To question whether there is Israeli Apartheid is like asking if there is any such thing as global warming. There are people who say there is no global warming, but people in the scientific community who study such things say there is no doubt about the facts. The same is true for Israeli apartheid, you can deny the “inconvenient truth,” you can call people names who say it, but it does not make it any less true.

Just look at what Israeli human rights group B’Tselem concluded; “Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime . . . is reminiscent of . . . the apartheid regime in South Africa.”

What about Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz, which observed in that “The apartheid regime in the territories remains intact; millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood, under the yoke of ongoing Israeli occupation.”

Or Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, who said, “If you change the names, the description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would be a description of what is happening in South Africa.”

Even the former Prime Minister of Israel, EhudOlmert, said failure of the peace process will sink Israel into a South Africa apartheid struggle. "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished."

If you are still not convinced go to the web site itisapartheid.org and find the truth.

Monday, March 23, 2009 The Bully On the Playground

This weekend sponsored marches in support of Palestine from the coasts of sunny California all the way to chilly Canada.

Growing up as an "80's Gen-Xer", we were certain after the Wall came down in Berlin, and Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and apartheid ended in South Africa that nothing like that could ever happen again.

Now, as I am much older and a little less naive, I am still amazed that grown-ups can act so churlishly and childishly.

Nothing like that could ever happen again.

Where have we heard this before? Oh, yes...the Holocaust. This was another thing we learned quite a bit about while I was a schoolgirl. And I felt the horror quite deeply of what churlish and childish men could wreak upon a people.

Something like that is happening again.

And is being perpetrated by those that remind us to never let it happen again.

You see, the kid that got picked on (Israel), I can relate to. I was picked on and bullied too. But what I took from that experience was a strength in character that made me want to protect the defenseless and correct injustices.

But Israel, rather than learn to defend not just it's niche in Palestine, but all those people that are part and parcel of Palestine-including those of Arabic descent-decided that insulating itself and bullying it's neighbors was a good way to protect itself.

The picked on Israel is now the Bully on the Playground.

And It is succeeding by insulating Gaza between the sea, barbed wire, tanks, soldiers and the Egyptian border. It is succeeding by erecting a wall around the West bank and daily arresting and shooting innocent people on both sides. It is introducing a washing away of Arabic identity by absorbing Arabic culture into Israels' own identity (did you know that Israelis are claiming they invented falafel?). It is bulldozing homes and olive trees, removing families from their homes or shooting them for refusing to leave. Israeli settlers harass and intimidate Arabic Palestinians on a daily basis. It is succeeding in proving itself to be a bully.

Apartheid is not the answer. Racism is not the answer. Separation is never the answer.

Of all people in the world, Israelis must understand that we truly are one world, one race-the Human Race, and the bully's of Israel must learn that peace and unity are who we truly are.

Fight the Bully's, Peacemakers! because this cannot happen again. We have outgrown childish things and want a better world. Visit itisapartheid.org for more information.