It’s 12 minutes long, and in it Katie Halper points out that it’s been labeled an Apartheid state by Zionists and Afrikanners for decades. Israeli prime ministers and Nelson Mandela, academics, and human rights groups have been saying this for generations.
If you want to call it something else, feel free. But whatever you call it, it needs to end.
Also: they don’t “rough up” protesters. They disappear them. They throw them in prison and torture them. They take them away from their families indefinitely without charges or kill them for posts on social media. This is not minor ethnic repression. The head of police, as I mentioned, is a convicted terrorist.
I will watch it. I’ve seen it in my feed before but never clicked it. My education on this comes from two influential professors, one I had for constitutional law, who was an expert on constitutional history and theory and had been an envoy to South Africa to help write their new Constitution, and the other was unofficial liason between certain folks in the US government and Arafat and the PLO, which had no official relations. To me, the lack of popular consent of the governed is the sine qua non of Apartheid, that means the victims are a political but popular majority citizens of the country. Those are the things that make it so evil and so abhorrent, to me anyway, and it’s how I’ve come to understand it, both in terms of how it came to be and the reforms that ended it.
Apartheid is said to be an “aggravated form of racial discrimination.” Racial discrimination is against international law on its own, by itself. Apartheid, in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, based solely on race, is something way, way more dastardly and offensive to humanity, mainly because it is antithetical to democratic governance, which the the only think that even leads toward peak humanity, if not the greatest human achievement.
Meanwhile, although a suspect class for which heightened scrutiny of potential racial discrimination is warranted, nationality and citizenship status are sometimes perfectly just grounds for policies that are facially neutral but discriminatory as applied. For example, how many suicide bombers have to cross the border from the same place before you restrict certain people’s rights based on national origin or immigration status, how many rockets do they have to import and launch at your people before you start inspecting their deliveries?
Still not ready to feed a democracy to Iran. Israel isn’t going to let it happen without a fight, and that will be a bloodbath that makes the entirety of the hostilities from 1948 to date look like a pleasant afternoon.
Apartheid, in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, based solely on race
We spoke about this. We looked at the definition. The minority/majority aspect is simply not in there. In fact it says it can be done to “any other racial group,” explicitly rejecting that framework. Why are you still saying the same thing? It is totally unjustified
Jesus christ dude. If you want to discuss you need to actually engage with the points made.
The definition says it can be done to “any other racial group” - why? How can this possibly be the wording if it had to be done to the majority group?
“As practiced in South Africa.”
Again, look at the actual wording of the whole sentence:
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa
It doesn’t have to be exactly the same. That’s why it says similar policies and not “identical to” or “the policies of…”
Bud…yes, similar policies against any other racial group as practiced in South Africa.
When a court of law with competent jurisdiction somewhere find someone outside of South Africa guilty of apartheid, then you have a leg to stand. Until then, there’s a reason nobody has been charged outside of South Africa, and that’s because the practices in South Africa were if a fundamentally different character than those in Israel, chiefly, based on immigration status, not race, and secondly, against non citizens, not citizens.
I thought there was hope for you. But today I’m convinced that either (1) you’re a hopeless pro-zioniat bootlicker or (2) you have some kind of psychological issue that makes you incapable of changing your mind even when provided with overwhelming evidence.
And today is the day I stop giving a fuck. I’m blocking you soon, goodbye forever. May we never meet. I don’t need more assholes to dehumanize me as a Palestinian and deny me the right to self determination and self defense in favor of a bunch of ruthless butchers.
Ps: frankly you seem quite racist.
The slimy questionable lawer-type racist.
Bud…yes, similar policies against any other racial group as practiced in South Africa.
So not necessarily a minority vs a majority. It literally doesn’t matter and appears nowhere in the definition.
When a court of law with competent jurisdiction somewhere find someone outside of South Africa guilty of apartheid, then you have a leg to stand
The implicit idea that we can’t just read the definition and apply it, so we must wait for a court to read it for us is laughable to me. Crimes exist regardless of whether they are convicted in practice.
You are mistaken that minority rule is fundamental to Apartheid. It’s not simply ‘a system of oppression’, it is the establishment and maintaining of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over another. Let’s look at Article II of the Apartheid Convention for one. We can also look into the definition from the Rome Statute or the ICERD.
Under every international definition of Apartheid, Israel is an Apartheid State.
