{"id":273055,"date":"2023-09-07T07:02:08","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T07:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=273055"},"modified":"2023-09-09T05:27:17","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T05:27:17","slug":"israel-imposing-apartheid-on-palestinians-says-former-mossad-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=273055","title":{"rendered":"Israel imposing apartheid on Palestinians, says former Mossad chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris McGreal \u2013 The Guardian Sept 7, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>

Tamir Pardo<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A former head of the Mossad intelligence agency has said Israel is imposing a form of apartheid on the Palestinians, joining a growing number of prominent Israelis<\/a> to compare the occupation of the West Bank to South Africa\u2019s defunct system of racial oppression.<\/p>\n

But Tamir Pardo\u2019s views will have added impact because of the high regard for Mossad in Israel<\/a> and because they come at a time when far-right members of Israel\u2019s government are moving to kill off any prospect of an independent Palestinian state.<\/p>\n

Pardo told the Associated Press that Israel\u2019s mechanisms for controlling the Palestinians, from restrictions on movement to placing them under military law while Jewish settlers in the occupied territories are governed by civilian courts, matched the old South Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an apartheid state here,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pardo, 70, was appointed to head Mossad in 2011 by Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>, Israel\u2019s prime minister then and now. Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party said Pardo \u201cshould be ashamed\u201d of his comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of defending Israel and the Israeli military, Pardo slanders Israel,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Successive Israeli governments have fought back against accusations of apartheid<\/a> by characterising them as antisemitic out of concern the charge will fuel a boycott movement or open the way to prosecutions under international laws against apartheid.<\/p>\n

But such allegations become harder to dismiss when they come from those within the Israeli establishment.<\/p>\n

Pardo told the AP his views on the system in the West Bank were \u201cnot extreme. It\u2019s a fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also warned that what has been described as Israel\u2019s \u201cforever occupation\u201d threatens its existence as a Jewish state. \u201cIsrael needs to decide what it wants,\u201d he said. \u201cA country that has no border has no boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pardo is among the highest ranking former officials to draw the once taboo parallel with the old South Africa. Israel\u2019s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, said last year \u201cthat my country has sunk to such political and moral depths that it is now an apartheid regime\u201d.<\/p>\n

The former speaker of the Israeli parliament, Avraham Burg, and the renowned Israeli historian, Benny Morris, are among more than 2,000 Israeli and American public figures who have signed a recent public statement<\/a> declaring that \u201cPalestinians live under a regime of apartheid\u201d.<\/p>\n

The open letter calls on US Jewish groups to speak out against the occupation of the Palestinian territories<\/a> as \u201cthe elephant in the room\u201d in the mass Israeli protests against Netanyahu\u2019s deeply divisive judicial reforms which, it said, are intended to \u201cannex more land, and ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population\u201d.<\/p>\n

Prominent foreign officials have also invoked apartheid to described the situation in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the former Irish president Mary Robinson and the former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon \u2013 representatives of The Elders group of global leaders<\/a> founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007 \u2013 spoke about the \u201cever-growing evidence that the situation meets the international legal definition of apartheid\u201d after visiting the West Bank.<\/p>\n

They said Israeli government policies \u201cclearly show an intent to pursue permanent annexation rather than temporary occupation, based on Jewish supremacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The former head of Mossad joins a growing number of establishment figures who\u2019ve likened current Zionist policies with apartheid. Israel\u2019s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, said last year \u201cthat my country has sunk to such political and moral depths that it is now an apartheid regime\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=273055"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273061,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273055\/revisions\/273061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=273055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=273055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=273055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}