United Methodists are responding to Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth ,a statement of faith and urgent call to action from Christians in Palestine. UMKR seeks, through nonviolent means and in partnership with Palestinian Christians, freedom, justice and equality for all Palestinians and Israelis.
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"Human rights have long been side-lined by the international community when dealing with the decades-long struggle and suffering of Palestinians. Palestinians facing the brutality of Israel’s repression have been calling for an understanding of Israel’s rule as apartheid for over two decades. Over time, a broader international recognition of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid has begun to take shape." Amnesty International: "Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians" 1 February 2022
Authoritative reports by human rights experts, legal analysts, and renowned scholars have definitively answered the question of whether Israel is practicing apartheid in its policies toward the Palestinian people.
In 2022, the global acknowledgment and understanding of Israeli apartheid keeps growing. In March, the United Nations Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk presented his report to the UN Human Rights Council, explicitly acknowledging and documenting Israeli apartheid in the Occupied Territories, which is a landmark event for this important body of the United Nations.
The most explosive moment to date regarding Israeli apartheid came on 1 February 2022, when the venerated Amnesty International, the largest human rights organization in the world, published the report they had been preparing for four years.
In April 2021, the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning Human Rights Watch published a comprehensive report which political commentators described as "game-changing."
In January 2021, Israel's premier human rights center, B'Tselem, published a thoroughly documented indictment of their own government as an apartheid regime.
In June 2020, another Israeli human rights organization, Yesh Din, published the 58-page position paper based on the legal findings of Michael Sfard, eminent Israeli attorney specializing in international law.
HELP TO END APARTHEID IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE:
See the actions on the right ►►►
However, Israeli apartheid did not appear in the 2020's, as can be seen in the report of a United Nations agency in 2017. One of the earliest acknowledgements of the apartheid reality in Palestine came in a 2009 report by legal scholars commissioned by the government of South Africa.
Since the increase in these reports in recent years, Israel made considerable effort discredit these reports by attacking the authors, be it individuals or organizations, with groundless accusations of bigotry, namely antisemitism. instead of responding to the charge of a crime against humanity and the ample documentation that proves the charge.
But these misleading counter charges of antisemitism cannot refute or hide the growing consensus among experts in human rights and international law: the harsh reality that Israel's daily and systemic oppression of Palestinians is an apartheid regime.
All of these findings regarding Israeli apartheid are based on these instruments of international law (click the titles to download these documents):
• The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
• The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
• The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Some reports on this page have excellent additional resources created by those organizations.
In addition to those, see more resources for learning about apartheid in Israel/Palestine, as well as news and commentary, on this page
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HELP TO END APARTHEID IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE:
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HELP TO END APARTHEID IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE:
See the actions on the right ►►►
The Legal Architecture
of Apartheid
Al-Haq – April 2021
The same month as the HRW report,
Al-Haq, one of the oldest human rights
centers in the Middle East, published a
briefing paper on Israeli apartheid,
a helpful overview on the subject at
a more digestible length.
From the conclusion: "Israel maintains its apartheid regime through a complex framework of laws that enable demographic engineering, widespread land appropriation and the fragmentation of the Palestinian people and territory. These laws also introduce illegally transferred Jewish settlers to colonize both sides of the Green Line. Finally, racially discriminatory laws seek to subordinate the Palestinian population as a whole through denying their collective rights of return, self-determination and permanent sovereignty (over lands on both sides of the Green Line).
See it on their website
Download the paper
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See this infographic and others at https://www.amnestyusa.org/endapartheid/
HELP TO END APARTHEID IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE:
See the actions on the right ►►►
PLO Negotiations Affairs Dept – December 2020
The State of Palestine/PLO Negotiations Affairs Department published a comprehensive report on Israeli apartheid that had been planned by Dr. Saeb Erakat, Secretary General of the PLO's Executive Committee among other positions of leadership he held, shortly after his death from Covid-19 at the end of 2020. From the Foreword: "This publication presents a full explanation of Israel as an apartheid system. It defines continuing acts of apartheid by the State of Israel in the land of Palestine occupied since 1967 and how it maintains systematic racial oppression and domination over the Palestinian people as a whole to ensure that their continued fragmentation into separated groups prevents their collective right of self-determination and to consolidate its illegal settler-colonial enterprise. It highlights that the apartheid system is characterized by a series of racist Israeli laws implemented since 1948 and continued by the Israeli occupying forces in 1967 and further defines penalties under international law and human rights law provisions."
A wonderful quotation in this report (page 7):
“...what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid, and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck - it is apartheid.” Yossi Sarid, former Education Minister of Israel, member of the Knesset, and leader of the Meretz party.
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Sign the Petition the UN Secretary General, calling for a UN investigation into Israeli apartheid - a crucial step toward concrete action to end apartheid and protect Palestinian rights.
Send an email directly to the UN Secretary General with the same message:
Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid
ESCWA – 2017
A report commissioned by the UN agency
ESCWA (Economic and Social Comission
for Western Asia) and published in March 2017
concludes unequivocally that Israel practices
Apartheid policy.
Read the Executive Summary on our site
Download the Executive Summmary (6 pp)
Download the full report (74 pp)
See the article in The Nation:
The Inside Story on Our Report Calling Israel
and Apartheid State,by Richard Falk
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Is Israel an Apartheid State?
Human Sciences Research Council
of South Africa – 2009
This is an easy-to-read summary (provided by
ICAHD-USA) of the 15-month study conducted
by an international group of legal analysts.