Article II then lists specific inhuman acts that committed in this context amount to the crime under international law of apartheid, ranging from violent ones such as murder and torture to legislative, administrative and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participating in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and deny them basic human rights and freedoms. The specific inhuman acts enumerated are:
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
That’s the language you need to quote because that’s the language I’m talking about, it qualifies the whole thing. You’re reading it out. That’s not how reading law works. All words have their usual meaning. No words are superfluous.
So you’re saying the international definitions of the crime of apartheid, are irrelevant span and presupposition, when it comes to determining if Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid?
The Rome Statute [Article 7] provides that the crime against humanity of apartheid is committed when “inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, are committed “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”. The “special intent” element of the crime of apartheid under the Rome Statute that distinguishes it from other crimes against humanity is thus the maintenance of a regime of systematic oppression and domination.
Article II of the ICSPCA defines the crime of apartheid as:
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person
i. By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
ii. By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
iii. By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
Try and keep up slow poke, it’s irrelevant because it’s a wall of text everyone here talking about this has already read. You don’t need to constantly link things to me that I’ve already seen.
The Rome Statute says “as practiced in South Africa.”
That means it’s about policies that are of the same character and kind as they had in South Africa.
The defining policies of Apartheid are simply not present in Israel, so you must agree you are making a stretch.
Have you? Because if you did, you’d realize “as practiced in South Africa” is not a quote found within the entire Rome Statute. In the Rome Statute, which I linked, you can find the Crime of Apartheid listed in Article 7, 2. h) as the following
“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime
Unless you meant to reference Article II of the ICSPCA, which lists the crime of apartheid as the following
the term ‘the crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
Both, on fact every, international definition of Apartheid is about the inhumane acts for the establishment and maintaining of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination. That’s what they are talking about “the same character and kind as they had in South Africa” not your made up definition of minority rule.
The defining policies of Apartheid are overwhelmingly present in Israel, for all three of the international definitions of Apartheid.
I think they are trying to quote Article II of the ICSPCA, but if they did, then they intentionally left out the rest of the Article which goes against their point.
“For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them: …”
"in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, "
to all the nice folks reading this gibberish, please know that this is flat out misinformation. @[email protected] had never been able to support this with any kind of source and it is not in the legal definition of apartheid. The crime of apartheid definition is very clear and says this applies to any racial group with absolutely NOTHING about it having to be a racial minority over a majority (and by miniority here, JustZ also just means less population).
Here is the definition of apartheid according to the ICC:
The ‘crime of apartheid’ means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by ONE RACIAL GROUP OVER ANY OTHER RACIAL GROUP OR GROUPS and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.
@[email protected] do you know why you can never respond to this? Because your lame argument rests entirely now on your false definition of Apartheid. Once that is gone, you are forced to admit that ISRAEL IS A RACIST COLONIAL APARTHEID STATE and very little about its founding and practices is actually legal.
Don’t be the kind of law expert that enables evil by saying BS like this…
It hurts, I get it. It’s okay. You can cross that bridge.
Nah, even though no nation or individual has ever been indicted, let alone convicted, for apartheid crimes, outside of South Africa, I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize. I’m only informed by my own education and experience, which on this were pretty on point, primary sources. I read a nice law review article this morning about the modern South African indictments under modern positive international law, but it focuses on jurisdictional and procedural rather than substantive law, since obviously they were South Africans and thus it wasn’t a new application of the substantive law.
Maybe you can help by describing the feature or features of “apartheid” under the statutory or customary international law definition of your choice that distinguishes apartheid from mere racial discrimination? What makes apartheid “aggravated” discrimination instead of regular discriminstion?Something that really gets to the meat of whether the international custom against apartheid, which led to the Rome Statute (which says in Article II “as practiced by South Africa”).
I fundamentally disagree that discrimination based on national origin and immigration status is on the same level as discrimination based on race. Every country discriminates based on national origin and immigration status; while doing so is always suspect, it is often perfectly acceptable and uncontroversial.
I also fundamentally believe that an evil policy duly enacted into law by a popular majority is less evil than the same policy forced onto the majority without consent. The latter is obviously a crime against humanity. Again, racial discrimination is already against international law.
So I’m still not ready to feed Israel to Iran and write off the only country in the middle east capable of granting legitimate human rights, and that’s the one that elects its leaders and not the one that hears voices and describes democratic ideals as infidelity to the word of Dog. I am hopeful for the Israeli people that they can and will strive toward democracy, and that is hope for humanity, since caliphates and imamates are not legitimate sources of positive law.
