A letter to the Sheffield Star and Telegraph
Dear Editor
Politicians and journalists who refer to Israel as a democracy are wrong. Actually, Israel is one of the most undemocratic countries in the world and uses a system of Apartheid. Jason Hickel explained this and I have summarised his argument.
In South African apartheid, Africans were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to tiny areas called Bantustans. The Bantustans were given a border, a flag and a parliament with little power to do anything. White people justified this by saying Africans had rights in their own “countries”. However, the Bantustans were completely controlled by the apartheid regime.
5 million people are living within the borders that Israel controls who do not have the right to vote for the government that determines virtually everything about their lives, and whose human rights are regularly violated. There are another 6 million people from that territory who are so completely disenfranchised that they have no rights within it at all, and are legally “stateless”. This is the apartheid system in Israel. The Nakba started the process of forcing Palestinians off their land and either into Gaza or the West Bank, where 5 million people live within borders Israel controls, or into neighbouring countries where 6 million people live as stateless refugees. Today this ethnic cleansing is accelerating.
So now 11 million people are denied the right to vote for the government that controls them. Palestinians in Gaza are not just denied their rights, they are also denied food and water and are constantly targeted with bombs. Minority rule by Zionists is called “democratic” but it excludes the majority of the population. To me, this is the opposite of democracy.
Apartheid must be abolished. The 11 million must be free to return to their land and enjoy full citizenship rights, including the right to vote. Apartheid must fall and we must keep protesting until it does.
Please stop calling Israel a “democratic country”.
Graham Wroe
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