The government of Israel attempted to prevent Amnesty International
from releasing a report accusing the country of engaging in apartheid.
But Amnesty International just today decided to release the report anyway,
and it is pretty damning.
I can totally understand why Israel would not want this report to come out.
Now, this was after a four year long investigation by Amnesty International
in partnership with Human Rights Watch and Israeli Rights Group B'tselem.
Now, here's what we know based on the report.
The comprehensive report, Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians,
Cruel Systems of Domination and Crime against humanity,
sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property,
unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions,
and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all
components of a system which amounts to apartheid under International law.
They also write that this system is maintained by violations, which
Amnesty International found to constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity,
as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.
And so they point to very specific instances,
including discriminatory policies within Israel and in annexed East Jerusalem.
They write about Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.
They also point to the de facto annexation of the West Bank,
where it's where the government of Israel exerts overall control and
is actively building and expanding Jewish settlements that most
of the International community considers illegal.
And we're gonna go to a video that helps you visualize some of this in just
a moment, but this is a damning report, to say the least.
And the real question is what the International response will be to it.
There are some suggestions in regard to what
Amnesty International believes the United States and
other major powers should do to basically end this apartheid.
I don't think the United States is gonna do a damn thing about it.
They want the International Criminal Court to also be involved in investigating this.
We'll see how that plays out.
But Jake, what do you think?
I mean, I am noticing a change in the way various organizations and
even media talks about the situation on the ground in Israel.
>> Yeah, well, you'll be punished if you're honest here.
But Israel has had a headlock on American media and
American politics for decades.
And I think is right that headlock is now loosening and
I would actually give credit to a lot of Jewish progressives who said
these constant charges of anti Semitism are just not merited.
And that has given space for people to say yeah,
if there's any kind of racism or bigotry here,
it looks like it's being done to the Palestinians, not to the Israelis.
And that is actually fairly obvious unless you're being gas lit for
decades that the people that are being occupied or though somehow the oppressors.
That makes no sense in the rational world.
I'm glad that we're beginning to snap out of it.
So now is Israel an apartheid system at this point?
The answer is obviously, yes.
So I mean think about the core of what they're saying,
we cannot let the Gaza Strip have control its own borders, were gonna blockade it.
And we're not gonna allow it to have its own military,
its own defenses, its own borders.
And the West Bank is still under our control.
So those are all open air prisons, and why?
Because the Palestinians cannot be trusted to not be violent.
That is by definition racist.
They're saying these people as a whole millions of them are untrustworthy.
That if we allow them to be free for even a minute, they will turn to violence.
While ironically they have used overwhelming oppressive
violence against that group for 55 years now.
Those are facts, they might make you uncomfortable, but they're indisputable.
Israel is not occupied, Palestine is occupied, so Israel and
its response to Amnesty International, they are the usual absurdities.
First it's antisemitic, no, you've over used that excuse a billion times.
Is there a real antisemitism in the world?
A ton of it, a ton of it.
And right now there's massive growing anti-antisemitism in America,
synagogues are getting attacked etc, right?
So do not use that phrase for your political purposes when it's real and
it's a massive problem that is growing every day in America.
But the Palestinians and Amnesty International are not being antisemitic
to Israel, they're the ones that are occupied.
No, you see the Israeli government is saying you people cannot rule yourselves,
your savages and all you understand is violence.
No, you're the racist ones.
That's just a fact.
And I hate that that's true, but it is true.
So the second absurd claim they had was Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups are all denying our right to exist.
No, they're not.
>> That's not true at all. >> They didn't say that at all,
you're lying.
And there is one country denying the existence of another.
Snap out of it you should know the answer.
Israel is denying the existence of the Palestinian territories
by not allowing them to be a state.
How do they not allow them?
They roll in tanks and kill them.
Where is the question?
Don't tell me about, look,
the existence of Israel is important it should not be questioned, okay.
But you don't get to say, hey,
I'm theoretically questioned my existence when in reality I have tons and
tons of nukes to back me up and ain't nobody gonna take it from us, right?
But you, I'm not gonna let you have a state because I'm racist against you.
And I think you're savage and and then talk about the existence of a state.
You're blocking their existence right now snap out of it America.
On this issue, there is no question Israel is not the good guys and
they're not a democracy.
>> So along with this report Amnesty International also released a video to
kinda help people interested in this story,
visualize what the conditions are like for Palestinians.
And how they're sectioned off and
fragmented in various parts in this area, right.
So let's take a quick look at that video and
then I'll give you some specific examples that were noted in
the report to make the case that there is in fact an apartheid system.
>> Where do all the Palestinians live now?
3.4 million live outside of Israel and the occupied territories,
Mainly in refugee camps in neighbouring countries.
