Israel ‘Drifting Into Apartheid’ With ‘Government Driving Jewish Supremacy’: What ex-UN Chiefs Saw on Their Visit
July 7, 2023 in News by RBN Staff
Source: Haaretz
Archived Page: HERE https://archive.is/nKaUJ
‘Israeli society is being eroded’ by the move towards a ‘one-state reality’: Ireland’s ex-president and the UN’s former Secretary-General, visiting Elders, have a harsh message for Israel and the international community – and expect to be labeled ‘antisemitic’
Mary Robinson, formerly president of Ireland and UN human rights commissioner, visited Israel and the Palestinian territories last week. Now chair of The Elders, a group of global leaders active in human rights, she told Haaretz in Tel Aviv that, since her last visit in 2012, the deterioration in political conditions and for civil society in the region is “very serious.”
“It’s very shocking and sad…to see the reality of one state with a government driving a kind of Jewish supremacy,” she said.
Robinson noted that in every meeting in Israel and the Palestinian territories she attended together with former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, The Elders’ deputy chair, “we heard the word apartheid.” She said that she’d brought up the issue of apartheid in their meetings with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and with opposition leader Yair Lapid. Both Israeli figures rejected the applicability of the term.
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Ban Ki-Moon suggested in a 2021 Financial Times opinion piece that the discriminatory legal regime of Israel’s occupation “arguably constitutes apartheid.” Although Robinson notes, “We have not said, as Elders, this is apartheid,” their language is hardening.
She says that this visit “is bringing it home to us. [Apartheid] is getting more evident unless it can be countered.” She praised as “healthy and welcome” the mass protests against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul legislation, but regretted the lack of public debate about Israel’s “systemic abuses and systematic impunity.”
Robinson warned that “Israeli society is being eroded” by the move towards a one-state reality: Israel “is now deliberately drifting into” apartheid, fulfilling more and more of the conditions that define “the crime of apartheid.”
In a public statement at the end of their visit, the two elder statespeople noted that in their discussions, they didn’t hear any “detailed rebuttal of the evidence of apartheid,” and warned that “a ‘one-state reality’ is now rapidly extinguishing the prospect of a two-state solution.”
That ‘one-state reality,’ their statement continued, “undermines the democratic ideals of the Israeli state, denies the Palestinian people their right to self-determination, and risks an uncontrollable explosion of violence on both sides.”
The Elders was established by Nelson Mandela and British business tycoon Richard Branson in 2007 in the hope that an independent grouping of veteran diplomats and senior public figures could offer cogent critiques and assistance for conflict zones around the world.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is perhaps most clearly associated with its work on Israel and the Palestinian territories; he visited four times in his capacity as a founding member.
In 2010, when Carter and Robinson visited the weekly demonstration in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, he said the evictions of Palestinians from their homes there was against international law.
Robinson and Ban met with President Herzog and with opposition leader Yair Lapid during their visit, but requests sent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were met with complete silence. In 2015, then-President Reuven Rivlin and Netanyahu rejected a request by visiting Elder Jimmy Carter on the grounds that he held an “anti-Israel stance.” Nine years earlier, Carter had published a best-selling book with the then-provocative title, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”
Robinson made a pointed reference to the International Criminal Court, and the asymmetry of its war crimes investigations: The world needs a Court, she said that is “perceived not to have double standards.”
She contrasted the ICC’s urgency and determination to bring Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to justice – Putin has already been indicted, and the Court has issued an international arrest – with the cases for war crimes against Israel and Hamas, on which there has been “no progress and not much political support.”
Robinson indicated that the “money pouring in” by international donors facilitated the speed and efficiency of the Putin hearings, but that the cases relating to Israel and the Palestinians had won no such backing. Both Israel and the U.S. strenuously oppose ICC investigations of alleged war crimes by Israel, citing the Court’s lack of jurisdiction and Israel’s own investigations of war-time incidents.
The Court’s expenses are funded primarily by states who have ratified the Rome Statute, but also accepts donations from governments, international organizations, individuals and corporations.
The Netanyahu government’s assault on Israel’s judicial system could change the international and legal calculus of this opposition. As the former Likud justice minister Dan Meridor said earlier this year, “If the country has a serious judicial system and investigates [alleged crimes] seriously and [issues] indictments, it’s a very good defense but if we lose that, we are much more exposed.”
The Elders have consistently called for accountability for both Israel and Hamas for years; in 2015, Carter urged the actions of both should be “measured against international standards of behavior” as exemplified by the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry into the 2014 Gaza war.
Robinson and Ban also visited Ramallah and met with the prime minister and foreign ministers of the Palestinian Authority and with representatives of the six NGOs that Israel designated as terrorist groups in 2021, a designation rejected by the U.S. and the European Commission.
They heard “utter frustration” from civil society activists about the lack of Palestinian leadership, its “disconnect” from the people, about increasing authoritarianism and that PA leaders “are just propping up the Israeli system” of occupation.
Ban and Robinson take differing tones and carry different baggage in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite their tightly integrated messages, their contrasting language is reminiscent of a good cop-bad cop set-up.
Ban explicitly frames his concerns as coming from “a true friend” of Israel” in contrast with other “not so friendly” global leaders. In the six years since he retired from the UN, he says he’s seen a regression in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not least in terms of clear evidence of “permanent domination and the encroachment of settlements.”
However he is careful to use cordial language to urge Israel to seek a resolution that would improve their regional and global integration, calling on Israelis to “open up their hearts and minds and make all the friends possible.” He noted his home country, South Korea, also faces “political problems” and a serious security threat from its neighbors but believes it is “doing much better in terms of managing [relations with] that neighbor.”
Robinson has a long history of engagement with the conflict, and far more first-hand experience, and from a more critical viewpoint. Jewish and Israeli activists who attended the 2001 UN conference on racism in Durban, in which she had a senior role, accused her of responding insufficiently to a toxically antisemitic environment.
Robinson says she “knows” that pronouncements by her or The Elders on Israel and the occupation are subject to extreme scrutiny, if not attack, by Israel and others. She also predicted that their comments would “get the antisemitic tag” but is unbowed: “We’re not, we wouldn’t be, we couldn’t be” motivated by antisemitism.” On the crisis in this area, “People have to stand up” and speak out, she says.
