Starting where Crabgrass first encountered notice of the HRC reporting, Juan Cole, here (reposting of a CommonDreams item):
Why Human Rights Watch Designating Israel’s Crimes as Apartheid Is a Very Big Deal
by Phyllis Bennis - 05/08/2021
Human Rights Watch is the best-known and arguably the most influential among Washington elites of any of the many human rights organizations in the United States. So when HRW issues an unsparing, 200-plus page legal and factual report concluding that Israeli government authorities are guilty of the crime of apartheid, it is a very big deal.
The key findings are that it is Israel’s “intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In the OPT, including East Jerusalem, that intent has been coupled with systematic oppression of Palestinians and inhumane acts committed against them. When these three elements occur together, they amount to the crime of apartheid.”
The language is legalistic and at times seems designed to deliberately muddle the actual charge HRW is making. But stripping away the obfuscation, the take-away is this: Human Rights Watch now acknowledges that Israel’s policies are designed to maintain Jewish domination over Palestinians across all the territory it controls, from the river to the sea. And Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.
Human Rights Watch is hardly the first institution to identify Israeli suppression of Palestinian lives and rights as a violation of the International Covenant Against the Crime of Apartheid. Its report is far from the most clear and powerful in its conclusions. (The internationally respected Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, which for many years had also resisted calling Israeli violations “apartheid,” issued its own report in January, titled unequivocally “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the River to the Sea: This Is Apartheid,” which identifies the entire structure of Israeli control as constituting apartheid, not only in the OPT.) HRW’s own examples and narratives clearly reflect (and indeed frequently cite) the work of Palestinian, South African, and other allied human rights advocates and organizations over the last two decades or more. Books and articles have been written, Palestinian rights organizations have mobilized, UN conferences have been convened, US Congressmembers and influential Palestinian and other academics as well as faith leaders from Archbishop Desmond Tutu to the Poor People’s Campaign co-chair Rev. William Barber II have all spoken out to condemn Israeli apartheid.
When Human Rights Watch, by far the human rights organization with the most direct access to power in Washington, says that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, that action not only reflects the discourse shift fought for and won by so many who have gone before, it also pushes that shift even farther.
So why is this latest report from HRW so very important? Precisely because its publication reflects (and pushes further) the gains that the global movement for Palestinian rights has made in transforming the public discourse regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The reason that activists and public scholars and others have worked so hard to build recognition that Israeli actions equal apartheid, is to reach the goal of mainstreaming that understanding. When Bishop Tutu said “Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation,” it was still too easy for US officials, congresspeople, media people in powerful venues to ignore his statement. As Palestinian and other academics began to use that definition routinely to describe Israeli policies, it moved the debate, but not enough. When more and more African-American and other progressive intellectuals, and UN officials, started to use the term, it got to be a little harder to ignore. And since Congresswoman Betty McCollum and Rev. Barber spoke out to identify and condemn Israeli apartheid, it has become harder still.
So when Human Rights Watch, by far the human rights organization with the most direct access to power in Washington, says that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, that action not only reflects the discourse shift fought for and won by so many who have gone before, it also pushes that shift even farther. It is precisely because the word apartheid is so charged, and so powerful that HRW and others have been reluctant to say the word, to tell the obvious. And it is precisely because the Palestinian-led and broader movements for Palestinian rights have accomplished so much in changing that discourse, that an organization like HRW is now willing to join the expanding chorus. Whether they admit it or not, there can be little doubt that much of HRW’s decision to issue this report now was based on the recognition that not only is it no longer political suicide to call Israeli apartheid what it is, but that we are now at a tipping point whereby failing to call out apartheid risks losing credibility for a human rights organization.
That’s huge. The report reflects the power of decades of work in defense of Palestinian rights. It hasn’t ever been easy, and it won’t be easy now. It surprised no one that White House press secretary Jen Psaki, asked about the report, responded that it “is not the view of this administration.” But the report will make it much more difficult for reluctant mainstream Democrats to ignore Palestinian rights, and much easier for progressive Democrats, looking for evidence of broadening support for those rights, to take a stand. It will significantly strengthen our work to change US policy: winning support for the Palestinian Children and Families Act in Congress, moving forward on conditioning and eventually ending military aid to Israel, and mobilizing BDS campaigns against the kinds of corporations HRW calls on to stop supporting Israeli apartheid.
