Imagine a country where ethnic minorities are prohibited from living in certain neighborhoods. Imagine a country where ethnic minorities are driven from decades old, ethnically-mixed neighborhoods to allow the ethnic majority to expand their dominion and control. Imagine a country where ethnic minority spouses are prohibited from living with one another to prevent the birth of ethnic minority children, for fear that one day those children will proliferate to become the ethnic majority. Imagine a country where religious zealot squads roam the streets to enforce their rigid codes of moral dress and decency, and harass and shower debris upon those who violate their codes. Imagine a country where women are denigrated and treated as second-class citizens, relegated to the back of the public bus and forbidden to walk on the same side of the street as men. Imagine a country where the government doesn't just turn a blind eye to these injustices, but codifies them into the law of the land. Would you be imagining America in the fifties and sixties, or Bosnia in the nineties? How about South Africa during the hay-day of Apartheid, or Afghanistan under Taliban rule? No, you'd be imagining Israel in 2012!
For quite some time, local and national legislative bodies in Israel have been passing laws forbidding the sales of businesses and real estate in specified areas to Arabs, Palestinians and non-Jewish individuals. The goal of those laws is to create ethnically exclusive Jewish neighborhoods by preventing non-Jews who already reside there from passing property onto their offspring or selling to anybody but a Jew. Non-Jewish families, who've resided in those designated areas for decades, are oftentimes forced from their homes and businesses and have to move into shrinking non-Jewish areas elsewhere in Israel. To make matters worse, the practice of limiting the pool of potential property buyers means that non-Jewish property sellers cannot get a fair price for the property they are being forced to sell.
Next, the Israeli legislature passed, and its highest court just recently affirmed a law banning Palestinian residents in Israel (those who are legal residents) from living with their spouse on Israeli soil. As I stated earlier, the intent of this prohibition is to eliminate the procreation and birth of Palestinian children in Israel in order to prevent the Palestinian minority from one day becoming an ethnic majority. Imagine one political party in America passing a law forbidding individuals belonging to another from living or procreating with their spouses and forcing their opponents to choose between their spouse and their country. The idea is so ludicrous here (okay, many not for Rush Limbaugh and his ilk) that we can't even fathom such a concept gaining political traction, but in Israel, the idea is not ludicrous. It's the law of the land!
Meanwhile, ultra-orthodox Jewish groups have demanded that the Israeli government sanction gender-based segregation on public streets, public transportation and in government buildings and other public places, and the right-wing Israeli government has been capitulating to the ultra-orthodox group demands. Mobs of Jewish zealots roam the streets of Israel's largest cities and harass and stone women and children who, in the eyes of the zealots, are violating their rigid codes of moral dress and decency. The Israeli government does nothing to prevent those attacks.
Women in Israel are on track toward becoming second class citizens, just as Palestinians are on track toward becoming slaves of their Israeli oppressors. In a matter of a few short years, Israel has become the new South Africa…a nation with government sanctioned apartheid.
In 2011, Israel received three billion dollars worth of foreign aid from the United States. Dare I ask why America, a country whose very foundation rests upon the pillars of justice and equality, should waste such sums of money on a nation such as Israel that openly practices apartheid over its non-Jewish citizens and sanctions violence and discrimination against its own women? How can Americans support such a regime or count them among our closest of friends?
Today we celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, the leader of the civil rights movement in America. If Dr. King's contributions are to mean anything in this land, America cannot look abroad and morally or financially support the same injustices he worked so hard to eliminate.
Once upon a time, when the struggles of Nelson Mandela against South African apartheid captured America's social conscience, we boycotted South African goods and withdrew America's financial aid from the government that sanctioned the unjust treatment of its black citizens. It was the morally just thing to do and our actions helped break the chains of apartheid. It's time we do the same to Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment