Postcard from Ramallah
By Tim McGirk, Time.com, 1 June 2009
Israelis normally react furiously when comparisons are drawn between their treatment of Palestinians and the behavior of South Africa’s racist regime. But this time, does it matter? The writing is on the Palestinian side, and the only Israelis who see it are soldiers patrolling in humvees. And as Van Oel points out, the Israelis aren’t the only ones the messages are aimed at. “A Palestinian taxi driver once told me that he likes the writing on the wall, even though he can’t read it,” he says. “He’s reassured that Palestinians haven’t been forgotten by the outside world.”Nijim stencils part of a 1.6-mile-long message near Ramallah. Jim Hollander / EPA
2625 meters – painted where it won’t be a bother to Israelis?
It may not be for 7 tin hut dwellers – if they’ve left the area – but for those upgraded to trailers?* One can only hope.
Israel dismantles West Bank settlement outpost
Agence France Presse 21 May 2009
KOKHAV HASHAHAR, West Bank (AFP) – Israeli police said they razed a tiny Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank on Thursday in what media called a gesture to US President Barack Obama after his talks with Israel’s prime minister.
“We dismantled seven tin huts,” said police spokesman Danny Peleg, specifying that the outpost had been built without government authorisation.
Open Letter
Excerpt:
White South Africa did of course seek to control Blacks. However it never tried to deny Black people their very existences or to wish them away completely as we see here. We have not experienced military occupation without any rights for the occupied. We were spared the barbaric and diverse forms of collective punishment in the forms of house demolitions, the destruction of orchards belonging to relatives of suspected freedom fighters, or the physical transfer of these relatives themselves. South Africa’s apartheid courts never legitimized torture. White South Africans were never given a carte blanche to humiliate Black South Africans as the Settlers here seem to have. The craziest Apartheid zealots would never have dreamt of something as macabre as this Wall. The Apartheid police never used kids as shields in any of their operations. Nor did the apartheid army ever use gunships and bombs against largely civilian targets. In South Africa the Whites were a stable community and after centuries simply had to come to terms with Black people. (Even if it were only because of their economic dependence on Black people.) The Zionist idea of Israel as the place for the ingathering for all the Jews – old and new, converts, reverts and reborn is a deeply problematic one. In such a case there is no sense of compulsion to reach out to your neighbour. The idea seems to be to get rid of the old neighbours – ethnic cleansing – and to bring in new ones all the time.
*edited to include this link
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