I remember discussions almost twenty years ago within the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, about launching a major campaign to popularize the apartheid framework. All of us took for granted that Israeli apartheid was the right description. The disagreement was over timing—would using the term then be a diversion, too much time spent debating the accuracy of the word? Or would it amplify the urgency of ending Washington’s support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people? The discourse has indeed shifted, and now Human Rights Watch itself recognizes the need to move with history and publicly recognize apartheid for what it is.
It’s a huge victory for our movement.
[,,,] Human Rights Watch recognizes the “discriminatory intent by Israeli authorities to maintain systematic domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians” in the OPT and inside Israel. It then goes on to charge Israel with the additional crime of persecution, “based on the discriminatory intent behind Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the grave abuses carried out in the OPT.” Like apartheid, persecution is a crime against humanity according to the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the International Criminal Court.
The bulk of the report is devoted to a deep dive into the breadth and depth of Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, stories of Palestinian lives torn apart, community dispossession and loss of land, homes, and rights. It includes Israeli laws and statements of top officials proving the state’s intentions. Describing Israeli crimes committed both within Israel’s pre-1967 borders and the OPT, HRW states unequivocally that the Israeli government “grants Jewish Israelis privileges denied to Palestinians and deprives Palestinians of fundamental rights on account of their being Palestinian”—rejecting the pretext of so-called “security” concerns.
The report goes on to critique a long list of violations of Palestinian rights involving land, residency and more, in the occupied territory, inside Israel, and affecting Palestinian refugees. Targeting the refugees’ right to return to their homeland as an inextricable component of Israel’s crimes against humanity is particularly important. HRW has affirmed the Palestinian right of return before. But it’s new for the 43-year-old organization to highlight the connected violations of all three parts of the forcibly fragmented Palestinian people: those living under military occupation, those living as second- or third-class citizens inside Israel, and the millions of refugees in camps across the region and scattered around the world.
The report’s legal conclusions are followed by recommendations of actions—by Israel, the international community, the United Nations, Palestinian authorities, and by the United States.
The recommendations to Israel are sweeping. They start with “[d]ismantle all forms of systematic oppression and discrimination that privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians and otherwise systematically violate Palestinian rights in order to ensure the dominance of Jewish Israelis, and end the persecution of Palestinians, including by ending discriminatory policies and practices in such realms as citizenship and nationality processes, protection of civil rights, freedom of movement, allocation of land and resources, access to water, electricity, and other services, and granting of building permits.”
HRW urges implementation of specific rights long denied to Palestinian citizens of Israel (such as repealing the 2018 Nation-State law that states only Jews, no other citizens, have the right of self-determination in Israel). And it calls on Israel to “recognize and honor the right of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948 and their descendants to enter Israel and reside in the areas where they or their families once lived.”
HRW calls on all governments to impose sanctions, “including travel bans and asset freezes” against those responsible for Israel’s crimes against humanity, and to condition arms sales and military aid on Israel taking steps to end its crimes.
It calls on the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute individuals involved in the crimes of apartheid and persecution in Israel and the OPT. And on the United Nations to “investigate systematic discrimination and repression based on group identity in the OPT and Israel,” as well as to appoint a global envoy to “advocate for their end and identify steps that states and judicial institutions should take to prosecute” crimes of apartheid.
HRW calls on all governments to impose sanctions, “including travel bans and asset freezes” against those responsible for Israel’s crimes against humanity, and to condition arms sales and military aid on Israel taking steps to end its crimes. It also calls for individual governments to bring charges against Israeli officials based on universal jurisdiction.
And in a move that will strengthen the global BDS movement, it urges corporations to “cease business activities that directly contribute” to Israeli crimes. In a clear reference to companies such as US-based Caterpillar, long targeted for boycotts because its D-9 bulldozers are routinely used by the Israeli military for precisely this purpose, it specifies “equipment used in the unlawful demolition of Palestinian homes” as the example of activities directly contributing to apartheid and persecution.
