By Richard Edmondson
A bill to allow the force-feeding of prisoners has been approved by the Israeli cabinet. In order to become law, it will require passage on two more readings in front of the Knesset, which has approved the measure on first reading already. And chances are looking pretty good it will win the necessary approval.
In some respects, you could look at this and say that Israel is actually more of a democracy than the US. At least they are having a debate on the issue–and the matter will ultimately be decided by legislators duly elected by the public, or at any rate some of the public.
You’ll recall of course that when the US started force-feeding prisoners at Guantanamo, no bill was ever introduced in Congress. In fact, I’m not sure if anyone in Congress was even informed of it. Certainly no public debate ever took place. An order was simply given, presumably by someone either in the military or the executive branch of government, and that was that: prisoners began having plastic tubes forced down their throats and food pumped into their stomachs.
So yes, as reprehensible as this bill is, Israel nonetheless is demonstrating to the world that it is indeed a democracy. There’s only one small catch: it’s a democracy for Jews only. This is something that is both denied as well as implied.
It is denied by Israelis who are in denial about the fact that they live in an apartheid state…yet it is also implied, in many cases by the very same Israelis, who demand that their rogue country be recognized as “a Jewish and democratic state”! Any nation articulating its national character on the basis of racial or ethnic identity is, of course, by definition, an apartheid state.
This would be true if a nation were to proclaim itself a “white and democratic state,” or a “black and democratic state,” so why is it somehow not applicable in the case of a “Jewish and democratic state”?
So then, yes, what we have here is a case of people who go forever about denying one thing–while turning around and implying the exact opposite. Perhaps the Israelis are guided by the principle that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I remember hearing that old adage years and years ago. Now you might think such a saying surely must have been coined by a Jew–and that would probably make a certain amount of sense–but the quote is actually attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, son of a Unitarian minister.
Perhaps significantly, however, it is drawn from an essay Emerson published in 1841–wellbefore large numbers of Jews began immigrating to America, forming themselves into Zionist lobbies, and advocating for a central bank. If Emerson were around today I wonder if he might revise his opinion on the matter.
I often find myself amused by prominent Israelis who, along with their supporters here in America, stubbornly and persistently proclaim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Israel is not an apartheid state. Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, makes such an argument in an op-ed piece published last year in the L.A. Times.
He points out, for one thing, that Palestinians serve in Israel’s Knesset as well as on its Supreme Court, but of course Palestinians represent only about twenty percent of the population of Israel, and they do not hold public offices in numbers sufficient to exact substantial change. Where Palestinians do make up a substantial majority of the population–in the West Bank and Gaza–they are of course not allowed to vote in Israeli elections.
As far as the West Bank goes, Oren acknowledges the existence of separate roads, schools, and hospitals for Palestinians and Israelis living there, but he insists that “none of this even remotely resembles apartheid,” and he alleges that “the vast majority of settlers and Palestinians choose to live apart because of cultural and historical differences, not segregation.”
Oren is, in effect, asking you to disregard the views of numerous black South Africans, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who have equated Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians to apartheid, or others, such as Baleka Mbete, former chairperson of the African National Congress and speaker of the South African National Assembly, who have gone so far as to label Israeli apartheid as being “far worse” than South Africa’s.
I guess it comes down to who ya’ gonna believe, South Africans who have actually lived under apartheid and know what it’s like…or Michael Oren.
The long and the short of it is, that from Soweto to Gaza to the West Bank, apartheid is apartheid is apartheid. There’s kind of no getting around that. By the way, tomorrow, June 16th, is the 39th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, certainly a defining moment in South African history, and you can go here to watch a 25-minute documentary that includes interviews with some of those who were present at the time and who witnessed the shooting of black protesters by white South African police.
The video also includes an interview with the photographer who snapped the above rather iconic photo of the event, as well as information on the mysterious disappearance of Mbuyisa Makhubo, the young man you see carrying the dying boy in his arms.
But of course “none of this even remotely resembles” Israel, does it?
So the lesson seems to be that in a “Jewish and democratic state” even the most repulsive of issues and proposals get a full airing. How admirable.
I think we can also safely assume that if the Knesset bill passes its next two readings, it will most certainly be Jews who will be administering the force feedings…and non-Jews who will have the plastic tubes rammed down their throats.
And if that’s not apartheid, what is it?
Uprooted Palestinian 
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