APARTHEID, ISRAELI STYLE.
DETAILS OF THE CLASS SYSTEM.
The following four distinct classes of "citizenship" can be found within the present borders of Israel.

Class "A" citizenship : Jews.

Privileged access to the material resources of the State and the social as well as the welfare services of the State. Are able to utilize the 93 per cent of pre-1967 Israel, controlled by the Land Agency. Note that no-one can actually purchase the Agency land and that it is leased to Jews only.

Class "B" citizenship : Non Jews/Arabs.

Taxpayers and citizens with voting rights. Are denied the right to utilize the 93 per cent of pre-1967 Israel controlled by the Land Agency. They are also denied equal access to water and social and welfare services. Are generally not permitted to serve in the military which means they are automatically denied the many social and welfare services available to those who complete compulsory (for Jews) military service.

Class "C" citizenship : Non Jews/Arabs.

Taxpayers and citizens with voting rights, but classified as "absentees". Comprises some 200,000 persons. Are denied the right to utilize property in 93 per cent of pre-1967 Israel. They are also denied equal access to water and social and welfare services. They have also been denied all rights to their own property (lands, houses, corporations, shares, bank accounts, bank safes, etc.) that they owned until confiscated by the Jewish state. This theft was made "legal" by the Absentees Property Law of 1950.

Class "D" citizenship : Non Jews/Arabs.

Taxpayers, but without voting rights. Comprises some 3,000,000 persons. Are also denied the right to utilize or buy property anywhere in pre-1967 Israel. Have no access to social and welfare services. Many (mostly those who once lived in pre-1967 Israel) have had all their property confiscated by the Jewish state without compensation and have been forced to live in ghettos spread throughout two areas that today resemble concentration camps.

Information From "Israel: An Apartheid State" (Zed Books, London and New Jersey, 1987) by Uri Davis.

Israel : An Apartheid State.
From the Introduction of "Israel - An Apartheid State", by Uri Davis, Zed Books.

(This sub-chapter is entitled in the original: Israel and Palestinian Return)

Israel was established as a Jewish state. It was not intended as a state for all of its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike. Rather, it was primarily envisaged as a state for Jews, that is, a state of which every Jewish individual throughout the world would be a potential citizen. Thus, when the state was unilaterally established on 15 May 1948, it became imperative for its legislative body, the Knesset, to define in law those persons who would qualify as actual or potential citizens, and those who would be excluded - that is, non-Jews in general, and Palestinian Arabs in particular. This was done without undue delay. In 1950 the Israeli Knesset passed two laws: the Law of Return, defining the boundaries of inclusion ('every Jew has the right to immigrate into the country') and the Absentee Property Law, defining the boundaries of exclusion ('absentee'). Under these laws, every Jew throughout the world is legally entitled to become a citizen of the state of Israel upon immigration into the country, while some two million people, the 1948 Palestinian Arabs and their descendants, who were exiled as a consequence of the 1948-9 and the 1967 wars, are denied the rights of citizenship. Nevertheless, their right of return is universally recognized in international law and in repeated UN resolutions (beginning with Resolution 194 (III), 11 December 1948). They clearly exist. Yet, they are defined in Israeli law as 'non-existent', and as 'absentees', and they are excluded by law from actual or potential citizenship in the Jewish state.

The Law of Return (1950) is the cornerstone of the Israeli Nationality Law (1952). The details of the Law of Return (1950), the Absentee Property Law (1950), the Israeli Nationality Law (1952), and the legal mechanisms of exclusion that are codified in this body of legislation will be discussed in detail [in the following chapters]. It is important to note here, however, that the Israeli Knesset, having elevated the attribute of 'being Jewish' to the status of a legally determining principle of exclusion from, or inclusion in, the constituency of actual or potential citizens of the state of Israel, has brought into sharp focus the crisis of modern secular Jewish identity which the Zionist movement claimed to have solved. Under this body of legislation, as amended over the past three and half decades, it is not only the Palestinian non-Jew - first and foremost the Palestinian Arab 'absentee' - who is excluded from his or her right to undisputed citizenship. Large categories of Jews are similarly excluded: Jewish bastards, Jewish persons born to non-Jewish mothers, Jewish persons born to Jewish mothers who converted to another religion, and non-Jews converted to Judaism by conservative or reform rabbis (only the Jewish orthodox conversion procedure is effectively recognized in Israel. The question of 'who is a Jew' has bedevilled Israeli political practice and legislation since the passage of the Law or Return in 1950. As Akiva Orr noted:

First, Zionism did not believe in the existence of God; the movement was secular, not religious...Zionism insisted that suffering in exile was a result of a minority status, not of sin. Zionism preached that the Jews must act on their own behalf to create their state in Zion, rather than wait till God did it for them. Finally, Zionism argued that when Jewish independence was resurrected the Jews would become 'a nation like all other nations' or 'normalized' as some put it (Orr, The unJewish State, p.6)

And yet, by every conventional criterion, the state of Israel is a theocracy. Civil marriage is not permitted under Israeli law, and marriage can be legally consecrated only by Rabbinical, Church or Shari'a courts. The same applies to divorce. Under Israeli law (Jurisdiction of Rabbinical Courts (Marriage and Divorce), 1953), religious courts are state courts and the religious judiciary (Rabbinical, Church and Shari'a) are paid by the state.

