Palestine: Parliamentary elections May 22, Presidential elections July 31

[PSOL]

Who wins the election if Abbas loses?

Rivals in the Fatah camp according to polling, mainly Marwan Barghouti currently in an Israeli cell. Outside of that, in the race chance Hamas makes the runoff, the exiled political chief in Qatar with no real power over Hamas proper would.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Imagine that group an even remotely credible source for anything pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

No, please. You can ignore reality or support the continuity of apartheid in Israel, but stop defaming human rights activists. Israeli authorities have a vast experience in doing that

I’m not defaming anyone.  Human Rights Watch has been heavily criticized for its shoddy research, tendency to play fast and loose with the facts to promote its preferred political narratives, and extreme bias in general.  Among the most commonly cited examples of this tendency is its coverage of the Middle East, specifically Human Rights Watch’s tendency to devote far more ink to promoting discredited, hyperbolic, and/or highly misleading attacks on Israel than it does to some of the other countries in the region that...you know...actually commit crimes against humanity (and do so as state-sanctioned policy). 

If you want to make legitimate, reality-based criticisms of Israel’s policies, fair enough.  I would love to see folks focus more on reality-based critiques and there many to be made.  However, I’m not gonna pretend the false claims of a group with a well-documented history of heavily promoting discredited anti-Israel talking points, extremely dishonest reporting, and actively avoiding any discussion of anti-Semitic violence whenever possible are even remotely credible. 

I mean, seriously, don’t take my word for it.  I encourage folks to research the considerable criticism of human rights watch with an open mind (and not just Re: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although you should definitely take look at those critiques as well).  I mean, you can obviously pretend they’re a credible source, but they’re not.  It’d be like if I cited an AIPAC press release as evidence Israel never mistreated the Palestinians in any way.  Not only is it an absurd claim, but it’s coming from an extremely biased source that will happily spread false claims if doing so advances its agenda.  Human Rights Watch is no different, they just happen to be shameless hacks for the Palestinians rather than the Israelis.

[Velasco]

Following with the reality of Palestine, in order to provide some context. The Human Rights Watch report denouncing that Israel is, in essence, an apartheid state was preceded by another issued by the main human rights group operating in Israel.

Earlier this year (January 2021) B'Tselem released a 'bombshell' report entitled A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid

https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule. The common perception in public, political, legal and media discourse is that two separate regimes operate side by side in this area, separated by the Green Line. One regime, inside the borders of the sovereign State of Israel, is a permanent democracy with a population of about nine million, all Israeli citizens. The other regime, in the territories Israel took over in 1967, whose final status is supposed to be determined in future negotiations, is a temporary military occupation imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects.

Over time, the distinction between the two regimes has grown divorced from reality. This state of affairs has existed for more than 50 years – twice as long as the State of Israel existed without it. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers now reside in permanent settlements east of the Green Line, living as though they were west of it. East Jerusalem has been officially annexed to Israel’s sovereign territory, and the West Bank has been annexed in practice. Most importantly, the distinction obfuscates the fact that the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. All this leads to the conclusion that these are not two parallel regimes that simply happen to uphold the same principle. There is one regime governing the entire area and the people living in it, based on a single organizing principle.

The report describes a brutal reality well known to the battered and disenfranchised Palestinians, whom might consider its conclusions state the obvious. The main difference between this report and the previous fruitless efforts made in the past by a wide range of personalities (including Edward Said, Desmond Tutu and the UN rapporteurs Richard Falk and John Dugard) is the provenance. In order to be taken seriously in Western media, the statement "Israel is an apartheid state" had to come from Jewish Israelis themselves.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/b-tselem-labels-israel-apartheid-regime-first-time-n1253863

It wasn't the first time someone labelled Israel in that way, for that's a claim the oppressed and ignored Palestinians have been sustaining for decades. But maybe it's the frst time Jewish Israelis support this claim and have the courage to denounce the reality existing in their country, which is not only confined to the internationally recognized borders of the Israeli ethno-state. Rather, we are talking about a country encompassing from the Jordan and the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean shores. One of the most painful aspects related to the Palestinian question, aside oppression itself, is the tendency of Western media and audiences to systematically ignore and dismiss the Palestinian point of view.

