Israeli Apartheid Week 2022

 Israeli Apartheid Week,(IAW) is an international week of action that has taken place for the last 16 years in over 200 universities and cities around the world. It aims to raise public awareness about Israel’s racial discrimination against all parts of the Palestinian people, which amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law. This week allows us to amplify Palestinian voices, build The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement campaigns works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law and allow us to show our solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice.

In 2022, the theme of Israeli Apartheid Week is ‘Art Against Apartheid’: aiming to highlight the role of culture and art in the Palestinian struggle against oppression. Israeli Apartheid Week also using the  theme of United Against Racism, links up the Palestinian anti-apartheid struggle with all those fighting racism, oppression and discrimination across the globefrom Palestine to Black Lives Matter.

Here in Britain, Israeli Apartheid Week is a chance for university campaigns to raise awareness about their work, launch new campaigns, and link with other organisations to fight to kick #ApartheidOffCampus.

 IAW provides an opportunity to network and strengthen the links between the Palestinian liberation struggle and other struggles against racism, oppression, and discrimination. In 2022, as in every year since 2005, we will once again join our voices to denounce apartheid and celebrate Palestinians diversity. This year, we plan to shed light on the role of culture, and art in particular, in decolonizing our minds in our collective struggles against cultural appropriation and oppression. From March to April, communities around the globe will come together to organize inspiring actions and events to show that now, more than ever, we are #UnitedAgainstRacism.

Calling the Israeli regime as one of apartheid is not rhetoric, nor is it an exaggeration or a propaganda tool. This is the reality in modern day Palestine, where the Israeli regime  through laws, practices and most aspects of life and the policies instituted by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people meets the UN definition of Apartheid. This apartheid regime is not only imposed on the people in Palestine, but also on millions of Palestinian refugees denied their right to return to their homes and lands..Under Israeli law, and in practice, Jewish Israelis and Palestinians are treated differently in almost every aspect of life including freedom of movement, family, housing, education, employment and other basic human rights. Dozens of Israeli laws and policies institutionalise this prevailing system of racial discrimination and domination.

The occupation Wall is also another element of the wider system of severe restrictions on the freedom of movement imposed by the Israeli authorities on Palestinian residents of the West Bank. There are over 600 closure obstacles blocking Palestinian movement within the West Bank. In addition, the system of roads is segregated: travel on hundreds of kilometres in the West Bank is restricted or prohibited outright for Palestinians, whereby Israelis are able to travel about freely. About one third of the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, is completely prohibited to Palestinians without a special permit issued by the Israeli military.

These severe restrictions violate not only the right to freedom of movement,they also effectively prevent Palestinian residents from exercising a wide range of fundamental human rights because of their identity, including their right to work, to health, to education and to an adequate standard of living. Farmers are stopped from assessing their fields and thus from exercising their right to sustain their livelihood. Many Palestinians are also prevented from seeking work outside their locality. Children are prevented from accessing schools and students face restrictions in choosing their university of choice. Patients are prevented from assessing hospitals, blocking them from exercising their right to the highest sustainable standard of health.  Israel has in effect created a system of seperation in the West Bank which fits the textbook definition of apartheid. Segregation is also carried out by implementing separate legal regimes for Jewish Israelis and Palestinians living in the same area. For example, Jewish Israeli settlers living in the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are governed by Israeli civil law, while Palestinians also living in the occupied West Bank are governed by Israeli military law.

As awareness across the world of all of this continues to increase  campaigns to boycott, divest and sanction this regime provide a very effective and natural response. The world witnessed a similar response transpire and bare fruit in the case of South Africa, and there are very good reasons to believe that it will do the same in the case of Palestine. 

 In 1966 the United Nations called for an International Day of remembrance for the 69 Africans who were killed and the 189 injured by the Apartheid Police in Sharpeville, South Africa. The Police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration against the apartheid "pass laws" on March 21 1960.

 The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a splinter group of the African National Congress (ANC) created in 1959, organized a countrywide demonstration for March 21, 1960, for the abolition of South Africa’s pass laws. Participants were instructed to surrender their passes and invite arrest. Some 20,000 Blacks gathered near a police station at Sharpeville, located about 30 miles south of Johannesburg. The police opened fire on them with submachine guns without warning.