In perhaps the most important section, HRW sets out a long list of actions the US government should take. Beyond issuing statements of concern and greater transparency, it calls on the White House and Congress to condition military aid on Israeli authorities taking “concrete and verifiable steps towards ending their commission of the crimes of apartheid and persecution.” They also call for applying to Israel existing US laws restricting military aid to human rights violators—laws from which Congress and presidents have long exempted Israel.
Human Rights Watch titled their report “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” The title may have referred to their finding that Israel’s policies are no longer in danger of “becoming” apartheid because that threshold has been crossed, and that Israel’s 1967 occupation can no longer be considered temporary. But the other threshold they’ve crossed is in the recognition that history has moved forward. The time has come, the discourse has been transformed, and their own credibility now depends on this new recognition of what many—including HRW’s own staff—have known for years. Human Rights Watch itself is over the threshold now, and it’s the movement for Palestinian rights that has made that crossing not only possible but necessary.
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Via Commondreams
Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:
Middle East Eye: “Israel guilty of ‘apartheid’ crimes against Palestinians”
About the Author
Yes, the excerpt is quite long. It is almost all of the CommonDreams/InformedComment item. It is that way because some readers might otherwise not follow links to get to the entirety of the story, in the convenient nutshell editorial format Ms. Bennis authored. Clearly, the report itself is the story. However, at 226 pages, many will bypass even skim reading of it. The editorial decision to put Bennis content into a Crabgrass post rests upon readers willingness to read item reposting top to bottom; so hopefully that willingness is widespread.
The new top sidebar item gives links to the HRW item. The homepage is:
Related coverage including news about current active conflict, and links:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/05/11/jerusalem-gaza-israeli-authorities-reassert-domination
That item:
Without doubt, the recent events in Gaza and Jerusalem have given rise to grave abuses. We are investigating and will take some time as we gather the facts. There are, though, some preliminary takeaways based on what we do know.
The escalation began over the move to take over several Palestinian homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed but is occupied territory under international law. Israel planned to evict the Palestinian residents and transfer their longtime homes to Jewish settlers. Israeli courts allowed these moves under a 1970 Israeli law that facilitates the return of property to Jewish owners or their heirs, including Jewish associations acting on their behalf, that they claim to have owned in East Jerusalem prior to 1948, when Jordanian authorities assumed control until 1967.
The Palestinian families involved had earlier been displaced from inside what is today Israel. They are barred by law from reclaiming their land and homes, which the Israeli authorities confiscated, along with land belonging to many other displaced Palestinians, as “absentee property” in the aftermath of the events around the establishment of the state of Israel between 1947 and 1949. A final court ruling on the matter is expected soon.
This discriminatory treatment, with the exact opposite legal outcomes for claims of pre-1948 title to property based on whether the claimant is a Jewish Israeli or a Palestinian, underscores the reality of apartheid that Palestinians in East Jerusalem face. Nearly all Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem hold a conditional, revocable residency status, while Jewish Israelis in the same area are citizens with secure status. Palestinians live in densely populated enclaves that receive a fraction of the resources given to settlements and effectively cannot obtain building permits, while neighboring Israeli settlements built on expropriated Palestinian land flourish.
Israeli officials have intentionally created this discriminatory system under which Jewish Israelis thrive at the expense of Palestinians. The government’s plan for the Jerusalem municipality, including both the west and occupied east parts of the city, sets the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain. This intent to dominate underlies Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, which Human Rights Watch documented in a recent report. [the item linked per the sidebar and per earlier quoted analysis]
To protest the planned Sheikh Jarrah evictions, Palestinians held demonstrations around East Jerusalem, some of which included incidents of rock-throwing. Israeli forces responded by firing teargas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets, including inside al-Aqsa Mosque, injuring 1000 Palestinians, 735 by rubber bullets, between May 7 and May 10, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). At least 32 Israeli officers have also been injured, according to figures cited by OCHA.
These practices stem from a decades-long pattern of Israeli authorities using excessive and vastly disproportionate force to quell protests and disturbances by Palestinians, often resulting in serious injury and loss of life.