I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize.
Good for you dude! It is hard to recognize but it’s better than having the wrong idea about something so important
I will acknowledge that when I describe the Israeli system as Apartheid, I’m using it in a colloquial sense, not a legal sense. Which I think is appropriate, because my purpose is to characterize the severity and urgency of the situation rather than prosecute the case in international court. But I can accept that it might fall short based on legal definitions (in part because Israel is familiar enough with international law that they usually take care in developing policy to try to avoid when possible making their violations easy to prosecute).
It’s a bit long, but the feature I think is useful is summed up here:
“If the Holocaust is the paradigmatic case for the crime of genocide and South Africa for that of apartheid, then the crime against the Palestinian people must be called the Nakba.”
The thesis, at least in my understanding, is that the situation is unique enough to fit poorly into the major categories we use for describing atrocities, and that it requires that we recognize it as the primary case for a novel form of ethnic oppression that incorporates elements of genocide and apartheid, but operates in a way that is ultimately unique to the specifics of this situation. I’m curious what you might think of that argument.
Honestly, I have a bone to pick with legal language.
I think it puts the cart before the horse. Law as a concept is an incredible invention, but I think we in our present often forget that it IS an invention: it’s a technology that was developed to systematize our ability to limit and remedy harm.
However we frequently ignore the fact that people will always shape their behavior to avoid consequence while looking for ways to serve their interests at the expense of the public good. And then when they do, we often act as if law is itself a kind of natural law, and if we can find no category for the behavior we abhor, that means that we must accept that they have some right to do it, as thought it’s out of our hands.
This situation is a profound demonstration of all of it. South Africa’s system of apartheid is a very useful framework for understanding the systems used to maintain Palestinians as a permanent underclass unable to gain meaningful political agency. This fact – that apartheid is a useful framework for examining the Israeli system and determining what to do about it – is true regardless of whether the system in question fulfills a definition. The definition is supposed to be useful. If you don’t think the term applies, that’s just a reflection that the definition apparently needs to be updated, because the thing the definition describes exists regardless of whether our language presently communicates it.
Language – like law – is a man-made tool that is supposed to serve us, not the other way around.
I think this video does a very good job of laying this out plainly:
The Video That Got Me Fired: Israel IS An Apartheid State
It’s 12 minutes long, and in it Katie Halper points out that it’s been labeled an Apartheid state by Zionists and Afrikanners for decades. Israeli prime ministers and Nelson Mandela, academics, and human rights groups have been saying this for generations.
If you want to call it something else, feel free. But whatever you call it, it needs to end.
Also: they don’t “rough up” protesters. They disappear them. They throw them in prison and torture them. They take them away from their families indefinitely without charges or kill them for posts on social media. This is not minor ethnic repression. The head of police, as I mentioned, is a convicted terrorist.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The Video That Got Me Fired: Israel IS An Apartheid State
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I will watch it. I’ve seen it in my feed before but never clicked it. My education on this comes from two influential professors, one I had for constitutional law, who was an expert on constitutional history and theory and had been an envoy to South Africa to help write their new Constitution, and the other was unofficial liason between certain folks in the US government and Arafat and the PLO, which had no official relations. To me, the lack of popular consent of the governed is the sine qua non of Apartheid, that means the victims are a political but popular majority citizens of the country. Those are the things that make it so evil and so abhorrent, to me anyway, and it’s how I’ve come to understand it, both in terms of how it came to be and the reforms that ended it.
Apartheid is said to be an “aggravated form of racial discrimination.” Racial discrimination is against international law on its own, by itself. Apartheid, in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, based solely on race, is something way, way more dastardly and offensive to humanity, mainly because it is antithetical to democratic governance, which the the only think that even leads toward peak humanity, if not the greatest human achievement.
Meanwhile, although a suspect class for which heightened scrutiny of potential racial discrimination is warranted, nationality and citizenship status are sometimes perfectly just grounds for policies that are facially neutral but discriminatory as applied. For example, how many suicide bombers have to cross the border from the same place before you restrict certain people’s rights based on national origin or immigration status, how many rockets do they have to import and launch at your people before you start inspecting their deliveries?
Still not ready to feed a democracy to Iran. Israel isn’t going to let it happen without a fight, and that will be a bloodbath that makes the entirety of the hostilities from 1948 to date look like a pleasant afternoon.
