Recall Shakespeare’s great work of dramatic art, the Merchant of Venice, where Shylock was treated as an unpleasant Jew (with a lovely, self-effacing daughter) who dealt mainly in shady usury. His speech to the court is one of Shakespeare’s most remembered: “Hath not a Jew eyes? / Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? /If you prick us, do we not bleed? /If you tickle us do we not laugh? /If you poison us, do we not die? /And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” But what if we substitute Palestinian for Jew? Viz: “Hath not a Palestinian eyes?” and so on. …

Do the Israelis treat the Palestinians as human beings like themselves? Or are the Palestinians just an anonymous threat, to be knocked down every time they push themselves up from behind the parapet?

; if the Jews of Israel always want to go back to their memories of their war against the Arab nations after they’d been attacked following the handover of the British in 1948; if they want to go back to the Holocaust; if they want to go back to the anti-Jewish violence, the first so-called “pogrom” in 1819 when the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt was ransacked; or to twelfth century England when began the libel that the Jews ritually murdered Christian children to mix their blood in the unleavened bread baked at Passover, then the Israeli Jews should recall some equally important other events, some good, some bad.

What about the welcoming of the large numbers of Jews by the Moslem Turks when they were expelled from Spain in 1492? What about the long period up to the 12th century when Jews lived without persecution for the most part in Europe? What about the centuries up to the twentieth when the good periods of toleration far outnumber the bad years of repression, discrimination and, ultimately, the gas chambers?

Or what about Moses’ act of genocide? Moses’s army in the land now called Palestine, the “land of milk and honey”, attacked its resident tribes: the Canaanites, the Hittites, Midianites and the Amorites. Following the defeat of the Midianites, Moses told his victorious generals, claiming God was ordering him to do this, to return to the Midianites and kill all the women and their young sons. (It’s all recorded at length in the Old Testament’s Book of Geneses and the Book of Numbers.)

And now today what about looking themselves honestly in the mirror and realizing it is they, the Jews, not the Palestinians who are doing the oppressing?

Five decades have passed since Israel in 1967 crushed a large-scale Arab attack. It was following that that Israelis started to settle beyond the border of their state. For around two-thirds of its history Israel has been an occupying state, one that has extended its settlements. The state of Israel has been free of the malignancy of occupation for only nineteen years of its existence. The vast majority of the 6.2 million Israeli Jews do not know any other reality. The vast majority of the 4.4 million Palestinians who live under occupation similarly do not know any other reality.

Many Israelis have long believed that this is an untenable situation. It was not that long ago Israel’s Defence Forces intelligence division submitted a document to the head of military intelligence. They recommended that to ensure peace an independent Palestinian state should be established in the territories of the West Bank as quickly as possible, based on the 1947 truce. But Israel under Netanyahu is going 180 degrees the other way. His latest move last month was to have written into law that only the Jews will have the right to self-determination within Israel’s borders. In effect this is a renunciation of the idea of a two-state solution, the concept propagated by North American, European and Arab countries and liberal Israelis.

Israelis, who find the term apartheid inaccurate and inflammatory when applied to their conflict with the Palestinians, immediately slammed the report. One government spokesman even compared it to Nazi tabloid Der Sturmer, which promoted Nazi propaganda and was virulently anti-Semitic. The report, published by the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), also drew sharp criticism from the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who called it “anti-Israel propaganda.”

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres distanced himself from the findings, with spokesman Stephane Dujarric saying the report was published without any prior consultation with the U.N. secretariat.

“The report as it stands does not reflect the views of the secretary general,” said Dujarric.

Headquartered in Beirut, ESCWA’s membership includes 18 Arab states, two of which — Jordan and Egypt — have peace treaties with Israel.

A statement released by Rima Khalaf, a U.N. undersecretary general and executive secretary of the committee, said concluding that a state has established an apartheid regime “is not an easy matter for a United Nations entity.”

“In recent years, some have labeled Israeli practices as racist, while others have warned that Israel risks becoming an apartheid state. A few have raised the question as to whether in fact it already has,” she said.

Titled, “Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” the report was written by Richard Falk, a former U.N. special rapporteur to the Palestinian territories known for harsh criticisms of both Israel and the United States, and Virginia Tilley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University.

The two concluded that Israel has established an apartheid regime aimed at dominating the Palestinians. Their recommendations include reviving the U.N. Center Against Apartheid, which closed in 1994 after South Africa ended its apartheid practices. The report also urges support for a boycott, divestment and a sanctions campaign against Israel.

Dividing the Palestinian people into four distinct groups, the authors write that although they are treated differently by Israel, they all face “the racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime.”

The first group identified is the roughly 1.7 million Palestinians who are full citizens of Israel, but who, the report found, live under “martial law” and are subjected to oppression because they are not Jewish.

The second group highlighted in the report is the estimated 300,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem, a mostly Arab area. The report said these Palestinians “experience discrimination in access to education, health care, employment, residency and building rights.”

The third group includes the 4.6 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza. In the West Bank, the Jewish residents known as settlers are governed by Israeli civil law, while Palestinians live under military rule.

“This dual legal system, problematic in itself, is indicative of an apartheid regime,” said the authors.

The last group discussed in the report are the millions of Palestinian refugees who live outside Israeli territory and who are prohibited from returning to their homes in Israel or the occupied Palestinian territory.

“Israel defends its rejection of the Palestinians’ return in frankly racist language: alleging that Palestinians constitute a 'demographic threat' and that their return would alter the demographic character of Israel to the point of eliminating it as a Jewish state,” wrote Falk and Tilley.

The report also attempts to refute Israeli explanations as to why this situation exists, namely its claims that Israel has the right to remain a Jewish state or that Israel does not owe Palestinian noncitizens equal treatment precisely because they are not citizens.

Some Israelis also claim the country's treatment of Palestinians reflects no intention to dominate, because it is a temporary situation derived from the realities of ongoing conflict and security requirements.

Eurasia Review