Colonialism is usually charaterized by repression of the colonized. Apartheid, OTOH, grossly exagerates the “fullness” of the situation in the occupied territories. Under real apartheid, in S.A., people were stripped of their citizenship, literally not allowed to socialize with the ruling race, intermarry with that race or hold a job managing someone of the ruling race. Then they were shipped off to live in “homelands” that many had never been to before.
That’s not much different from what the US, as occupiers, do in Iraq. I think that “occupier” adequately describes things.
Are you seriously suggesting that the Apartheid laws in S.A. were not rooted in the racist belief that whites are superior to blacks? Seriously?
I didn’t make that distinction. But just because “X” is a bad policy and “Y” is a bad policy, does not mean that X = Y.
Again, just because X and Y have a similar effect does not mean that X = Y. Whites, on average, are better off in the US than Blacks by almost any measure. Would you describe the system in the US as “apartheid”?
The word “apartheid” is inextricably tied to racism. Take the racism out of it, and you lose an important part of its essence. It’s like saying you can have Jim Crow laws that aren’t racist in nature. And I’m not aware of any colonizing power that didn’t take actions to ensure the safety and security of its colonists, always at the expense of the “natives”.
Agreed. The use of “terrorist” and “aparthied” (albeit by different sides of the conflict) has achieved positively Orwellian levels of dishonesty, with the net effect of eroding the value of the terms themselves. A similar thing often happens to “genocide”, “racist”, “fascist”, etc.; the effect is that these words end up meaning pretty well nothing other than “I oppose the target”.
But it is always so much harder to say “The Israeli government is incorrect/immoral for X or Y”, or “Palistinian group A is incorrect/immoral for X or Y”, and then defend it with facts, than to use the simple smear. It is a shame to see Carter, a man I could respect for other reasons, resorting to such puerile tactics in the very title of his book.
Thanks to duality72 and Ravenman for answering this. I have really nothing more to add to what they said. The whole article is based on ascribing cause-and-effect with not a shred of proof whatsoever to connect the things besides the idea that Occurrence B happened (sometime) after Occurrence A in (at least roughly) the same region of the world. For example, I could just as easily argue (and probably with more justification) that it was our installation of the shah and propping up of the shah over so many years that fomented, or at least radicalized, the situation in Iran and that the only problem with Carter’s change in policy is that it came to late to prevent the train-wreck that he foresaw.
Close enough: they’re treated as foreigners in their own land.
If you can’t even get there from here, it makes all of those things extremely difficult.
And the West Bank’s chopped up into mini-Bantustans; the only difference is that they’re still in the West Bank.
If someone wants to drive from Baqubah to Karbala, are we going to make them wait for hours in several checkpoints along the way?? News to me.
No, I was scoring the Palestinian situation against your definitions. I was agreeing with you that the Palestinian version of apartheid wasn’t based on a belief in Jewish racial superiority over Palestinian Arabs. Sorry if I went with too short a shorthand to be intelligible.
But if X and Y are different, but X=>Z and Y=>Z, instituting X and instituting Y aren’t all that different.
See the word, “on average”?
Like you say, to the extent that we’ve had policies that tightly restricted all blacks, that was an American version of apartheid. But there’s nothing to stop a black from living in my neighborhood, as some do, or work in my office, as many do in positions of responsibility. Let’s see a Palestinian try to buy a house in an Israeli West Bank settlement.
here’s a reason why the colonial era has been in the rearview mirror for awhile now: we recognize what once was simply normative colonial behavior as immoral, racist behavior.
And it’s racist for Israel to be acting this way now - and I don’t see that racism has to rely on a belief in innate superiority. They’ve instituted a legal system that blatantly discriminates against people of another race. I’d call that racism AND colonialism, and also - because of some of the peculiar features of the discrimination that are exceedingly reminiscent of the particulars of the late, unlamented South African system (the passes, the checkpoints, the forbidden areas) - apartheid.
Who’s this ‘she’ you refer to? Golda Meir’s been dead awhile now.
The fact remains that there’s nothing stopping Israel from withdrawing from the occupied territories except Israel. It may have what it regards as good reasons for not withdrawing, but nobody’s making Israel maintain a network of settlements, roads, and checkpoints in the West Bank except Israel. But you said Israel doesn’t want to stay in the West Bank, and I pointed out that they didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave.
Perhaps it’s not the best word but it is as close as we have to an accurate word. It may not quite walk or quack exactly like a mallard but that doesn’t mean a goose isn’t a relative.
No, people have mentioned that Israel was heading toward an apartheid-like system for many years; the first Intifada was in response to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, areas that, instead of being treated as being temporarily occupied, were treated as defacto parts of Israel by the Israeli government while their Palestinian residents were treated as the interlopers, with checkpoints and maltreatment by the Israeli Army. The Fence simply confirmed the impression for many people.
Perhaps you have a better word? Language is limited in that, until we have a better, more accurate word, even those of us who try to see both sides of the issue must force-fit what vocabulary we have.
Except unlike with the bantustans, there is a genuine truth to the idea that Palestine isn’t part of Israel, nor are Palestinians Israeli. It’s like saying America is an apartheid society because it doesn’t let Canadians vote in American elections.
It’s most certainly a state, just a subjugated one. No one argued that Japanese or German citizens should have been allowed to vote in American elections after WWII, just because America was practically administering Japan and German (in that case along with four other allied powers.)
Just because a state has border issues and areas that possibly aren’t under its control doesn’t mean it isn’t a state. Do you think Pakistan is a state? How about the United States (ever heard of Indian Reservations?)
This leads nicely into a different aspect of this debate that I was thinking about earlier today. Carter had many different words to choose from. He could have said “coexistence not colonialism”, for instance*. Now, in choosing to use the phrase “peace not apartheid” will he be more or less likely to persuade those who disagree with him that he’s got it right and they’ve got it wrong. I think not. I can only judge by my own reaction, but I actually agree with him on the issue of the settlements (they should be dismantled), and I **still **think he got it wrong.
What do you think? Will using the term “apartheid” win him converts, or just re-inforce the beliefs of those who already agree with him?
We use language to communicate ideas, and in an honest debate it behooves us to be as accurate as possible in the terms we choose. Unless, of course, we intend to use a fallacious argument like “appeal to emotion”. And that’s what I think he’s done in this case.