Israel Announces — Then Scraps — Plan For Separate Buses For Palestinians

[Purveyor]

Source: Washington Post

By Ruth Eglash May 20 at 1:48 PM

JERUSALEM — A government plan to force Palestinians and Israelis to use separate bus lines in the West Bank was suspended within hours of being announced Wednesday after critics likened the program to apartheid.

The uproar was touched off by news media reports that the Defense Ministry had begun a three-month pilot program preventing thousands of Palestinian laborers — who live in the occupied West Bank but have permits to work in Israel — from riding Israeli buses.

“Separating Palestinians and Jews on public transport is an unnecessary humiliation and a stain on the state and its citizens,” Isaac Herzog, the leader of the opposition and head of the Labor Party, wrote on Facebook.

He warned that it would fan flames of hatred toward Israel around the world.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-announces--then-scraps--plan-for-separate-palestinian-buses/2015/05/20/2efdefd8-2e74-4309-a219-af40d574a5ca_story.html

[TexasProgresive]

1. No comment.

[mountain grammy]

2. From all my dead Jewish ancestors: SHAME!

[sakabatou]

3. Ugh...

[closeupready]

4. Shame on those who even proposed this measure.

It's not just like apartheid; it IS, in fact, apartheid.

I'm glad they scrapped these plans.

[SummerSnow]

5. They'll just make them sit on the back of the bus and give up their seats for Israelis

[geomon666]

6. They'll pass it eventually.

When the world isn't paying attention.

[Chemisse]

7. Not even the BACK of the bus?

Israeli was proposing to treat the Palestinians even worse than American blacks in the 1950s!

[MisterP]

8. yeah, well the Hamas manifesto doesn't like the Rotarians! Iran!

[Lagom]

9. How Israel helped create Hamas

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/

The current fighting — a clash between Israel's vastly superior armed forces and Hamas's insurgents — obscures the greater challenges facing Israelis and Palestinians, including the thorny question of how to accord equal rights to millions of Palestinians living under occupation in the event that a separate Palestinian state turns out not to be viable.

It also obscures Hamas's curious history. To a certain degree, the Islamist organization whose militant wing has rained rockets on Israel the past few weeks has the Jewish state to thank for its existence. Hamas launched in 1988 in Gaza at the time of the first intifada, or uprising, with a charter now infamous for its anti-Semitism and its refusal to accept the existence of the Israeli state. But for more than a decade prior, Israeli authorities actively enabled its rise.

more

How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

Israel Created Two of Its Own Worst Enemies—Hamas and Hezbollah

http://www.wrmea.org/2002-november/israel-created-two-of-its-own-worst-enemies-hamas-and-hezbollah.html

[MisterP]

12. thanks for that! I was just mocking the "whataboutery" that greets every

new jaw-dropping obscenity: heaven forbid we treat Israel as just another country

[bravenak]

13. +1

[They_Live]

10. Are the palestians required to wear an identifying patch on their clothing yet?

or a tattoo with a P and a tracking number?

[Agony]

16. A special color license plate. does that count?

the color of your plate determines which roads you can use… in your own country.

http://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/segregated-roads-west-bank

[billhicks76]

11. Apartheid Anyone?

These guys are worse than South Africa was.

[former9thward]

14. Let's have an actual black South African say that.

I think we will be waiting a long time.

[Purveyor]

17. This is close: Gaza Crisis Like Apartheid - Desmond Tutu

AFP

Two South African winners of the Nobel Peace Prize urged Israel and the Palestinians on Friday to negotiate peace, with former archbishop Desmond Tutu comparing the regional crisis to apartheid.

Tutu was speaking alongside fellow laureate and former president FW de Klerk at a news conference on this year's annual summit of peace prize winners to be held in Cape Town in October.

The feisty cleric, who won the prize in 1984 and has in the past compared the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the racist apartheid system, said the latest flare-up in the Middle East crisis was the result of a void in global leadership.

"It is not a Muslim or Jewish crisis. It is a human rights crisis with roots to what amounts to an apartheid system of land ownership and control," he said.

