New York Times’ Jodi Rudoren ignores apartheid election being held in occupied West Bank today

New York Times bureau chief Jodi Rudoren began a “Timescast” video report today with these words:

As polls opened Tuesday morning across Israel, most voters and analysts felt they already knew the outcome.

This is far from the straightforward or factual statement it might appear to be. In fact, polls opened across “Israel” as it was established in 1948 and in settlements all over the occupied West Bank.

But in the West Bank, only Israeli settlers – numbering some half a million – can vote.

So an election is being held today in the West Bank but only one privileged ethno-racial group is allowed to vote for the government that exercises full and effective control over this territory, which Israel asserts is the sole birthright of “the Jewish people.” Meanwhile, the indigenous majority languish under the military and colonial rule of this regime.

In other circumstances this might be called “apartheid” or “Jim Crow.” But Rudoren did not even mention it at all.

Of course the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank – who are not citizens of any state – have been allowed in the past to vote in elections for the Palestinian Authority, an entity created by the Oslo Accords and that exists at the pleasure of the ruling Israeli Jewish sectarian regime.

But as we know Israel and its international sponsors simply overlook the results of such bantustan elections or work to overthrow them by criminal subterfuge when they don’t like the result, as they did after Hamas won the 2006 legislative election.

And in her long discussion of Israeli party platforms, Rudoren stuck to safe euphemisms such as “hawkish” and “hardline” to describe what in all other circumstances she might have the guts to call blatant racism, apartheid and colonialism.

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A racist is one who believes that biologically determined classes of people. Ethnic nationalism is a belief that the citizenship should be tied to different ethnicity. Religious nationalism is a belief that citizenship should be tied to religious adherence.

When the 19th century French Nationalists (ex. Action Française) movement attacked French Protestants (Huguenots) and Freemasons as no longer being nationally French, they weren't arguing that Freemasonry of Protestantism altered biology rather they believed rather they believed being French was both ethnic and idealogical. Even in the case of Jews that were non-French (in the view of these nationalists) the idealogical issue was primary. The division in these groups was whether the idealogical component was exclusive (standard view) or whether there was also an ethnic component (anti-Semitism, in its original meaning).

Israel is more in line with these 19th century European groups. Racism in the Jim Crow / American sense I don't think is an appropriate analogy. The NYTimes is right not to allow for this sort of oversimplification.

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It is funny how feeble are Zionists when they try to whitewash their favorite racists.

And the French versus French have NOTHING to do with Zionism. The colonialist French against their colonial subjects, from Vietnamese to Arabs are the perfect example of colonialist racism, the same as Zionist "hardline"

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The problem with your theory is that Zionism doesn't have the same attitude as the French did towards the Vietnamese. The French relationship with the Vietnamese was a desire to exploit their labor. Whatever else you may think of the Zionists I suspect you would agree they aren't primarily interested in the Palestinians as a source of cheap labor. Their reactions to the two intifada's when they displaced Palestinian labor proves that. The French colonialists in Vietnam never even considered a situation of living without native labor since native labor was the whole point of the colony.

Viewing Israel through the prism of colonialism totally distorts their objectives and goals.

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Zionists simply are MORE racist then even the majority of colonialists. Zionists want ALL Palestine for themselves without the natives (it is not for nothing than Jabotinski used the example of white colonizers against natives in America in his colonialist rant "Iron Wall").

One more time - trying to whitewash Zionism under any pretext is not working anymore for people with a modicum of knowledge about Zionist colonisation.

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Oh dear, JeffB, I fear that your definition of racism is a tad racist. That is, there really is no biological racism. Except for skin pigmentation, humans are pretty much the same. Humans themselves have attached certain facial features to racial determinations, but clearly people of all races can have large ears, flabby lips, dark eyes, red hair, flat noses, small eyes, etc.

As to the situation in Zionist Israel, religion is not easy to clarify. After all , the Ethiopians who have claimed ancient Jewish ancestry, are not considered equal to the Ashkenazic Jews. The Sephardi in Israel --there's problem. They are after all ethnically quite similar to Palestinian Muslims and Christians. And wouldn't you think their Jewishness would provide an even footing with Ashkenazi Jews? Not quite.

Palestinians, denizens of the West Bank and Gaze, Palestinians since biblical times, well, they are hardly given the rights of an Askenazic Jew, who hails from the Europe that you describe so well for its nationalistic views.

Now apartheid, which I chose to define as separation of the powerful and the powerless, both in Mandela's use of the term, and in Zionist Israel's practice of it.
If you have ever been stopped at a checkpoint, spent hours at the BG airport trying to enter Israel, you would begin to feel your status under the Zionist system of apartheid. I was three -hours late in arriving from Jerusalem to give an invited lecture at BirZeit University because of a "flying checkpoint," a sort of impromptu street-theater sort of IDF demonstration of the powerful over the powerless.

Apartheid? No pass, no Muslim man under 35 can journey from his home in Bethlehem to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque. Whose Holy of holies has the power, whose is rendered powerless. Try getting to Bethlehem for Christmas!

As for the NY Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief: another example of power, an Ashkenazi Jew from Brooklyn, writing for the paper of record. Only what counts.

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no matter, "left" or "right". Anyway, some of them are best friends, like some "feminists" and LGBT Zionists, who are calling by the same breath against bad (for LGBT) law in Russia and for poor little Bennet being wronged by "misquatations". They are quite openly say things like - I have "left" friends and settler friends.

And really, they are the same foes of Palestinians, no matter Merez or Bennet. It is a Zionism to you. Racism is like air for them.

By the way, there is also some new player - a "workers" party named DAAM, by one Asma Agbaria, a pet "Arab" who says things about unity of Jews and Arabs for the wellness of Israel, not a word about ROR, for "2 states" sham, and called Syrian regime "fascist". She tries to woo "Russian" colonizers, but, I am sure, in vain. You could read about it here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

and see why she is a darling of "left" Zionists.

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I choose to cut through all the theory and the tired terminology and the historical analogies, to just focus on the reality of a vicious oppressor and an oppressed that must be freed by any means necessary!