Political practice and legislation have been similarly bedevilled by the question of 'who is an Israeli' in the state of Israel. Clearly, the term 'Israeli' and 'Jew' are not coterminous. Seven hundred thousand of the over four million citizens of the state of Israel (some 17 percent) are non-Jewish. They are Palestinian Arabs, the descendants of the remnants of the Palestinian people who have remained in Palestine under Israeli rule (some 150,000 in 1948-9). Much of this volume will be devoted to the analysis and explication of the political and legal mechanisms in terms of which the state of Israel confers a priori exclusive and privileged access to national resources and services on its Jewish citizens, to the exclusion of its non-Jewish, mainly Palestinian Arab, citizens.

In this context, however, it is necessary to remember that Israeli legislation is not directed against those non-Jews who are legally incorporated, albeit in terms of extreme discrimination, into the Israeli body politic as citizens of the Jewish state. Rather, the most damaging manifestation of Israeli legislation is directed against those non-Jews who are legally excluded as 'absentees' from the body of Israeli polity: two million Palestinian Arab displaced persons, conventionally referred to as 'refugees'.

Thus, each Israeli Jew has a shadow: the Palestinian Arab refugee of 1948. Israeli Jewish homes are built on the ruins of their homes. Israeli Jews cultivate their land.

The Palestinian Arab refugee of 1948 is today a soldier in the Palestine Liberation Army: a fida'i. All human beings will rebel, must rebel, in such circumstances, to reconstitute their full human existence, to reclaim their rights, if necessary by armed struggle, inside every part of the homeland from which they have been excluded. And in this struggle the Palestinian Arab deserves our full moral and material support.

US Dept of State Report.
"The overwhelming majority of non-Jewish citizens are Arabs and they are subject to various forms of discrimination. It is not clear that whatever discrepancies exist in the treatment of various communities in Israeli society are based on religion per se. Israeli Arabs and other non-Jewish Israelis are, in fact, free to practice their religions.

The Government does not provide Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of the population, with the same quality of education, housing, employment opportunities, and social services as Jews. In addition, government spending and financial support are proportionally far lower in predominantly non-Jewish areas than in Jewish areas. According to the press, an Interior Ministry report released during 1998 notes that non-Jewish communities receive significantly less government financial support than their Jewish counterparts. Israeli-Arab organizations have challenged the Government's "Master Plan for the Northern Areas of Israel," which listed as priority goals increasing the Galilee's Jewish population and blocking the territorial contiguity of Arab villages and towns, on the grounds that it discriminates against Arab citizens.

The Government provides proportionally greater financial support to religious and civic institutions in the Jewish sector compared with those in the non-Jewish sector, i.e., Muslim, Christian, and Druze. For example, only 2 percent of the Ministry of Religious Affairs budget goes to the non-Jewish sector. The Ministry's 1998 budget actually reduced the percentage. The High Court of Justice heard a case in February 1997 alleging that this budgetary allocation constitutes discrimination. The Court refused to rule on the case in 1997 and suggested that the petitioners refile the case after the passage of the 1998 budget, which the petitioners did. After three hearings during 1998, the Court ruled that the budget allocation did in fact constitute "prima facie discrimination" but that the plaintiff's petition did not provide adequate information about the religious needs of the various communities. The Court refused to intervene in the budgetary process on the grounds that such action would invade the proper sphere of the legislature."

http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/irf/irf_rpt/1999/irf_israel99.html

"If It Walks Like a Duck": The Racism of Zionism.
By Donald Neff.

You don't need to see racism to recognize it. Unlike porngraphy, which often is in the eye of the beholder, racism in nations is self-evident. It comes in the form of a constitution, the laws that a nation adopts and the behavior of its citizens toward minorites. Yet the United States failed to recognize racism when the American delegation walked out of the recent U.N. World Conference Against Racism in sympathy with Israel. Significantly, it was the only country in the world to do so.

What is it that the rest of the world sees when it looks at Israel that Washington doesn't? Other nations note that Israel has no constitution. But it has a body of what are called "Basic Laws" that serve the purpose of a constitution. Among these laws are a number of statutes that enshrine exclusive rights for Jews above all other religions and peoples living in the state.

One such law is the Right of Return, granting any Jew-but no one else-automatic Israeli citizenship. It was passed in 1950 by the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in which there are few non-Jews beyond token members of minor minorities.

