Afrasianet - Israel's apartheid regime is finding sympathy from world public opinion thanks to a series of myths it has fabricated to justify its crimes and violations of international law.
First, no, Israel is not "the only democracy in the Middle East"; in fact, it is an ethnic and colonial system, which is completely contrary to the principles of democracy. Let us make this clear.
Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes in 1948, and the modern Jewish state of Israel seized all their property and distributed it to its Jewish citizens.
To this day, Palestinian refugees are prevented from returning to their homeland, while any Jewish person from anywhere in the world can come and obtain Israeli citizenship easily and quickly.
Palestinians who survived the Nakba and hold Israeli citizenship and live in Palestine occupied in 1948 also cannot recover their property and land that was confiscated under Israel's Absentee Property Law.
The Israeli regime has imposed discriminatory and racist policies related to land and housing; although Palestinians with Israeli citizenship make up about 25 percent of the population, they are confined and isolated to only 3 percent of the land.
Israeli military rule was imposed on Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from 1948 to 1966, living under the Emergency Law and curfews in isolated areas (ghettos) in cities such as Lod and Haifa. The massacres continued as in Kafr Qasim in 1956.
The same military regime was subsequently imposed on the West Bank and Gaza Strip after their occupation in 1967 and is still in place today.
There are 65 laws, each of which explicitly discriminates against Palestinian citizens of the Israeli colonial state.
The Admissions Committees Act legitimized private "admissions committees" operating in colonies built on "state land" seized in 1948. The law gives these committees almost absolute power to accept or reject requests for residency.
This law is mainly used in the Negev (Negev) and the Galilee to enforce apartheid.
The Family Law prohibits Palestinians with Israeli citizenship or residents of Israel from bringing their spouses from the West Bank or Gaza, and deprives couples of the freedom to choose where they live.
At the same time, Jewish foreigners married to Israeli Jews automatically receive Israeli citizenship, while non-Jewish spouses wait five years to obtain it.
The "Nakba Law" allows Israel's finance minister to review government funding for institutions that criticize Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic state or refuse to commemorate Israel's Independence Day, in particular the commemoration of the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing of 1948).
Israel controls all aspects of life – from births, movements, marriages and residence permits – to the five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who do not have the right to elect or hold accountable those who control most aspects of their lives.
Israeli constitutional law states that "the right to self-determination in the State of Israel is limited to the Jewish people only."
Israel's Supreme Court, often seen by the international community as a guarantee of democracy and a means of checks and balances, reinforces Jewish dominance.
The court upheld and even enforced all of the aforementioned racist laws by greenlighting large-scale expulsions of entire Palestinian communities in the West Bank, such as Khan al-Ahmar and Masafer Yatta, as well as land confiscation and blockade of Gaza.
Since 2002, the Israeli regime has killed hundreds of journalists and arrested others.
The myths of Israeli democracy
In this context, an article on the website "Counterpunch" reviews the growing opposition within the Democratic Party to US support for Israel, reflecting the decline of traditional narratives in support of it, in light of the escalating criticism of its policy towards the Palestinians. Article by Melvin Goodman
In an article, Counterpunch talked about the rapid shifts in political attitudes within the United States toward Israel, and reviews a critique of the traditional Israeli narrative, considering that the growing dissent within Congress reflects a decline in the impact of the pro-Tel Aviv rhetoric.
The following is the text of the article, with the following effect:
Last week, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, told the New York Times that "support for U.S.-Israeli relations has become a minority trend among Democrats in Congress, a shocking radical shift in a short period of time, while there are socialists running on the basis of an anti-American platform, saying yes to Hamas and not to supporting one of our closest Democratic allies."
Israel has not been a true democracy since 1948, and more than one-fifth of its "citizens" have been under military rule
Many of the myths espoused by Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel deny the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land in 1948 and justify the June 1967 war as preemptive, with the worst of these myths showing the claim that Palestinians left their homeland "voluntarily" that year, which was never the case. The most common myth, cited by members of Congress, is the claim that "Israel is a democratic state," indeed, "the only democracy in the Middle East."
Israel has not been a true democracy since 1948, and more than one-fifth of its "citizens" have been under military rule under Britain's mandatory emergency regulations, which at the same time deprived Palestinians of their basic human and civil rights and subjected them to the authority of Israeli military rulers who have been able to destroy their lives and livelihoods.
Although some of these pressures eased in the late 1950s, they re-intensified in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, while Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were not treated equally by any Israeli government, with Israeli settlers in the West Bank who committed crimes being tried by Israeli courts, if ever tried, while Palestinians were tried before Israeli military courts.
There are currently 7 million Jews living in Israel and Palestine, and a similar number of Palestinians in the same region, where Israel's apartheid regimes guarantee no equal rights, or true democracy for both Jews and Palestinians, and not a democratic state for its Jewish citizens only, occupying Palestinian territories and subjecting Palestinians to a harsh and long-term reality.
The Nakba began in 1948 with the forced displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians during the so-called Israeli War of Independence, where some Palestinians were forced to live in "ghettos" inside Israel, while most were forced to flee to Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon, leaving behind their homes that they lost An Israeli who commits massacres with impunity for his crimes, which are ignored in the mainstream media in the United States.
When evaluating any democracy, the government's willingness to protect the interests of minorities and preserve the independence of the judiciary is an important criterion, while the Netanyahu government is waging a genocidal war against Palestinians, and the Trump administration is campaigning against the interests of women and people of color, and explicitly exposing its racist immigration policy. At the same time, both Trump and Netanyahu are seeking to exploit the powers of their attorneys general and weaken the core democratic element of judicial oversight.
The vote of more than 100 Democratic members of Congress last week against extending military aid to Israel indicates that the myths about the Zionist state are becoming viciously obsolete.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappy warned of the dangers of treating these myths and superstitions as facts, which is crucial when evaluating arguments in support of Israel. The Israeli claim that Palestine was a land devoid of Palestinians before 1948, for example, is a superstitious claim par excellence. Arab Palestinians are in fact the descendants of the indigenous people of Palestine, who lived under the rule of the vast Arab-Islamic empire that ruled the region from 700 AD, when Jewish communities were very local and small. It is an integral part of Palestinian society.
"Palestine was colonized, and its people were displaced from their property in 1948, they have not yet returned, and they have not left voluntarily," says Papi. However, the mainstream media ignore the fact that peoples under occupation and colonialism have the right to struggle for their liberation and independence, even by the use of military force, as international law also recognizes the right of the occupying population to resist foreign military occupation, including the use of weapons against military objectives.
The fact that more than 100 Democratic members of Congress voted last week against extending military aid to Israel suggests that the myths about the Zionist state are becoming wildly obsolete.
