Endless Futile Attempts to Negate
Palestinians'
Right to Be
Kushner as a Colonial Administrator: Let's Talk about the "Israeli Model"
- Ramzy Baroud -
In a TV interview on June 2, on the news docu-series Axios
on the HBO channel, Jared Kushner opened up regarding many
issues, in which his "Deal of the Century" was a prime focus.
The major revelation made by Kushner, President Donald
Trump's
adviser and son-in-law, was least surprising. Kushner believes
that Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves.
Not surprising, because Kushner thinks he is capable of
arranging the future of the Palestinian people without the
inclusion of the Palestinian leadership. He has been pushing his
so-called Deal of the Century relentlessly while including in
his various meets and conferences countries such as Poland,
Brazil, and Croatia, but not Palestine.
Indeed, this is what transpired at the Warsaw conference
on "peace and security" in the Middle East [on February 13 and 14]. The
same charade, also
led by Kushner, is expected to be rebooted in Bahrain on June
25.
Much has been said about the subtle racism in Kushner's
words,
reeking with the stench of old colonial discourses where the
natives were seen as lesser, incapable of rational thinking
beings who needed the civilized "whites" of the western
hemisphere to help them cope with their backwardness and inherent
incompetence.
Kushner, whose credentials are merely based on his
familial
connections to Trump and family friendship with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is now poised to be the colonial
administrator of old, making and enforcing the law while the
hapless natives have no other option but to either accommodate or
receive their due punishment.
This is not an exaggeration. In fact, according to
leaked
information concerning Kushner's "Deal of the Century," and
published in the Israeli daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, if
Palestinian groups refuse to accept the U.S.-Israeli diktats, "the U.S.
will cancel all financial support to the Palestinians and
ensure that no country transfers funds to them."
In the HBO interview, Kushner offered the Palestinians a
lifeline. They could be considered capable of governing
themselves should they manage to achieve the following: "a fair
judicial system, freedom of the press, freedom of expression,
tolerance for all religions."
The fact that Palestine is an occupied country, subject
in
every possible way to Israel's military law, and that Israel has
never been held accountable for its 52-year occupation seems to
be of no relevance whatsoever, as far as Kushner is
concerned.
Preparing to celebrate Land Day and one-year anniversary of the Great
Return March,
March 28, 2019 in Gaza.
On the contrary, the subtext in all of what Kushner has
said
in the interview is that Israel is the antithesis to the
unquestionable Palestinian failure. Unlike Palestine, Israel
needs to do little to demonstrate its ability to be a worthy
peace partner.
While the term "U.S. bias towards Israel" is as old as
the
state
of Israel itself, what is hardly discussed is the specific of
that bias, the decidedly condescending, patronizing and, often,
racist view that U.S. political classes have of Palestinians -- and
all Arabs and Muslims, for that matter; and the utter infatuation
with Israel, which is often cited as a model for democracy,
judicial transparency and successful "anti-terror" tactics.
According to Kushner a "fair judicial system" is a
condition sine qua non to
determine a country's ability to govern itself.
But is [the] Israeli judicial system "fair" and "democratic"?
Israel does not have a single judicial system, but two.
This
duality has, in fact, defined Israeli courts from the very
inception of Israel in 1948. This de
facto apartheid system
openly differentiates between Jews and Arabs, a fact that is true
in both civil and criminal law.
"Criminal law is applied separately and unequally in the
West
Bank, based on nationality alone (Israeli versus Palestinian),
inventively weaving its way around the contours of international
law in order to preserve and develop its '(illegal Jewish)
settlement enterprise,'" Israeli scholar, Emily Omer-Man,
explained in her essay "Separate and Unequal."
In practice, Palestinians and Israelis who commit the
exact
same crime will be judged according to two different systems,
with two different procedures: "The settler will be processed
according to the Israeli Penal Code
(while) the Palestinian will
be processed according to a military order."
This unfairness is [a] constituent of a massively unjust
judicial
apparatus that has defined the Israeli legal system from the
onset. Take the measure of administrative detention as an
example. Palestinians can be held without trial and without any
stated legal justification. Tens of thousands of Palestinians
have been subjected to this undemocratic "law" and hundreds of
them are currently held in Israeli jails.
It is ironic that Kushner raised the issue of freedom of
the
press, in particular, as Israel is being derided for its dismal
record in that regard. Israel has reportedly committed 811
violations against Palestinian journalists since the start of the
"March of Return" in Gaza in March 2018. Two journalists -- Yaser
Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein -- were killed and 155 were wounded
by Israeli snipers.
Like the imbalanced Israeli judicial system, targeting
the
press is also a part of a protracted pattern. According to a
press release issued by the Palestinian Journalists Union last
May, Israel has killed 102 Palestinian journalists since
1972.
The fact that Palestinian intellectuals, poets and
activists
have been imprisoned for Facebook and other social media posts
should tell us volumes about the limits of Israel's freedom of
press and expression.
It is also worth mentioning that in June 2018, the
Israeli
Knesset voted for a bill that prohibits the filming of Israeli
soldiers as a way to mask their crimes and shelter them from any
future legal accountability.
As for freedom of religion, despite its many
shortcomings, the
Palestinian Authority hardly discriminates against religious
minorities. The same cannot be said about Israel.
Although discrimination against non-Jews in Israel has
been
the raison d'être of
the very idea of Israel, the Nation-State
Law of July 2018 further cemented the superiority of the Jews and
the inferior status of everyone else.
According to the new Basic
Law, Israel is "the national
home
of the Jewish people" only and "the right to exercise national
self-determination is unique to the Jewish people."
Palestinians do not need to be lectured on how to meet
Israeli
and American expectations, nor should they ever aspire to imitate
the undemocratic Israeli model. What they urgently need, instead,
is international solidarity to help them win the fight against
Israeli occupation, racism, and apartheid.
Ramzy Baroud is a
journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book
is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London, 2018).
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 23 - June 22, 2019
Article Link:
Endless Futile Attempts to Negate
Palestinians'
Right to Be: Kushner as a Colonial Administrator: Let's Talk about the "Israeli Model" - Ramzy Baroud
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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