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Chronicles of Apartheid

Apartheid News & Quotes

  • “The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system.  But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”

    - Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, December 1997
  • “Without ownership of the land, [Palestine] will never become Jewish … but as the ways of the world go, how does one acquire landed property? By one of the following methods: by force- that is by robbing land of its owner; by forceful acquisition, that is by expropriation via governmental authority; and by purchase with the owner’s consent.”

    - Menahem Ussishkin, served as chairman of the Jewish National Fund, 1904
  • “Israel isn’t a state of all its citizens… Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people – and it alone.”

    Benjamin Netanyahu - Israeli Prime Minister, March 2019
  • Count Bernadotte: denying the Palestinians their right to return is an offence against the principles of elemental justice

    “It is, however, undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the [Palestinian] Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.”

    - Count Bernadotte (A/648(SUPP)) - Swedish diplomat appointed by the United Nations Security Council as the mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948. (He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by the paramilitary Zionist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties).
  • “[Palestinian children in Gaza] are not children — they are terrorists. We are fooling ourselves. I see the photos.”

    - Naftali Bennett - former Minister of Defense, Leader of small, right-wing Yamina party, and Israel's potential new Prime Minister; October 2018
  • “It isn’t Islamophobic to denounce Iran’s nuclear program. It’s not anti-Christian to reproach President Donald Trump for condoning white nationalism. And it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for possible war crimes.”

    - Nicholas Kristof - former New York Times foreign correspondent and two Pulitzer Prize winner, May 2021
  • “The only way is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, all of them except perhaps Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem.”

    Joseph Weitz - the director of the Jewish Agency’s Land Department, December 1940
  • “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”

    David Ben-Gurion - Preeminent leader of the Jewish community pre-the State of Israel, 1937
  • “[Palestinian children in Gaza] are not children — they are terrorists. We are fooling ourselves. I see the photos.”

    Naftali Bennett - former Minister of Defense leader of small, right-wing Yamina party, and Israel's potential new Prime Minister; October 2018
  • “I don’t think that there’s anyone in this country, whatever his or her views might be, that can imagine that I would be taking a vaccine from the Israeli citizen, and, with all the goodwill, give it to our neighbors”

    Yuli Edelstein - Israeli Health Minister, January 2021
  • “Israel is the only member of the UN that enshrines its racism in law.”

    Avi Shlaim - British-Israeli historian at Oxford University, March 2021
  • “the ‘state’ of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, and therefore only the Jewish people can enjoy their national rights

    Benjamin Netanyahu - Israeli Prime Minister, December 2020
  • “Every single member of my family on both sides was exterminated. Both of my parents were in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. And it is precisely and exactly because of the lessons my parents taught me and my two siblings that I will not be silent when Israel commits its crimes against the Palestinians”

    - Norman Finkelstein - Jewish-American political scientist, activist, author, and former professor, September 2009
  • “If I don’t steal your home, someone else will steal it”

    - Israeli settler trying to steal one of the Palestinian homes in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, May 2021
  • “For Jewish Jerusalem, I did something in the past twenty-five years. For East Jerusalem? Nothing! What did I do? Nothing. Sidewalks? Nothing. Cultural institutions? Not one. Yes, we installed a sewerage system for them and improved the water supply. Do you know why? Do you think it was for their good, for their welfare? Forget it! There were some cases of cholera there, and the Jews were afraid that they would catch it, so we installed sewerage and a water system against cholera.”

    - Teddy Kollek - former Mayor of Jerusalem, October 1990
  • “What’s so horrifying about understanding that the whole Palestinian people are our enemy?”

    - Ayelet Shaked - former Minister of Justice, 2019
  • “What is being done against the Palestinian people seems to me to be a version of the hideous policy of apartheid”

    Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann - former President of the UN General Assembly, November 2008
  • Palestinian citizens of Israel are a “Time bomb, an existential threat like cancer, and fifth column”

    Effi Eitam - former Israeli Minister of Housing, March 2002
  • “6,231 targets were destroyed… parts of Gaza were sent back to the Stone Age”

    Benny Gantz - former Defense Minister of Israel, January 2019
  • “Those who are against us deserve to have their heads chopped off with an axe”

    Avigdor Leiberman - former Defense Minister of Israel
  • “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – there’s no problem with that”

    Naftali Bennett - former Defense Minister of Israel
  • “Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law.”