Protests later broke out both in the West Bank and inside Israel.
Seeking to take advantage of the opportunity to brandish their image as defenders of al-Aqsa Mosque, Hamas and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza fired rockets at Israeli population centers. Three people in Israel have been killed as a result, as of May 11. Such attacks, which are inherently indiscriminate and endanger the lives, homes, and properties of tens of thousands of Israeli civilians, are war crimes, as Human Rights Watch has extensively documented over the years.
Juan Cole published:
Did Israel Exacerbate the situation in Gaza to shift attention from its Sheikh Jarrah evictions?
By Yousef A-Helou | –
( Middle East Monitor ) – It seems it is the fate of Palestinians to face the worst of apartheid policies under Israel’s military occupation.
Denial of rights, dispossessions, expulsions, evictions, ID confiscations, house demolitions, land grabs, airstrikes, tank shelling, targeted assassinations, warships, refugees, military occupation. These are terms among many others that Palestinians are used to hearing and using.
The events at Al-Aqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood that happened in the past few days in the occupied holy city of Jerusalem is a reminder of the ethnic cleansing that has never stopped since 1948.
Over 300 peaceful worshipers were injured by Israeli rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas canisters. Anger was high as Israeli attacks and violations took place during the holy month of Ramadan while worshippers were praying.
OPINION: The untold story of Sheikh Jarrah
Provocative scenes of storming the mosque – Islam’s third holiest site – trapping worshipers inside, shooting, and arresting peaceful worshipers fuelled the situation. Provocative footage not only made anger run high among Palestinians but also among Muslims worldwide, with many demonstrations taking place in many capitals worldwide.
The aggressive nature of the Israeli military occupation is also a reminder that Palestinians under the ongoing 73-year occupation have a right to self-defence.
Gaza resistance steps in
Gaza’s resistance has issued threats to retaliate in response to the aggression against the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and its holy Al-Aqsa Mosque. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, wanted to impose a de facto formula that the holy sites, mainly Al-Aqsa Mosque, are a red line.
An ultimatum was given to Israel to leave the mosque and release those arrested. As provocations did not end, the Palestinian resistance started firing projectiles from Gaza at Israeli cities reaching some 45 kilometres.
So, the viewpoint seems to be that the mosque invasion during Ramadan was the tipping point of current hostilities. Interestingly, U.S. mainstream coverage seems to cast the Hamas rocket launching as start of hostilities; with no background as to why rockets were being launched after a long lull in such action. In effect, U.S. mainstream coverage begins after the East Jerusalem incursion, by Israeli forces against Palestinians in their mosque.
Why, such a differing focus upon "start" of new hostilities exists? Go figure.
___________UPDATE__________
Media suppression/intimidation: Israel's military bombed a media center building in Gaza. Advance evacuation notice of only an hour was given to the building owner. Coverage by AP, a building occupant, online here. Coverage by another international media outlet using the location, aljazeera.com, here and here. The suggestion of both outlets is that an effort was afoot to lessen coverage opportunities of Israeli activity - a coverup step where atrocities could be anticipated by military planners.
History: This websearch, about a comparable Israeli military attack - without warning then - during the 1967 War, an airstrike on the USS Liberty spy-ship monitoring war activity in the Mediterranean at the time. Taking out the eyes and ears of observers during warfare suggests coverup, in each instance, of unacceptable conduct. Else why not let the world see? If there is nothing to hide, why provoke suspicion that something was about to happen that the Israeli military did not want heard, seen, documented, known, or criticized?
Each instance, decades apart, of such hubris was calculated in terms of expecting a tepid U.S. response, if any at all. They don't care how the world judges them. They do as they choose. They put the U.S. in the position of having to use the U.N. Security Council veto to avoid on-the-record international censure of their excesses. And U.S. policy, but once, was to do as expected by mutual understandings we might guess at. Obama near the end of his second term had the U.S. rep to the U.N. vote "present," and a censure stood on record, without veto.
There are pathologies afoot. A reckoning is overdue.
FURTHER: RT coverage.