2.5 million Palestinians live in Israel in East Jerusalem restricted
to enclaves that make up around 3% of the entire area.
three million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank, but
are only allowed to access 40% of the land to live and work.
The rest of the area is for the Jewish Israeli settlers only.
Two million are trapped in the Gaza Strip,
one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
Fragmentation of the Palestinian society and the dispossession of their lands
are key pillars of Israel's apartheid system to maintain domination and control.
>> Now, clearly in response to that Palestinians protest and when they do,
they're usually met with brutality and violence.
For instance, and this was outlined in the Amnesty International report in
2018 Palestinians in Gaza began to hold weekly protests along the border with
Israel calling for the right of return for refugees and an end to the blockade.
Before protests even began senior Israeli officials warned that Palestinians
approaching the wall would be shot.
By the end of 2019 Israeli forces had killed 214 civilians,
including 46 children.
And so in response to their findings, Amnesty International is calling for
International action to ensure that Palestinians live lives of dignity,
that their human rights are supported and protected.
And so it calls for countries like the United States to
stop enabling the Israeli government with weaponry and with funding.
Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and
shielded from accountability at the United Nations are supporting a system of
apartheid undermining the International legal order and
exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And here's what else the report recommends.
Amnesty International is calling on the International Criminal Court the ICC
to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the occupied
Palestinian territories, and calls on all states to exercise universal
jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.
What they're recommending makes sense.
It's not gonna happen.
And it's for
many of the reasons that we've talked about on this show repeatedly.
I mean, you have legalized bribery in this country.
You have well funded groups that have one objective and one objective only in
ensuring that we protect our relationship with Israel at any and all costs
continue to provide foreign aid to Israel with no conditions, no strings attached.
And it's really, really hard to to fight back against that.
The system of legalized bribery in the United States is what fuels many of
the foreign policy foibles that we see by our government.
>> Yeah, in terms of our reaction, we will have none except
to shun Amnesty International, not the government that's doing the apartheid.
So this is the, by the way,
I have personal experience with how this propaganda works.
Because when I was growing up as a kid under the influence of honestly, Turkish
propaganda, when Amnesty International did reports about torture in Turkey.
The government of Turkey would do propaganda saying, Amnesty International
is working with foreigners and terrorists and against the interests of Turks.
And we were told that we would we were supposed to hate Amnesty International
because they were biased against us.
That of course is nonsense.
Total, utter nonsense.
That's what every government says,
that's actually doing terrible things that human rights groups are calling out.
So I don't say that just in relationship to Israel now in their reaction, but
to the American reaction, they have a 0% chance of caring about this.
Because honestly, and this is deeply uncomfortable, and
Ilhan Omar was sanctioned for pointing out the super obvious.
In America, everyone has lobbyists and some are more powerful than others a and
so drug companies have the biggest lobbyists give dozens of examples.
In this case, there's a group called the A pack that's been doing it for decades.
Now, there's another group called Democratic Majority for Israel.
We just did a story yesterday unrelated to this.
They're going in and declaring we're gonna basically buy 15 legislators,
we're going to pour in millions of dollars and then they're gonna owe us.
And they claim proudly these we will make the difference in these races and
then they will have to support Israel unilaterally.
And those candidates, a lot of them who are incumbent American
politicians in the United States Congress right now.
Have public courts where they say they will not question Israel.
That their bond is unbreakable.
It doesn't matter what Israel does.
So American politicians are very literally bought by Israel and
I hate to say that because there's old antisemitic tropes about how
the Jews do this universally they do not.
Most of the donors are not at all Jewish in America,
there are tiny tiny percentage of it.
But in this case and it isn't about Jewish people overall Democratic majority for
Israel's targeting Jewish legislators.
>> Yeah. >> Okay, but
is it a lobby on behalf of a foreign government that completely controls those
politicians that make the difference in America.
The answer is yes, yes.
So Israel does have apartheid and America will do absolutely nothing about it.
While by the way pretending to care about human rights abuses in other countries.
>> Yeah, I mean, look, it's all propaganda.
Hey, Venezuela and
Iran have a lot of oil we'd like Exxon mobil to have contracts with.
So they're the bad guys.
They're the bad guys.
Saudi Arabia is a vicious, dictatorial fundamentalist government.
They sell us oil for cheap, good guys.
And by the way, not to you and me, the deal is with the American oil companies.
Those are the guys that are getting rich, not us, right?
So as long as you butter up American companies and
you butter up American politicians, you can pretty much buy anything here.
So in this case, America's foreign policy is very clear.
I hope one day progresses will overturn that.
And that's exactly why that lobby is attacking progressives all across
the country.
They're like, we don't want our lock on American politicians to be broken and
that is what's at stake and reporters barely ever cover it.