A few months ago, Ben White gave a wonderfully eloquent lecture at Amnesty International in London. The event celebrated the new edition of the journalist’s book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide (published by Pluto and available on amazon USA
The Israeli embassy had done its best to convince Amnesty International to cancel the talk. They also tried to dissuade David Hearst from chairing the evening. To no avail, thankfully.
The lecture was in March and the reason why i blog about it today is that while children (125 so far) and other innocent civilians are being terrorized and murdered right now in Gaza, people are still accused of anti-semitism simply because they believe that the basic human rights of the Palestinians should be respected. I fear there is still a lot of disinformation and misunderstanding about what is happening in Israel/Palestine. I would certainly never claim that i understand precisely the situation but i do think that Ben White’s book and his talks are well documented, engaging and worth a few minutes of your time.
Sadly, there is no video of the evening but some of Ben White’s videos are on youtube. Here’s one of them:
Ben White at Ryerson University in Toronto: “Israel: Apartheid not Democracy”
White starts his lecture by explaining the relevance of the word ‘apartheid’ in the Israeli context. Apartheid does not apply solely to South Africa. Nowadays, apartheid is outlawed and defined in international law independently of the country where it takes place. In 2012, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination itself has used the term to condemn Israeli policies. Numerous international, Israeli NGOs, Palestinian NOGs and human rights observers have done the same.
The author goes on by giving a series of examples of ethnocratic Israeli policies that have been affecting Palestinians for over 6 decades, both inside what people call “Israel proper” and in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
White also exposes clearly that the main problem for Palestinians is not just the occupation but the issue of their forced expulsion in 1948. One day after the date Israel has chosen to celebrate its independence is Nakba Day for Palestinians, the day they were expelled from their home, the day their land was confiscated, the day they were forbidden to come back home.
800,000 Olive Trees Uprooted, 33 Central Parks. By Polypod and Philippe Ghabayen
Please do check also Ben White’s twitter feed, Visualizing Palestine‘s striking infographics, and Léopold Lambert’s recent essays on The Funambulist.
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, The Saints Forest, 2005 (via)
I’m going to close this post with a photo by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin. The image is part of a series that depicts forests planted by the Israeli to cover and erase the very existence of former Palestinian villages that were evacuated and destroyed at various times since 1948. Each razed village has since been planted with stands of pine trees that gradually colonize the reclaimed lands and obscure their histories of devastation.
Should you be interested, i took some photos of Ben White’s slides.
Photo on the homepage: Palestinian workers at the Bethlehem checkpoint. By Daniel Bar-On.