Code that helped end Apartheid

They asked how to end apartheid, not how to learn to accept and justify it

As I said, I don't want this to become a flame war, and to that end would have preferred not to name the apartheid state in question.

But since you insist, nobody is just 'making it so by saying it' - indeed, saying it's not happening, in spite of the abundance of evidence, does not mean it's not!

I've Norwegian friends who have seen it first hand and we're aghast, but of course that's just a personal anecdote that just happens to agree with the ICJ, Human Rights Watch, and even Israel's own B’Tselem[0].

And no - I absolutely will not try to see "both sides" of apartheid. That's a really heinous thing to say.

[0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/19/world-court-finds-israel...

Nelson Mandela would have a good idea on what situation is apartheid.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/nelson-mandelas-support-f...

on one side: you

on the other side: every human rights org in the world

The moment you mention Israeli crimes on this platform, you get downvoted until your post / comment is dead. Sad.

No, it‘s not complicated. It’s straight and clear. Every human rights org says so, the UN says so, HR scholars say so. It is apartheid.

South Africa’s done great since the end of apartheid

With barbarism you mean breaking of any rule of engagement? Shooting civilians, children, innocents? Or fighting for the right to rape detainees on TV? Or starving 2.5 mil civilians?

The whole world sees who the barbarians are. You keep believing in fairy tales in your echo chamber.

[1] British doctor: „IDF deliberately shoots 5-12 year old children in the head“ https://youtu.be/0jlT-NRx-u4

[2] Footage of Israeli soldiers gang-raping a Palestinian hostage at Sde Teiman published by Israel's Ch12 https://x.com/EsheruKwaku/status/1821043507152195751

You could spend 5 minutes and find things like this that meet your definition but you won't, because you do not want to know about or acknowledge them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_the_Galilee

Ugh, no matter whose side you're on, if the Israel-Palestine situation is not complicated, I'm not sure what is.

> Because my personal operating definition is where you have one single country that has a different set of laws for different groups of people living in that country based on their ethnicity or skin colour.

“ Walk around Hebron, look at the streets. Streets where Arabs are no longer allowed to go on, only Jews.” - says Amiram Levin, former head of the Israeli army’s Northern Command.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-08-13/ty-article/ex....

That’s within the internationally recognized boundaries of Israel. A separate issue is that Israel enjoys full control over 60% of the West Bank (Area C), which is ever expanding, and various degrees of defects control over the rest of it. Within the West Bank Israeli settlers have more freedom of movement and less restrictions on their day to day lives. So any characterization of the West Bank as an independent country or polity is completely missing the point.

I disagree.

While the situation in Israel differs from that in the West Bank, there are still significant elements of systemic discrimination against Arab citizens. The 2018 Nation-State Law is a prime example, as it:

1. Removedd Arabic as an offical language 2. Defined Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people exclusively 3. Declared Jewish settlements a national value

This law effectively codified the second-class status of Arab citizens, who make up about 20% of Israel's population. Additionally, Arab Israelis face ongoing disparities in areas such as education, employment, and housing. They are underrepresented in government and leadership positions.

While Arab citizens have legal rights on paper, the reality is a system of de facto segregation and institutional discrimination. The Nation-State Law and other policies create a two-tiered system that privileges Jewish citizens over Arab citizens, meeting key criteria of apartheid even within Israel proper.

[1] What to Know About the Arab Citizens of Israel https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citize... [2] Israel's controversial new “Jewish nation-state” law, explained | Vox https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-n... [3] Israel: New Laws Marginalize Palestinian Arab Citizens https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/03/30/israel-new-laws-marginal... [4] The argument that Israel practices apartheid, explained https://www.vox.com/23924319/israel-palestine-apartheid-mean... [5] Israel - Minority Rights Group https://minorityrights.org/country/israel/ [6] Q&A: Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of ... https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2022/02/qa-israel...

Show me a country that doesn't have systemic discrimination of minority groups.

At the end of the day it's quite clear why jewish people want a jewish country, so yes, some discrimination around immigration will always be "built-in" into israel.

Now do I think israel is trending in the wrong direction? 100% yes. Do I wish for a two state solution and achieving as equal rights as possible while maintaining the status of israel as a jewish state? also 100% yes.

Do I think that calling israel proper an apartheid is just leading to people on both sides to become even more extreme? also yes.

We could have had a one state solution. One country for all. Christians, muslims, jews. That would have been just.

Could a one state solution work sometime deep into the future? Perhaps, but the only way to achieve a stable and prosperous one state solution is by first having a two state solution with decades of peace, rebuilding of trust and a return to a more secular direction from both sides.

