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)
