This Poster Lies

This poster can be seen at bus stops around San Francisco. Don’t believe the hype.

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Israel is not a democracy. Israel is an apartheid state where the government mandates official discrimination against Palestinians, who live as second class citizens within the boundaries of Israel that the UN recognized in 1967.

They are 20 percent of the Israeli population, but, in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), they have only 12 out of 120 seats — one of which is held by a woman. In 2001, the parliaments of Syria, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Algeria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon all had a higher percentage of Arab women than did Israel.

This poster, mounted on bus shelters around San Francisco, is a hypocritical attempt to make Israel seem like it cares about Palestinian women’s liberation when it continues to deny fundamental human rights not only to Palestinian women but also to their fathers, brothers, sons and husbands.

Apartheid in Israel means:

l Israel is a “Jewish state” in which Jews are the majority, where Jews are entitled to special treatment and preferential laws and where any Jewish person from anywhere in the world has a right to claim Israeli citizenship. (Palestinians have no right of return to the homes they lived in before Israel pushed them out in 1948.) By privileging Jews, the state treats others as second-class citizens. Israel has no constitution, and its basic law includes no right to equality.

l Jewish organizations, like the Jewish National Fund, have semi-governmental status and benefit Jews only. They have special rights to housing, land development, tax benefits.

l Only those who have served in the Israeli Army (or Jewish Yeshiva students) are eligible for benefits, including access to public employment, housing, scholarships and mortgages.

l Sixty-one percent of Palestinian women with (second-class) Israeli citizenship earn less than minimum wage. An Israeli Jew of European origin makes twice the average pay of a Palestinian Israeli. Of 1,710 directors and managing directors of government-recognized companies, only two are Palestinian women. There is only one Palestinian woman university lecturer in Israel and no Palestinian women high school principals.

l Of the 30 areas in Israel with the highest unemployment rates, 26 are Palestinian.

l Strict residential segregation is the rule in Israel. Only 8 percent of all Palestinians with (second-class) Israeli citizenship live in cities with Jewish populations, and in those cities, they live in segregated neighborhoods.

l One hundred Palestinian villages within 1967 Israeli boundaries are not recognized by the Israeli government and therefore receive no electricity, water or sewer services, no paved roads, schools, hospitals or clinics. (Yet Jewish settlers are 10 percent of the population of the West Bank and Gaza and consume more than 50 percent of the water.)

l Palestinians with (second-class) Israeli citizenship cannot buy land and cannot build on land they own without an Israeli permit, which is nearly impossible to secure.

l Palestinian political parties admitted into the Knesset cannot stand for election if they take any position against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

l Palestinians with (second-class) Israeli citizenship have no freedom of movement. They cannot visit families or friends who live in the West Bank or Gaza. With the new apartheid wall, Israel has grabbed more land and forcibly separated more families.

l Palestinians are subject to administrative detention for six months without any charges. Detention may be renewed indefinitely. Whenever Israel declares a state of emergency, Palestinians are subject to military rule with no civil rights. Israel holds 8,000 Palestinian political prisoners — many of whom are women — all of whom are separated from their families.

Racism against Palestinians is on the rise. In 1998, 39 percent of Jewish youth told survey takers they “hated” Arabs, 44 percent believe “Arab” citizens should be deprived of some of their rights, 19 percent thought “we should get rid of them.”

And there is not even a pretense of democracy for the nearly 3.5 million Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

l Since 2000, Israeli soldiers have killed 3,490 Palestinians — 19 percent of them under the age of 18 — and injured 28,297. As of March 2004, Israeli soldiers killed 132 Palestinian children and injured 2,500 on their way to or from school.

l As of March 2004, the Israeli army destroyed and damaged nearly 20,000 homes, 30 mosques, 12 churches and 134 water wells, uprooted 35,000 olive and fruit trees, closed 850 schools and converted 23 schools into military barracks or detention centers.

l According to a UN count completed in July 2004, Israel maintains 703 checkpoints and road closures in the West Bank — a territory about the same size as the greater Bay Area. These checkpoints and the apartheid wall, which transforms many Palestinian towns into open air prisons, results in most Palestinian people being cut off from their families, schools, fields, jobs, markets, clinics and hospitals.

l As a result of this destruction and travel restrictions, 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza and 58 percent in the West Bank now live in poverty, on less than $2 a day.

http://www.sfbayview.com/010505/posterlies010505.shtml