"Yes, we condemn those who fan the flames, who launch the missiles against Israel, but missiles do not justify Israel's excessive response," he said.

"As an old man, my appeal to my fellow laureates and peacemakers is to step into the leadership void, to make your voices heard from all corners of the globe, to advocate or pressure your government and institutions to cajole, to persuade," Tutu said.

more...

http://news.iafrica.com/sa/950193.html

[former9thward]

18. Not at all close.

It is a generic call for peace. No where is someone saying Israel is worse or equivalent to South Africa as the poster I was relying to said.

[Cal Carpenter]

22. Actually, Desmond Tutu *has* claimed that the situations are comparable

You don't like my examples in my post below, fine.

Here are direct quotes from Tutu:

In 2002 Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote a series of articles in major newspapers, comparing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to apartheid South Africa, and calling for the international community to divest support from Israel until the territories were no longer occupied. In an April 2010 open letter to the University of Berkeley, Tutu wrote “I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.” In 2011, Tutu wrote an article for the Tampa Bay Times, arguing that Israeli apartheid is now so bad that only an international boycott can force Israel to change its policies. Earlier this month, Tutu said, : “It is not a Muslim or Jewish crisis. It is a human rights crisis with roots to what amounts to an apartheid system of land ownership and control. It is a crisis that fuels other crises…”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/south-african-leaders-israeli-apartheid-state.html

From the same link:

The South African government said the terms of the order are “reminiscent of pass laws under apartheid South Africa”.

You honestly didn't think there were black South Africans who saw things this way. You are wrong. I doubt you'll admit that, and you'll parse words and hem and haw about it, but it is true. Do all black South Africans see it this way? Of course not, because like any other people, there are differing opinions.

As for your post to me below, I won't even bother, honestly. You are pretty transparent, you know.

[former9thward]

23. As are you.

Have a good day.

[Cal Carpenter]

20. Here are a few examples, from a variety of contexts

I'd have been more thorough and selective about the sources, but I was worried about you having to wait such a long time, and figured if you were the type to attack based on sources rather than actual info, it wouldn't matter how thorough I am..

Of course, google found these and many more examples in 0.31 seconds, so I'm sure if you want more, you could google around a bit. I, for one, don't consider 0.31 seconds a long time... there are around 150,000 hits, at least, based on key words.




snip
The current South African government is led by the African National Congress, which aligned itself with the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
snip

South African study: Israel practicing apartheid and colonialism
http://electronicintifada.net/content/south-african-study-israel-practicing-apartheid-and-colonialism/3432


http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/activists-apartheid-israelpalestine
The Palestine Solidarity Alliance(PSA) is a South African based Solidarity Movement that supports the struggle for a free, non-racial and democratic Palestine State for all who live in it. The PSA is made up of individuals, groups and organizations from diverse backgrounds. We draw on our experience as activists in the South African National Democratic Revolution and the International Anti-Apartheid Movement to promote peace, justice and dignity for all.
http://www.palestinesa.co.za/about.html

SNIP
Having lived for decades under a system that denied democratic rights on racial grounds to millions of people over which it ruled, many South Africans – including the likes of Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and senior ANC leaders – feel an intimate connection with Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. (The close working relationship during the 1970s and early ‘80s between Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa has reinforced that view.)
SNIP
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/15/gaza-south-africa.html

Israel refuses visa to South African cabinet minister en route to Palestinian Authority
Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande says in response that he will call on all higher education institutions in his country to freeze their contacts with Israeli universities.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.653391

[former9thward]

21. Your last one is a simple news item.

We deny visas to people also. The others are agenda driven propaganda. There are people on this board who say we live under fascism. So what? Do you believe that too? Go to Israel and show me how it is worse than South Africa. But you won't do that. It is easier typing on a keyboard and reading prop blogs.

[Agony]

15. West bank roads have been segregated using an Israeli system of apartheid for a long time...

http://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/segregated-roads-west-bank

So whats the big deal about a bus line all of the sudden? Cut the apartheid crap out across the board.

the current situation is fucking ridiculous

[awoke_in_2003]

19. Apartheid by any other name...

still stinks the same.