Post by jon_banquerhttp://elderofziyon.blogspot.ca/p/eoz-posters-for-apartheid-week.html#.VTKMAZPON6L
http://www.seamac.org/EqualRights.htm
Equal Rights for Palestinians
APARTHEID AND OCCUPATION
More than 5 million Palestinians are denied equal rights by the state of
Israel under a system of apartheid, a deliberate policy of racial or
ethnic segregation.
Under Israeli military occupation, millions of Palestinians live in
conditions which closely resemble the apartheid system that existed in
South Africa:
•No right of free speech, assembly or movement
•Arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial
•Torture
•House searches without warrant
•Assassination, extra-judicial murder
•No right to vote for the Israeli government (even though it controls
their lives)
Israel controls all Palestinian borders, all imports and exports, and
all movement between towns and cities.
THE GAZA STRIP, still surrounded, besieged and controlled by Israel, has
been sealed off and effectively turned into the world’s largest open-air
prison.
SCHOOL SEGREGATION IN ISRAEL
Why are Palestinian students channeled into a segregated school system
within Israel lasting from 1st grade through high school? Segregation
for Israel’s Palestinian students, who make up roughly 20 percent of the
country’s student population, is a result of rigid geographic and
residential segregation. Palestinian Israelis live largely in Arab
villages or neighborhoods and rarely mix with Jewish Israelis until they
begin working or until they attend university. Israeli governments have
never tried to promote the integration of Israel’s public school system.
ISRAEL’S SEGREGATED TOWNS
Since 1967 the Israeli government has imposed a system of segregation
and discrimination against the Palestinian residents of the West Bank,
East Jerusalem, and Gaza, the areas known as the Occupied Territories.
It has illegally established 121 settlements in the West Bank that are
exclusively for Jews. These settlements are in violation of Article 49
of the Geneva Conventions which prohibits an Occupying Power from
transferring “parts of its own civilian population into the territory it
occupies.” In addition successive Israeli governments have sanctioned
the creation of 100 “unofficial outposts” of Jewish settlers in the West
Bank by supporting and assisting their creation, and they have
established 14 Jewish-only neighborhoods on land in East Jerusalem that
was illegally annexed to Israel. Until 2005, Israel had also established
illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip.
COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
Out of these principles flows the crime of collective punishment,
which is defined as reprisals directed at civilians. An example is
punishment meted out against civilians for the resistance activities of
insurgents, such as the infamous Nazi retributions against civilians for
acts of the Resistance in France, Italy, and other countries that often
involved the wholesale slaughter of towns. The prohibition against
collective punishment is spelled out in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention. It reads, “No protected person [that is, a civilian] may be
punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.
Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of
terrorism are prohibited. . . . Reprisals against protected persons and
their property are prohibited.”
THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS DO APPLY
In adopting Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions
following the end of World War II in 1945, the international community
sought to outlaw collective punishment to ensure that crimes like those
carried out by the Nazis never occurred again. Israeli and Palestinian
civilians deserve that protection. The Israeli government is virtually
alone among the world’s nations in arguing that the Geneva Conventions
do not apply to the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories. But
their argument only reinforces their disdain for human rights and
international humanitarian law. It is incumbent on the U.S. government
to uphold the rule of law. In signing the Geneva Conventions and in
passing the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act,
our government is legally bound to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are
not given to human rights violators.