President Joe Biden’s administration approved the potential sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to support apartheid.
https://www.newsweek.com/rashida-tlaib-ayanna-pressley-call-israel-situation-apartheid-funded-us-1591566
Because, why just support the oppressor by being neutral when you can send precision-guided weapons?
Please share widely!
I really wish we would drop the word apartheid when describing our closest ally in the region. It’s nothing like South Africa was. Given that Hamas decided this was a good week to launch one of its random rocket attacks it might not be the best time to bemoan Israeli defense either.
On the whole, the two countries have a lot more in common than they have differences. It’s true that apartheid South Africa didn’t bomb and strafe its Bantustans on the same scale that Israel bombs and strafes Gaza, but that doesn’t make your argument stronger.
The evidence of Israeli apartheid at this point is overwhelming and well documented and wishing it away is like demanding a recount over and over even when the election was decided 6 months ago.
Pretty sure I’d rather be a Palestinian in Israel than a Black person in South Africa during that time.
I was present when my parish (All Saints Episcopal, 1773 Beacon Street, Brookline) gave Desmond Tutu their annual “Spirituality and Justice” award in 2002. Mr. Tutu (an Anglican bishop) gave the homily and joined us in the regular “social hour” after the Sunday morning Eucharist. I found him to be a strikingly soft-spoken, warm, and compassionate man in person.
In his homily, Mr. Tutu explicitly and clearly described the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as “apartheid” — he based his entire homily on the comparison, enumerated the various key elements, and offered those elements as an “early warning” sign for other conflicts that become similarly toxic. In particular, he warned each of us about our own habits of thought that allow the poisons of apartheid and racism to spread among us.
One of the more memorable aspects that Mr. Tutu identified was dehumanizing the people at risk — employing language and vocabulary that transforms the victims from people into neutral or hostile targets. He cited as examples the use of “terrorist” instead of “person” to describe human casualties.
I really wish you would pay more attention to people who actually know and understand apartheid before attempting to impose limits on our vocabulary. So far as I know, you have no first-hand knowledge of either South Africa (before or after Apartheid) or the Middle East. Desmond Tutu has both.
Given a choice between the perspective of Desmond Tutu and you, my choice is trivially easy.
I for one have always heard much worse about Apartheid South Africa than Israeli treatment of Palestinians, though obviously the latter does leave a lot to be desired. I guess to me the word Apartheid refers to one specific regime, and like Holocaust should only be used once, lest we trigger the South African corollary to Godwin’s Law.
I, on the other hand, believe that those who have suffered under Apartheid, masterminded its successful and peaceful abolition, and subsequently dedicated their lives towards ending similar abuses are better suited to determine the vocabulary we use and the most effective ways to prevent its occurrence elsewhere.
Refusing to mention the Holocaust or Apartheid when the social forces that drive each are clearly recognizable is a passive-aggressive way of encourage them. Mr. Godwin himself explicitly reminded those would listen that he did NOT intend his aphorism to apply to correctly and carefully constructed parallels between current movements and the rise of the Nazi Party in the 1920s and 1930s.
Mr. Godwin himself was famously quoted in 2015 when he himself explicitly compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler (https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/sure-call-trump-a-nazi-just-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-talking-about/, emphasis mine):
Donald Trump and the Trumpists gained enormous strength in America because too many Americans refused to talk about the obvious parallels with Germany of the 1920s and 1930s.
The survivors of the Holocaust chose the phrase “Never again” to remind us that events like the Holocaust and Apartheid are not one-time special snowflakes that are unlikely to ever recur.
The irony that the government of Mr. Netanyahu is employing the propaganda techniques and policy decisions of Apartheid and the Holocaust towards Palestinians is striking.
We SHOULD be naming these horrors what they are. We should NOT be sending American weapons to murderers who use them to slaughter Palestinian children.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that the action noted in the thread-starter took place on May 5, before the current round of hostilities began (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/17/biden-administration-approves-735-million-weapons-sale-israel/).
The Washington Post reporting suggests, consistent with reporting from MSNBC over the weekend, that the White House is attempting to thread a diplomatic needle by suggesting that it supports an immediate Israeli cease-fire while simultaneously avoiding open disagreement with Mr. Netanyahu (which the White House believes will only encourage more Israeli attacks).
The WaPo report also describes congressional leaders (such as Gregory W. Meeks, D-NY) as feeling blind-sided by this announcement. Democrats who have been staunch supporters of Israel in the past, such as Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), condemned Israel’s recent actions:
It appears to me that there is widespread and growing opposition to the abhorrent policies of the Netanyahu government within Democratic circles, including within the Joe Biden administration.
As has been the case for at least 60 years, nobody seems able to agree on how that opposition should be translated to action and policy.
If it were my choice, I would immediately do all in my power to disable current US-provided weaponry and cease all future shipments.
I agree and my only quibble is that the Biden administration should have had a pretty good idea by May 5 what was likely to happen. If they didn’t I would question the quality of their intelligence briefings.
Can you explain to me why these conflicts seem to arise suddenly? Yes, I know the underlying struggle is decades old, but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard about violence erupting in a way that makes me think – where the heck did that (immediately) come from?
The attempted evictions and the police attacks inside a mosque in Jerusalem are well documented if you want to go back and make a timeline. But it seems like a frivolous way to look at things. If you don’t pay attention to a situation you will be surprised at events all the time.
When a nation behaves as if murdering people who live within its claimed (and disputed) borders is “Mowing the grass”, what do you expect?