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Powerful grassroots effort needed to counter Zionist ‘apartheid state’

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Mar 25, 2015 - 9:31:33 AM

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WASHINGTON - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a surprising, come-from-behind election victory March 17, putting him on course to become the longest serving Israeli Prime Minister since founder David Ben-Gurion.

Mr. Netanyahu closed out his campaign on Election Day with a bigoted and belligerent vow to oppose a Palestinian state, reneging on his 2009 endorsement of two-states—one Jewish, one Palestinian, living side-by-side—and by espousing fear-mongering rhetoric that voting by Israeli Arab citizens could tip the electoral balance.

“The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are streaming in mass to the polling stations,” Mr. Netanyahu warned. “Left-wing nonprofit organizations are bringing them in buses. Go out to the polling station, bring your friends and family, and vote Likud, in order to close the gap between us and the Labor Party. With your help and God’s help, we will form a national government and protect the state of Israel.”

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Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat

Palestinian reaction was blunt. “The Israeli elections indicate business as usual,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. “It seems to me that Mr. Netanyahu will form the next government in Israel. And we all heard what he said yesterday. He said if he is re-elected as the prime minister in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu said, he will not allow a Palestinian state. He will continue with settlement activities and dictations.

“I believe he was not campaigning in the elections. I believe he was honest, and he specified his truth. Mr. Netanyahu has done nothing in his political life but to destroy the two-state solution. And I believe now it’s up to the international community to stop treating this prime minister as a prime minister that’s above the laws of man. And he should be held accountable. And he should—the international community should not cover him or give him impunity. Impunity will mean more conflict, more complicities, and it will not make peace. Justice will make peace.”

The White House response was measured, but cool. In a congratulatory phone call, President Barack Obama emphasized this country’s close military, intelligence, and security cooperation with Israel, while he “reaffirmed the United States’ long-standing commitment to a two-state solution that results in a secure Israel alongside a sovereign and viable Palestine,” the White House said in a statement.

“That has been the policy of the United States under both Democratic and Republican Presidents,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. “And based on (Mr. Netanyahu’s) comments, the United States will evaluate our approach to the situation moving forward.” While White House and U.S. bi-partisan Congressional support for Israeli defense and intelligence activities are not likely to be affected by Mr. Netanyahu’s rhetoric, it’s now possible that the U.S. may no longer provide diplomatic protection for Israeli policies in the United Nations Security Council.

Even though Mr. Netanyahu tried to modify, if not retract his statement about Palestinian statehood, immediately after his victory was apparent, European governments as well as Democrats in Congress are now also reevaluating their blind support for Israeli policies, and even some American Jews are reserving their endorsement of the Israeli, right-wing, Likud Party. In a television interview after his victory was secure, the Israeli leader explained that what he really means is he supports a “sustainable, peaceful two-state solution” after all, so long as “circumstances” change.

“I wasn’t trying to suppress the vote,” Mr. Netanyahu explained to Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, “I’m very proud to be the prime minister of all Israel’s citizens.” He even claimed that he drew support from “quite a few Arab voters.”

Another nail was driven into the coffin of bi-partisan political support for Israel when Speaker of the House John Boehner and the Netanyahu regime announced Mr. Boehner will lead a delegation of Republican congress members on a trip to Israel on March 31. Mr. Boehner reportedly confirmed the trip when Mr. Netanyahu spoke before Congress two weeks before the Prime Minister won re-election. Approximately 60 Democratic Senators and members of the House boycotted that speech, which was secretly arranged without White House input, by the Republican leadership.

Long time critics of Israeli excesses insist that at its best the “two-state solution” is an apartheid-like arrangement, which is as harmful to the disenfranchised Palestinian population as was White-minority rule in South Africa. But a true “democratic” state in Palestine would not be compatible with either the left-wing or right-wing Zionist notion of a “Jewish state,” according to Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of law.

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“Many have argued that the two-state solution has failed and therefore the Palestinian leadership should go back to pursuing a one-state solution, akin to how the South African conflict was resolved,” Professor Boyle said, “giving one-person-one-vote to everyone regardless of their religious, ethnic or language group.

“Israel is an apartheid state by Jews against Palestinians. That’s why I called for the establishment of the Israeli divestment-disinvestment campaign in November 2000. I was a veteran of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, going back to my days at Harvard Law School. I think I helped win the first pure anti-apartheid protest case in America—Chicago v. Streeter, 1985, in Chicago at the South African Consulate.

“The legal situation is exactly the same,” Professor Boyle, author of Palestine, Palestinians and International Law told The Final Call. The reason there is a double standard in the way the two identical injustices are perceived is easy to see, he said. “It’s Zionist control and domination of the mainstream news media here in the United States, it’s that simple. You can’t get a word in edgewise on the mainstream news media. I can’t. I don’t know who can.”

What’s needed to break the logjam, he continued, is a grassroots campaign, out there among the common ordinary American people. “Take the case in favor of the Palestinians out to the American people, like the anti-apartheid movement did, and just educate the American people and get their support, and build support for the Palestinians from the ground up.

“In the anti-apartheid movement that finally culminated in the Congress adopting the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, over (President Ronald) Reagan’s veto. This wasn’t due out of the goodness of the heart of members of Congress, let alone Reagan. It was because the demand was there among the American people.

“That’s the same way we’re going to have to do it today with Palestinians and the BDS (boycott-divestment-sanctions) campaign, exactly along the lines of what was done to apartheid South Africa,” Professor Boyle said. “That’s the real hope. That’s the agenda. That’s the movement forward, to take our case out to the American people and build this movement from the ground up, not the top down.”