Galway, Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign : "Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East"

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Sunday June 17, 2007 18:36

by TD - Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign

In a poll, 86% of Israeli jews supported the ethnic cleansing, the ‘transfer’ of Palestinians in Israel.

Yesterday, Galway IPSC activists did their customary seven hour stint outside Lynch's castle in Shop Street gathering signatures for the Israeli Blood Diamonds petition and, generally, bearing witness to that torn country,

As is also customarily, we ran the gamut of abuse and ignorant mantras from some passers by, the most egregious being the contention that; "Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East". Ilan Pappe in his powerful The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine illuminates the Gorgonian face of this "democracy" and in the witches brew that is Israeli "democracy," one particular obscenity floating on top, that Ilan scoops up and explicates on, is worth quoting in full:

On 31 July 2003, the Knesset passed a law prohibiting Palestinians from obtaining citizenship, permanent residency or even temporary residency when they marry Israeli citizens. In Hebrew ‘Palestinians’ always means Palestinians living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and in the diaspora, so as to distinguish them from ‘Israeli Arabs,’ as though they are not part all part of the same Palestinian nation. The initiator of the legislation was a liberal Zionist, Avraham Poraz, of the centrist party Shinui, who described the bill as a ‘defence measure’. Only twenty-five of the 120 members of the Knesset opposed it and Poraz at the time explained that that those ‘Palestinians’ already married to ‘Israeli citizens’ and with families ‘will have to go back to the West Bank,’ regardless of how long they had been living in Israel. The Arab members of the Knesset were among a group of Israelis who appealed to the Israeli Supreme court against this latest racist law …when the Supreme Court turned the appeal down it also revealed once again how it prefers to uphold Zionism rather than justice.

In the dead of night on 24 January 2006, an elite unit of Israel’s border police seized the Israeli Palestinian village of Jaljulya. The troops burst into houses, dragging out thirty-six women and eventually deporting eight of them. The eight women were ordered to go back to their old homes in the West Bank. Some of them had been married for years to Palestinian men from Jaljulya, some were pregnant , many had children. They were abruptly cut off from their husbands and children. One Palestinian member of the Knesset protested, but the action was backed by the government, the courts and the media (in a 2006 poll, 86% of Israeli jews supported the ethnic cleansing, the ‘transfer’ of Palestinians in Israel).