    - Nelson Mandela - former President of South Africa, 2010

Apartheid News

Ben & Jerry’s Jewish Founders Proud of Company’s Israel Boycott – Albawaba

When the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s announced it would no longer sell its products in the occupied Palestinian territories, its decision was strongly condemned by leading Israeli politicians, who hastily assembled a task force with the aim of forcing the company to change its decision (Mondoweiss, 2021). For Ramzy Baroud, it was actually...
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2021, the year of Israeli Apartheid – by Ahmed Abbes and Jonathan Rosenhead, Mondoweiss

Ahmed Abbes and Jonathan Rosenhead cite a recent declaration signed by more than 1000 academics, artists and intellectuals in support of their claim that western observers increasingly recognize Israel as an apartheid state. Although a number of hugely significant events, including Benjamin Netanyahu’s removal from power, have occurred this year, the authors claim that future historians will...
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Apartheid and the suppression of native language – by Alya Zoabi, Mondoweiss

Palestinian citizens of Israel experience systematic marginalisation and discrimination in a wide number of areas, including the speaking and writing of their own language. In 2018, the Israeli government passed the Jewish Nation-State Law, which stripped Arabic of its status as an official language. Hebrew and English are now the most dominant languages in the...
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Israel continues to target Al-Aqsa Mosque under new government – by Dr Adnan Abu Amer, Middle East Monitor

On July 18, the Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett claimed, in both English and Hebrew, that Jews should have “freedom of worship” in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which directly challenged the current arrangement, in which it is exclusively a prayer location for Muslims. Although anonymous officials in his office rejected his claim on the following day,...
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Mainline church labels Israel an Apartheid state, and more churches are sure to follow – by Steve France, Mondoweiss

On July 18, the United Church of Christ General Synod passed a resolution that labelled Israel as an apartheid state, after more than three-quarters (83 percent) of delegates voted in favour. In clearly stating that it “reject[ed] Israel’s apartheid system of laws and legal procedures”, it became the first major U.S. denomination to take this...
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Pegasus scandal turns spotlight on Israel’s controversial military tech sector – by Yossi Melman, Middle East Eye

On July 18, the Pegasus Project’s investigative report was published on the Forbidden project website. This was a collaborative investigation of the activities of NSO Group, an Israeli company whose spyware products were used by repressive governments, including the Hungarian, Rwandan and Mexican authorities, to target activists, dissidents, journalists and even high-profile politicians (allegedly including the French president...
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Israel vows to ‘act aggressively’ against Ben & Jerry’s – by Josef Federman, Associated Press

On Monday, July 19, the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s announced that it would no longer sell its products in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and, in justification, cited the fact that such sales would be “inconsistent with our values”. On the same day, Avi Zinger, its local Israeli CEO (Chief Executive...
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The EU’s complicity in Israel’s crimes – by David Hearst, Middle East Eye

(Photo from The Times of Israel) On July 12, Yair Lapid, Israel’s new foreign minister, continued on from his predecessors when he declared to the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council that a Palestinian state was no longer possible. Hearst offers the essential qualification that it has become impossible precisely because of Israel’s continued actions, which include...
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Israel evicts Palestinian Bedouin community in the West Bank – by Mustafa Abu Sneineh, Middle East Eye

On July 13, Israeli soldiers demolished the entire area of al-Qaboun, which lies to the northeast of Ramallah. Eleven Palestinian Bedouin families were evicted, leaving a total of 70 people homeless, including 36 children. Tents, tin houses and sheep pens were demolished and tractors and solar energy units were confiscated. The UN Office for the Coordination...
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