On the other hand, it's extremely important to note that, in spite of the downward spiral of bigotry and extremism dominating the politics of the Israeli ethno-state, the existence of small redoubts of decent and courageous people represents a ray of light in a context of dystopia

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/12/israel-largest-human-rights-group-apartheid

One cannot live a single day in Israel-Palestine without the sense that this place is constantly being engineered to privilege one people, and one people only: the Jewish people. Yet half of those living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are Palestinian. The chasm between these lived realities fills the air, bleeds, is everywhere on this land.

I am not simply referring to official statements spelling this out – and there are plenty, such as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion in 2019 that Isabel is not a state of all its citizen's, or the “nation state” basic law enshrining “the development of Jewish settlement as a national value”. What I am trying to get at is a deeper sense of people as desirable or undesirable, and an understanding about my country that I have been gradually exposed to since the day I was born in Haifa. Now, it is a realisation that can no longer be avoided.

Although there is demographic parity between the two peoples living here, life is managed so that only one half enjoy the vast majority of political power, land resources, rights, freedoms and protections. It is quite a feat to maintain such disfranchisement. Even more so, to successfully market it as a democracy (inside the “green line” – the 1949 armistice line), one to which a temporary occupation is attached. In fact, one government rules everyone and everything between the river and the sea, following the same organising principle everywhere under its control, working to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group of people – Jews – over another – Palestinians. This is apartheid.  

[Velasco]

I mean, seriously, don’t take my word for it.  I encourage folks to research the considerable criticism of human rights watch with an open mind (and not just Re: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although you should definitely take look at those critiques as well).  I mean, you can obviously pretend they’re a credible source, but they’re not.  It’d be like if I cited an AIPAC press release as evidence Israel never mistreated the Palestinians in any way.  Not only is it an absurd claim, but it’s coming from an extremely biased source that will happily spread false claims if doing so advances its agenda.  Human Rights Watch is no different, they just happen to be shameless hacks for the Palestinians rather than the Israelis.

I have read plenty of criticisms from Israel advocates and apartheid enablers to the labor of human rights activists,  using the same type of adjectives and dismissing the conclusions as "hyperbolic" and "misleading". What is certain is that people denouncing the constant abuses of the apartheid state face a hazardous task and have to confront slander and smear campaigns on a daily basis. There exists a strong bias, indeed, but it works in the opposite direction. The bias towards the State of Israel is deeply entrenched in western countries and the historical root of that bias is obviously related to an overwhelming sense of guilt. No matter the amount of evidence and the horrible facts depicted in countless reports, there is always people ready to rise up in defence of the State of Israel and discredit its critics. But the thin veil that hides the reality of apartheid is slowly lifting

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/12/israel-largest-human-rights-group-apartheid

 Unlike South African apartheid, the application of our version of it – apartheid 2.0, if you will – avoids certain kinds of ugliness. You won’t find “whites only” signs on benches. Here, “protecting the Jewish character” of a community – or of the state itself – is one of the thinly veiled euphemisms deployed to try to obscure the truth. Yet the essence is the same. That Israel’s definitions do not depend on skin colour make no material difference: it is the supremacist reality which is the heart of the matter – and which must be defeated.

I mean, seriously, if these facts are too hard to admit, or you support the continued existence of apartheid, it's okay.  I only say that human rights groups working on the ground deserve respect

EDIT: As I said earlier, there are still small redoubts of decency within the apartheid state. For those Israel advocates who deny credibility to human rights organizations and lie to themselves about the true nature of the political regime existing in Israel, Gideon Levy writes the following in Haaretz

https://www.haaretz.com/amp/opinion/.premium-we-can-keep-lying-to-ourselves-on-apartheid-but-israel-has-crossed-the-line-1.9756246?__twitter_impression=true

Human Rights Watch, one of the most well-regarded human rights organizations, has stated that Israel has crossed the line and is guilty of committing crimes against humanity and of being an apartheid regime.

It’s possible of course to argue endlessly about Benjamin Netanyahu, to warn with great pathos about the terrible damage to Israel’s renowned democracy and its rule of law. We can continue to play with ourselves, enjoy life and lie as we please. But when the reports pile up – in January it was one by Israel’s B’Tselem, and now by America’s HRW – one cannot continue to claim that the spit aimed at our faces is rain. Spit is spit. It obligates Israelis with a conscience to think about the country in which they live, and obligates governments to ask themselves if they will continue to embrace a country with such a regime (...)

There’s no longer any way to challenge the diagnosis of apartheid. Only lying propagandists can claim that Israel is a democracy when millions of people have been living in it for decades under one of the most tyrannical military regimes in the world. Neither is there any way to avoid the fact that all three elements of apartheid under the The Hague’s Rome Statute, which are described in the HRW report, exist in Israel: maintaining the domination of one racial group over another, systematic oppression of the marginalized group, and inhumane acts.

