(see 10 for introduction)
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For Thursday’s Capital Times , John Nichols reworked his latest Nation On-Line Beat entry, which topped Common Dreams’ list Wednesday. The subject was the thwarting of a church’s attempt to celebrate inclusiveness. I’m attempting to celebrate how religiously exclusive John (and by proxy, far too many “progressives”) is when it comes to Palestine, that’s 102 Cap Times columns down, eight to go and he’ll have made it through the year without having used the word “Israel.”
In a letter to the editor in response to a Cap Times editorial in October, 1995, I wondered how the same people who had celebrated the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa were gushing over “the peace process,” i.e., the “formalization and intensification of apartheid in Israel/Palestine…The plan being implemented is to isolate Palestinian population centers. Each enclave is being surrounded by settlements, Israeli army fortresses and crucially, ‘bypass’ roads costing a billion dollars…”
“Born in 1991,” the checkpoints “were greatly reinforced” after the Oslo Accords were signed, Yitzhak Laor writes in the wake of the violin incident.
Amira Hass reports and applauds, the Palestinian Authority is finally taking a practical step against apartheid road construction.
In “Palestinians await someone who offers them freedom,” Nadia Hijab mentions “Marwan Barghouti, whose capture and imprisonment by
Israel during the current uprising evokes comparisons with South Africa’s Nelson Mandela.”
Martin Fletcher, NBC News’ Tel Aviv bureau chief who was previously based in Johannesburg, had this to say in an interview last year:
“The thing is that, to a large extent, Israel today is worse than South Africa. Because if you compare the situation of the blacks under apartheid to the situation of the Palestinians under the Israeli military occupation, the Palestinians’ situation is much worse.
“The idea of apartheid was that the blacks would live separately from the whites, but as long as they were living apart, they could do what they wanted. They were free to travel, to go to the cinema, to go to work, or wherever else they wanted. Here the Palestinians are not free to move because the military dictatorship of this government doesn’t allow it…
“I loved South Africa, but one day I realized that I couldn’t remain there any longer…
“I wonder when the Israelis will look at the Palestinians’ situation and understand that it’s intolerable that a million people should live for so long stuck in their houses without being able to go anywhere.”
“Untolerable” for whom? Yes, 102 columns down, eight to go.