In the words of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion: "This is not only a Jewish state, where the majority of the inhabitants are Jews, but a state for all Jews, wherever they are, and for every Jew who wants to be here....This right is inherent in being a Jew." (1)

Another of the Basic Laws is one defining Israel citizenship, passed by the Knesset in 1952. It is the Law of Citizenship, sometimes called the Nationality Law. It set citizenship rules so stringently against non-Jews that many Palestinian residents of Israel (stuck there when Israel captured their land in 1948) were denied citizenship even though their families had lived in Palestine for many generations.

In fact, the law was so restrictive against granting citizenship to goyim-a Hebrew term to define all non-Jews-that it caused concern among some Jewish communities outside of Israel. Irving M. Engel, president of the American Jewish Committee, later met with Ben-Gurion and urged him to have the law changed. Engel said he was embarrassed by the restrictive nature of the law, since his organization had crusaded throughout the world for equal treatment of Jews. Now, he added, when Jews got their own their country they were discriminating against non-Jews. Ben-Gurion rejected any changes to the Nationality Law. (2)

In the same year, 1952, the Knesset passed the World Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency (Status) Law, which legalized special economic, political and social benefits for Israeli Jews. It gave exclusive rights not to all citizens of Israel but to Israelis of "Jewish nationality," including the right to purchase land. Jewish institutions such as the Jewish National Fund were prohibited by law to sell the land they owned in Israel-some 97 percent-to non-Jews and were enjoined to hold all land "for the whole Jewish people."

Israel is a democracy for Jews only.

Racism has many other manifestations in Israel beyond official statutes. Most notable of these prejudicial practices is the ban against Palestinians serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Even though Palestinians make up nearly 20 percent of Israel's population-a larger minority than blacks in America-they are left in the paradoxical position of being denied the basic duty of protecting what is supposedly their country.

Palestinians never gain entry to the higher levels of the Israeli government. There has never been a Palestinian cabinet minister, much less a prime minister or a minister of foreign affairs. Their cities and towns receive nowhere near the financial aid from the central government that their Jewish counterparts receive, nor do their educational and health systems. Needless to say, the quality of life of the average Palestinian citizen of Israel is far lower than that of Jewish "nationals."

By any definition of racism, Israel qualifies. Its laws and practices define it as exclusionary and for Jews only. While Israel most certainly is a democracy, it is a democracy for Jews only. Goyim are not welcome or accepted as equals.

Palestinians are at best second-class citizens, casualties of a bloody history that left them stranded inside what became Israel. In fact, all non-Jews, whether Palestinians or American Christians, are discouraged from living in Israel. Marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew cannot be performed there. Nor is religious tolerance exactly a hallmark of Israel's democracy. From time to time Israel's Knesset has passed laws against proselytizing by Christians, decreeing prison terms for both the converted and the conveter.

Given this reality, it was hypocritical in the extreme for the U.S. to thumb its nose at the World Conference Against Racism. Surely this country, as one of the world's few true democracies, has a duty to stand up against racism wherever it sees it. Instead it brusquely quit the conference in September as a show of solidarity with Israel's walkout.

Israeli Apartheid

Secretary of State Colin Powell specifically cited as one of the reasons for the U.S. action the charge by some non-Jewish delegates that "apartheid exists in Israel." (3) How could they say otherwise? Anyone who has ever visited Israel knows that apartheid is alive and well in the Jewish state. What else is the cruel Israeli military occupation and isolation of three million Palestinians-complete with travel permits, checkpoints, "whites-only" neighborhoods and other former trademarks of South Africa?

Powell also complained that delegates regarded "Zionism as racism." (4) But, by its own definition, Zionism is racist. How could it be otherwise? Zionism is specifically for Jews, excluding all others, so by its very nature it is racist. What else could it mean when Jews proudly proclaim Israel is a Jewish state? They mean goyim are not wanted.

What could Secretary of State Powell have been thinking when he uttered these absurd justifications for leaving the conference? Surely it wasn't reality. His charge that Israel was being unfairly discriminated against lost any trace of credibility when not one of the other 163 nations in the world followed Washington's lead, not even such traditional allies as Britain or France.

In fact, after the United States and Israel quit the conference the remaining delegates-i.e., the rest of the world-went on formally to express their concern about the "plight of the Palestinians under foreign occupation." Israel and the United States were left standing alone, in shame.

In the end Powell and his boss, President George W. Bush, sacrificed an important international conference to pander to Zionists and their powerful American political lobby. In the process they besmirched their own reputations and that of their nation.

Footnotes:

1. Sachar, Howard, A History of Israel, p. 383.
2. New York Times, 6/24/57.
3. Colin Powell, State Department release, 9/3/01.
4. Ibid.

Donald Neff is the author of the Warriors trilogy and 50 Years of Israel, available from the AET Book Club, and of Fallen Pillars.