We spoke about this. We looked at the definition. The minority/majority aspect is simply not in there. In fact it says it can be done to “any other racial group,” explicitly rejecting that framework. Why are you still saying the same thing? It is totally unjustified
“As practiced in South Africa.”
What was practiced in South Africa was minority political rule over the racial majority.
Jesus christ dude. If you want to discuss you need to actually engage with the points made.
The definition says it can be done to “any other racial group” - why? How can this possibly be the wording if it had to be done to the majority group?
Again, look at the actual wording of the whole sentence:
It doesn’t have to be exactly the same. That’s why it says similar policies and not “identical to” or “the policies of…”
Bud…yes, similar policies against any other racial group as practiced in South Africa.
When a court of law with competent jurisdiction somewhere find someone outside of South Africa guilty of apartheid, then you have a leg to stand. Until then, there’s a reason nobody has been charged outside of South Africa, and that’s because the practices in South Africa were if a fundamentally different character than those in Israel, chiefly, based on immigration status, not race, and secondly, against non citizens, not citizens.
I thought there was hope for you. But today I’m convinced that either (1) you’re a hopeless pro-zioniat bootlicker or (2) you have some kind of psychological issue that makes you incapable of changing your mind even when provided with overwhelming evidence.
And today is the day I stop giving a fuck. I’m blocking you soon, goodbye forever. May we never meet. I don’t need more assholes to dehumanize me as a Palestinian and deny me the right to self determination and self defense in favor of a bunch of ruthless butchers.
Ps: frankly you seem quite racist. The slimy questionable lawer-type racist.
So not necessarily a minority vs a majority. It literally doesn’t matter and appears nowhere in the definition.
The implicit idea that we can’t just read the definition and apply it, so we must wait for a court to read it for us is laughable to me. Crimes exist regardless of whether they are convicted in practice.
Where is this quote from? Link please.
You are mistaken that minority rule is fundamental to Apartheid. It’s not simply ‘a system of oppression’, it is the establishment and maintaining of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over another. Let’s look at Article II of the Apartheid Convention for one. We can also look into the definition from the Rome Statute or the ICERD.
Under every international definition of Apartheid, Israel is an Apartheid State.
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
Amnesty International Report
Human Rights Watch Report
B’TSelem Report, Explainer
More irrelevant spam and presupposition.
That’s the language you need to quote because that’s the language I’m talking about, it qualifies the whole thing. You’re reading it out. That’s not how reading law works. All words have their usual meaning. No words are superfluous.
So you’re saying the international definitions of the crime of apartheid, are irrelevant span and presupposition, when it comes to determining if Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid?
The Rome Statute [Article 7] provides that the crime against humanity of apartheid is committed when “inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, are committed “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”. The “special intent” element of the crime of apartheid under the Rome Statute that distinguishes it from other crimes against humanity is thus the maintenance of a regime of systematic oppression and domination.
Article II of the ICSPCA defines the crime of apartheid as:
Try and keep up slow poke, it’s irrelevant because it’s a wall of text everyone here talking about this has already read. You don’t need to constantly link things to me that I’ve already seen.
The Rome Statute says “as practiced in South Africa.”
That means it’s about policies that are of the same character and kind as they had in South Africa.
The defining policies of Apartheid are simply not present in Israel, so you must agree you are making a stretch.
Have you? Because if you did, you’d realize “as practiced in South Africa” is not a quote found within the entire Rome Statute. In the Rome Statute, which I linked, you can find the Crime of Apartheid listed in Article 7, 2. h) as the following
Unless you meant to reference Article II of the ICSPCA, which lists the crime of apartheid as the following
Both, on fact every, international definition of Apartheid is about the inhumane acts for the establishment and maintaining of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination. That’s what they are talking about “the same character and kind as they had in South Africa” not your made up definition of minority rule.
The defining policies of Apartheid are overwhelmingly present in Israel, for all three of the international definitions of Apartheid.
Except that it’s not really like it was in South Africa without that bit is it?
And now I also think you are being stupid.
What? Yes, in many cases, it’s worse than Apartheid in South Africa. What do you think Nelson Mandala has said about Israel being an Apartheid State?
What is this from? Source?
I think they are trying to quote Article II of the ICSPCA, but if they did, then they intentionally left out the rest of the Article which goes against their point.