What exactly doesn’t exist in the Jewish supremacy regime in the land of Israel? There is no systematic oppression? No domination? No inhumane acts? They happen every night, even if there is no one to report it and no one who wants to know about it. And who can argue anymore that the occupation is merely defensive and its end is on the horizon, without bursting into laughter? If it’s not temporary and not equitable, then what is it, if not apartheid? We don’t need B’Tselem or HRW to know that.
 

[omar04]

Who wins the election if Abbas loses?

A new poll was just issued by the Atlas Center.

- taken April 19-22

- 1056 surveyed, 2-3% MOE

- 86.6% want to vote.

The Hamas list polled at 32.4%, Fatah at 17.2%, the Future List (Dahlan, an ex Fatah member and rival of Mahmoud Abbas currently abroad in Qatar) at 13.9%, the Freedom List (Nasser al-Qudwa, Arafat's nephew and Marwan Barghouti) at 8.6%, and the PFLP at 4.1%.

The Future and Freedom lists are concerning for Abbas as they both take many votes that would mostly go to Fatah which is not good for him as he wants to avoid another defeat like 2006.
There were a few more surveyed questions which can be found below:
https://atls.ps/post/17318

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

@Velasco: You’ll have to forgive me for considering a group (B’Tselem) run by a nutjob (Hagai El-Ad, whose opinion column in The Guardian you cited) who has called for a UN force to invade Israel on behalf of the Palestinians to be a credible, unbiased source.  If you want to post a credible source be my guest, but El-Ad’s deranged ramblings accusing Israel of being an evil “Jewish Supremacist” state that treats Palestinians worse than “African-Americans were treated under Jim Crow” are just that: delusional ramblings.  

As for Human Rights Watch, the issues with them go far beyond their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  They are simply not a credible, trustworthy source, period.  I’ve held that view long before I knew about their anti-Israel fanaticism.  You should really do some research on the group.  

In any case, we’re clearly not gonna change each other’s minds and this conversation seems to be getting needlessly aggressive on both ends, so I am gonna call it a day.

[Velasco]

@Velasco: You’ll have to forgive me for considering a group (B’Tselem) run by a nutjob (Hagai El-Ad, whose opinion column in The Guardian you cited) who has called for a UN force to invade Israel on behalf of the Palestinians to be a credible, unbiased source.  If you want to post a credible source be my guest, but El-Ad’s deranged ramblings accusing Israel of being an evil “Jewish Supremacist” state that treats Palestinians worse than “African-Americans were treated under Jim Crow” are just that: delusional ramblings.  

As for Human Rights Watch, the issues with them go far beyond their coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.  They are simply not a credible, trustworthy source, period.  I’ve held that view long before I knew about their anti-Israel fanaticism.  You should really do some research on the group.  

In any case, we’re clearly not gonna change each other’s minds and this conversation seems to be getting needlessly aggressive on both ends, so I am gonna call it a day.

Alright, I get your point. The fact you are not even trying to argue is telling.

I think you don't realize the B'Tselem and HRW reports, depicting the apartheid regime existing between the Jordan and the Sea, represent a paradigm shift. I don't expect the situation of Palestinians is going to improve in the short term, sadly. But they are a tiny ray of light in a context of supremacist dystopia. It's the first time humanitarian organizations based in Israel and the US  dare to call things by their name. The introduction of the word "apartheid" into the mainstream will have repercussions, for the continued myth of Israeli democracy is harder to maintain. More and more people will come to the right conclusion about the nature of that political regime and realize the military occupation is permanent. There is no "Israel-Palestine conflict"; rather, there exists the domination of one ethnic group (the Jewish Israelis) over another ethnic group (the Palestinians). As Gideon Levy says, we don't need humanitarian organizations to see reality as it is, but the people you call "nutjobs" are necessary.

As far as I'm concerned, Israel advocates and sympathizers can continue lying to themselves. That bunch is dishonest and insincere by nature, for they are constantly justifying atrocities in the name of ethinc "democracy" and self-defence. The most racist and reactionary elements within the zionist movement are usually more sincere about their ultimate goals, but there's still a certain faction of "liberal" zionists and advocates that stand out for their hypocrisy.

This is Apartheid, folks.

You can either wake up from your moral slumber, or embrace openly racism and supremacism