 Following the dismantling of apartheid, South African President Nelson Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site at which, on December 10, 1996, he signed into law the country’s new constitution.  Since then, the Apartheid System in South Africa has been dismantled but Apartheid in Israel has only been 

 only been strengthened. In 2018 Israel officially declared itself an Apartheid State with the passage of the Jewish Nation State Law which removed Arabic as an official language and designated ‘Jewish Settlement’ as a national goal.

 What happened at Sharpeville, horrific though it was, pales into comparison with the thousands of Palestinians who have been murdered for the crime of being Palestinian. In 2018 Israeli troops shot thousands of Palestinians deliberately disabling peaceful protestors at the Gaza fence and killing hundreds in the process.

 The IAW observes that “the recognition of Israel as an apartheid state is becoming increasingly mainstream”. There are visible signs of exceptional support for the cultural and academic boycott of Israel. IAW makes the pertinent conclusion: “Apartheid Israel is realizing that its South Africa moment is nearing”.

In the past year three major human rights organisations have declared that Israel is an Apartheid State. The first was B’Tselem which, on January 12 2021, declared that:  The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls… an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls… an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

 The next human rights organisation to describe Israel as an apartheid state was Human Rights Watch in April 2021. It declared that:  For the past 54 years, Israeli authorities have facilitated the transfer of Jewish Israelis to the OPT and granted them a superior status under the law as compared to Palestinians living in the same territory when it comes to civil rights, access to land, and freedom to move, build, and confer residency rights to close relatives.

  HRW described Israeli Apartheid as a crime against humanity ‘which stands among the most odious crimes  in international law.’ https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

The third organisation to describe Israel was Amnesty International this January. In a damning report calling for Israeli authorities to be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, which includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.It described Israeli apartheid as ‘a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity.’ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/ 

While Israel has been accused of perpetrating apartheid before, this is the first time an international organisation at the level of Amnesty International has gone as far as accusing the state of Israel of perpetrating apartheid against Palestinians as a whole.

"Our report reveals the true extent of Israel's apartheid regime," said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's Secretary General.

"Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem, Hebron, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights.

"We found All of the above leads to a growing acceptance that Israel is an Apartheid state, or that its policies are Apartheid policies. This strengthens calls to expose such behaviour as well as demands to impose appropriate measures that deal with Israel as an Apartheid state, one that should be boycotted and censured until it ends its racist Apartheid policies.d that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid.

"The international community has an obligation to act," Ms Callamard said.

"There is no possible justification for a system built around the institutionalised and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people.

"Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

"Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining the international legal order, and exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people.

"The international community must face up to the reality of Israel's apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored."

 All of the above leads to a growing acceptance that Israel is an Apartheid state, or that its policies are Apartheid policies. This strengthens calls to expose such behaviour as well as demands to impose appropriate measures that deal with Israel as an Apartheid state, that continues to deprive millions of Palestinians, refugees included  of their basic rights, and ,as long as Israel maintains its apartheid regime, we must refuse to artwash its brurl oppression against Palestinians, and  should be boycotted and censured until it ends its racist Apartheid policies.

The dates provided for the Israeli Apartheid Week 2022 are: Europe and North America 21 – 28 March; Africa from 21 March – 4 April; Asia-Pacific 28 March – 4 April; Latin America and Arab World (incl. Palestine) 11 – 18 April.

 A Global Rally Against Israeli Apartheid will take place on March 26th in which arenas of our collective resistance to Israeli apartheid and all forms of racism and oppression. From dance, to music, to poetry, the rally will highlight the critical role that culture and art play in decolonizing our minds against cultural appropriation and oppression and highlighting culture as a weapon of resistance.

 Some of these artists, speakers and creatives include: Saana Moussa, Rana Nazal. Radiodervish, Kayda Aziz, Badiaa Bourezi, Estrefania Vega, El Funoun, Palestinian Dabke Troupe and more!

You can register for the event here :https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NkZjN90PRMG4l20jHj6fsQ

 “One has to keep telling the Palestinian story in as many ways as possible, as insistently as possible, and in as compelling a way as possible, to keep attention to it, because there is always the fear that it might just disappear.” ( Edward Said, 2003)

https://bdsmovement.net/iaw