That study was funded and coordinated by the
government of South Africa.
Read the ICAHD-USA Summary on our site
Download the ICAHD-USA Summary
legal team's Executive Summary
Download the Executive Summary
Download the full report (300+ pages)
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FOR ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ON lSRAELI APARTHEID: CLICK HERE
A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution
Human Rights Watch – April 2021
In this rigorously documented report, the esteemed international rights monitor Human Rights Watch declares that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. That finding is based on an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem.
The 213-page report presents the present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government, ruling primarily over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.
Read the summary and full report at their website
Download the Summary
Download the full report
Watch HRW's 3 min. explainer video:⬇︎
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Sign the Petition the UN Secretary General, calling for a UN investigation into Israeli apartheid - a crucial step toward concrete action to end apartheid and protect Palestinian rights.
Send an email directly to the UN Secretary General with the same message:
Education Yes, It Is Apartheid
Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
March 2022
The UN Special Rapporteur examined Israel’s treatment of Palestinians through the lens of international law and reached the unmistakable conclusion that Israel's policies and practices are apartheid. The report sets out how Israel's regime in the OPT “endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule."
This report is a important moment in a prominent and influential United Nations body, the explicit naming of the lived reality of millions of Palestinians. The report emphasizes the need for the international community to accept the findings of human rights organizations, call Israel’s "pitiless" apartheid what it is, stop shielding Israel from accountability, and take effective actions to help end apartheid and protect Palestinian rights.
Download the Special Rapporteur's report
See the article in Electronic Intifada
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ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS:
Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity
Amnesty International – February 2022
Coming from the largest human rights organization in the world, the report from the venerated Amnesty International has garnered even more praise and resistance than its predecessors, as it is more damning in its conclusions than previous indictments of the Israeli regime.
Amnesty International has assessed that almost all of Israel’s civilian administration and military institutions are involved in the enforcement of a system of apartheid against Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as Palestinian refugees and their descendants outside the territory. “Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.”
This authoritative work comes from decades of research collecting evidence in Israel and the OPT, as well as publications by human rights organizations, academic studies, reports by UN agencies, monitoring by grassroots activist groups, and media articles.
Amnesty has prepared great resources to go with this report and there are two good websites worth visiting:
See AmnestyUSA.org to learn about Israeli apartheid and download the report and many resources:
https://www.amnestyusa.org/endapartheid/
Amnesty.org has a campaign page introducing the subject and providing opportunity for action: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/
Amnesty has prepared an online course, a free 90-minute educational resource: "Deconstructing Israeli Apartheid Against Palestinians"
By the end of the course, you will be able to...
• Define the characteristics of the human rights violation and crime of apartheid in international law
• Explain how the oppression and domination of Palestinians by Israel amounts to apartheid
• Describe how apartheid affects Palestinians
• Take action to campaign against apartheid
Certification: Certificate of Participation
Watch on Youtube: the 15-minute video Amnesty has prepared to explain and illustrate Israeli apartheid and how it came to exist in this land: ⬇︎
MATERIALS TO DOWNLOAD:
The full report from Amnesty International - 280 pages
The Executive Summary - 27 pages
An Action Toolkit - 9 pages
Handout for advocacy at government offices - 2 pages
Q & A Explainer - 10 pages
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The Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid
Yesh Din – June 2020
Yesh Din, a human rights monitor in Israel, is the courageous NGO that initiated the wave of reports on Israeli apartheid in the 2020s. They released a detailed legal opinion primarily authored by Michael Sfard, a prominent Israeli attorney and specialist in international law.
Their paper argues that Israel’s 53-year occupation of the West Bank constitutes an “apartheid regime.” In Sfards words: “Up until now, Yesh Din would say that specific policies are illegal or are even war crimes, but now we are talking about the regime being illegitimate.” [The goal of the legal opinion] “is to change the internal Israeli discourse, and no longer talk about our presence in the West Bank as an occupation that is temporary, but as an illegitimate crime.”
See the +972 Magazine article:‘An illegitimate regime’: How a top rights group shed Israeli myths to recognize apartheid
See the full legal opinion and associated resources the Yesh Din website
https://www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/
Download the full document - 58 pages
Download the summary - 10 pages
Download the FAQs - 5 pages
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Sign the Petition the UN Secretary General, calling for a UN investigation into Israeli apartheid - a crucial step toward concrete action to end apartheid and protect Palestinian rights.
Send an email directly to the UN Secretary General with the same message:
Sign the Petition the UN Secretary General, calling for a UN investigation into Israeli apartheid - a crucial step toward concrete action to end apartheid and protect Palestinian rights.
Send an email directly to the UN Secretary General with the same message:
FIND MORE RESOURCES on this subject - infographics, videos, news reports, and analysis about Israeli apartheid: CLICK HERE
A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea:
THIS IS APARTHEID
B'Tselem – January 2021
B'Tselem is a human rights center in Israel that monitors what is happening to Palestinians in the occupied territories; the name means "image" in Hebrew, from the phrase "b'tselem elohim" - in the image of God . The center has a sterling reputation globally for its sound research and documentation and for its carefully considered conclusions. This paper published in early 2021 was a virtual bombshell in its effect, given the severity of this center's indictment of the government of their own country.
See the report at B'Tselem's website
Download the pdf
Check out their "Illustrated Explainer" online, which shows step by step how Israel has created an apartheid regime over Palestinians.
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