“For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them: …”
Yep and they will never get it… I’ve seen religion do this to people, but this pro-Zionism with them is religious/cult-like.
to all the nice folks reading this gibberish, please know that this is flat out misinformation. @[email protected] had never been able to support this with any kind of source and it is not in the legal definition of apartheid. The crime of apartheid definition is very clear and says this applies to any racial group with absolutely NOTHING about it having to be a racial minority over a majority (and by miniority here, JustZ also just means less population).
Here is the definition of apartheid according to the ICC:
@[email protected] do you know why you can never respond to this? Because your lame argument rests entirely now on your false definition of Apartheid. Once that is gone, you are forced to admit that ISRAEL IS A RACIST COLONIAL APARTHEID STATE and very little about its founding and practices is actually legal.
Don’t be the kind of law expert that enables evil by saying BS like this…
It hurts, I get it. It’s okay. You can cross that bridge.
Nah, even though no nation or individual has ever been indicted, let alone convicted, for apartheid crimes, outside of South Africa, I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize. I’m only informed by my own education and experience, which on this were pretty on point, primary sources. I read a nice law review article this morning about the modern South African indictments under modern positive international law, but it focuses on jurisdictional and procedural rather than substantive law, since obviously they were South Africans and thus it wasn’t a new application of the substantive law.
Maybe you can help by describing the feature or features of “apartheid” under the statutory or customary international law definition of your choice that distinguishes apartheid from mere racial discrimination? What makes apartheid “aggravated” discrimination instead of regular discriminstion?Something that really gets to the meat of whether the international custom against apartheid, which led to the Rome Statute (which says in Article II “as practiced by South Africa”).
I fundamentally disagree that discrimination based on national origin and immigration status is on the same level as discrimination based on race. Every country discriminates based on national origin and immigration status; while doing so is always suspect, it is often perfectly acceptable and uncontroversial.
I also fundamentally believe that an evil policy duly enacted into law by a popular majority is less evil than the same policy forced onto the majority without consent. The latter is obviously a crime against humanity. Again, racial discrimination is already against international law.
So I’m still not ready to feed Israel to Iran and write off the only country in the middle east capable of granting legitimate human rights, and that’s the one that elects its leaders and not the one that hears voices and describes democratic ideals as infidelity to the word of Dog. I am hopeful for the Israeli people that they can and will strive toward democracy, and that is hope for humanity, since caliphates and imamates are not legitimate sources of positive law.
Good for you dude! It is hard to recognize but it’s better than having the wrong idea about something so important
I actually think that all makes sense.
I will acknowledge that when I describe the Israeli system as Apartheid, I’m using it in a colloquial sense, not a legal sense. Which I think is appropriate, because my purpose is to characterize the severity and urgency of the situation rather than prosecute the case in international court. But I can accept that it might fall short based on legal definitions (in part because Israel is familiar enough with international law that they usually take care in developing policy to try to avoid when possible making their violations easy to prosecute).
I think if that’s the framework you’re applying, you might be interested in this law review (assuming you haven’t already read it): “The Ongoing Nakba: Towards a Legal Framework for Palestine,” by Rabea Eghbariah
It’s a bit long, but the feature I think is useful is summed up here:
The thesis, at least in my understanding, is that the situation is unique enough to fit poorly into the major categories we use for describing atrocities, and that it requires that we recognize it as the primary case for a novel form of ethnic oppression that incorporates elements of genocide and apartheid, but operates in a way that is ultimately unique to the specifics of this situation. I’m curious what you might think of that argument.
You should use it in the legal sense :)
Honestly, I have a bone to pick with legal language.
I think it puts the cart before the horse. Law as a concept is an incredible invention, but I think we in our present often forget that it IS an invention: it’s a technology that was developed to systematize our ability to limit and remedy harm.
However we frequently ignore the fact that people will always shape their behavior to avoid consequence while looking for ways to serve their interests at the expense of the public good. And then when they do, we often act as if law is itself a kind of natural law, and if we can find no category for the behavior we abhor, that means that we must accept that they have some right to do it, as thought it’s out of our hands.
This situation is a profound demonstration of all of it. South Africa’s system of apartheid is a very useful framework for understanding the systems used to maintain Palestinians as a permanent underclass unable to gain meaningful political agency. This fact – that apartheid is a useful framework for examining the Israeli system and determining what to do about it – is true regardless of whether the system in question fulfills a definition. The definition is supposed to be useful. If you don’t think the term applies, that’s just a reflection that the definition apparently needs to be updated, because the thing the definition describes exists regardless of whether our language presently communicates it.
Language – like law – is a man-made tool that is supposed to serve us, not the other way around.