If you'd try to force a one state solution in the near/medium term you'd just end up with another divided failed state similar to lebanon (and probably much worse), the population would just be too divided on basically every subject, with militant/religious extremists on both sides making the keg especially explosive.

So ask yourself what is better for the people, trying to achieve some ideal for the sake of that ideal or actually trying to achieve something that could work? If this were an engineering project, would you do a full refactor with an extremely high chance of failure or go through an intermediate step that would bring a lot of the benefits with a much higher chance of success?

Only a privileged fool would think that prosperity justifies the continuation of injustice.

Hebron is not part of Israel & is not governed by Israel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebron_Governorate

Also, and I don't want to take a position here, my advocacy is for learning as much about the history and current state of affairs as possible in order to form an informed position, because not only is there fog of war going on right now, but there is a decades long conflict with lots of narratives and propaganda.

I say that to offer a counter narrative in pursuit of objectivity: if you ask an Israeli, there are many areas in the West Bank that are deemed "no go zones" for for Jews, but there are none that apply to non-Jews.

And as for the security and the "check points", those are applied equally to everyone who is there, regardless of citizenship or ethnicity or any other considerations. So even if it's a shitty situation, it's not targeted at any specific ethnic group.

So given that a) Israel does not govern Hebron and b) the security check points are not specific to any ethnic group, how is Hebron a data point that supports the "apartheid" charge?

Oh to the contrary - It would be the privileged who would be fine chasing some ideal in the name of justice while sacrificing all the unprivileged people who are actually suffering day to day.

Your comment is complicated in and of itself, even without the enormous historical, legal-theoretic and political context surrounding that law and its enactment.

Constantly framing it as „complicated“ does not make it so. It was populated land, home to muslims, Christians, jews. One state for all. Until Zionism started colonising Palestine. And expelled Christians and muslims. First Zionists called their conferences „Colonising Palestine“. Nothing complicated.

Constantly claiming it is not complicated does not make it so. It was populated land - before Greeks, Romans, Christians and Muslims conquered it and ethnically cleansed the Jews from the area. There wasn't one state - in what is Israel/Palestine today, until 1948, was at least Jordan, Egypt, British Palestine and Syria.

You keep oversimplifying. It's just not simple.

Ahh, here we go again: „Thousands of years ago jewish people populated the area.“ And that’s how nations define their borders in modern days? Who said it was one state? I said it was populated land. People lived there for centuries. Mostly Christian and muslim arabs. Some jewish arabs. And then came a settler colonial ideology in 19th century, way before Holocaust, polish jews, created the idea for a jewish majority homeland in an area that was populated, so they expelled many people from their homes in Palestine. And that led to first Nakba. Today we witness the second Nakba. The most detailed documentation of a Genocide.

Btw: „God‘s chosen people, God‘s promised land, nation state law, jewish majority“. Sounds very racist to me. - If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, it is propably a duck?

Here we go again with genocide and nakba and settler colonialism.

Here's the thing about settler colonialism: it's when you're sent by an empire to settle on land you're not native to. Jews are native to Israel. Dig in the ground, you'll find coins and pots and tablets in Hebrew.

"Thousands of years ago" is not OK, but "for centuries" is. Sorry, you don't get to choose.

As for the second Nakba, October 7th really was as close to a second holocaust as the Jews experienced, one in a long line of pogroms. To do that and then hide behind and below women, children and innocent civilians you're using as human shields, that's beyond a war crime, it's a crime against humanity.

As for the idea of a Jewish majority homeland, go check the bible. It predates "polish jews in the 19th century" by a few centuries.

I ain't readin' all that, mate. Free Palestine.

They sure can.

If you check the Bible you'll find that the Jews obtained their "homeland" through... genocide. Their deity told them to move there and kill every man, woman, child, and even the livestock already living there. They're just another invader.

Then they had a kingdom that lasted about 200 years before falling apart, we can count it as almost 500 years if you want to include the kingdom of Judah time. And now it's more than 2500 years later. Jews who can't trace a single ancestor back to the Middle East for hundreds of years can somehow claim to be indigenous to the land and "return" there. And they have the right to displace or murder the people who have been living there for generations and whose genetics show their ancestors have been in that area for hundreds or thousands of years.

Clearly this is an absurd standard of 'indigenous' that nobody in their right mind should take seriously.

As for your other claims, they are irrelevant. Whether or not Hamas uses or has used human shields is completely unrelated to whether or not it is good or righteous to commit genocide on the Palestinians (indeed, there can be NO excuse for genocide). And if using human shields is so vile that the people of the same country deserve to be slaughtered I should point out that the Israeli military has a rich history of using Palestinian civilians (including children) as human shields. And if October 7th qualifies as a holocaust, then what Israel has done in Gaza is a holocaust ten times over.