April 10, 2007
Source: Arabic Media Internet Network
Researcher: Israel Responsible for at least 97.8 Percent of Serious Human Rights Abuses in Conflict
As Israel comes under increasing pressure over its policies against Palestinians, an independent Swedish researcher today releases an extensive analysis of the Middle Eastern conflict since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. According to Dr. Anthony Lowstedt, the vast majority of grave violations of human rights falls under the responsibility of the Jewish state.
In the third edition of his study, "Apartheid: Ancient, Past and Present", Lowstedt concludes that no less than 97.8 percent of gross human rights violations so far committed in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are sole responsibilities of the Israeli Jews, and 2.2 percent, at the most, are Palestinian crimes.
Israel was accused of apartheid by John Dugard, the United Nations Human Rights Council's Special Envoy to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in February this year. In a report to the Council, Dugard recommended bringing the charge of apartheid, a crime against humanity under international law, against Israel to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Previously, two Nobel Peace Prize laureates, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and the former South African Anglican Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, had also raised accusations of apartheid against Israel.
According to all four and many others, Israel is implementing the same system of oppression that Whites used against the indigenous black majority in South Africa until 1994. And just like Blacks committed a number of violent crimes against Whites and occasionally incited people to violence against South African Whites in the liberation struggle there, Palestinians have carried out similar crimes against Israeli Jews.
However, the overwhelming majority of violent crimes as well as cases of incitement to violence are responsibilities of the privileged ethnicities in both countries, according to Lowstedt. Moreover, he points out seven kinds of systematic, racist crimes which he says are the sole responsibilities of the Israeli Jews and the South African Whites and of similar ethnic elites in other apartheid societies. These crimes include ethnically discriminatory repopulation, citizenship, land, work, access, education, and language policies and practices.
Lowstedt has worked in the Occupied Territories as well as in South Africa as an academic and fot the U.N. He currently teaches at Webster University in Vienna, Austria.
Read the complete study (377 pages) ""Apartheid-Ancient, Past, and Present: Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Greco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, at
http://www.dada.at/gems/gesellschaft/Apartheid.pdf Although this study is quite long, you can easily read only the information given concerning Israel/Palestine (if you so desire) by referencing the table of contents.
From this study, please go to page 311 where the "Minimum Requirements for Ending Israeli Apartheid" are listed. Listed briefly:
Israel must implement United Nations resolutions, abide by the Geneva Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and more in order to end apartheid in the state of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As a member of those organizations, and signatory to those documents, it has a non-negotiable duty not to violate them. The international community has a corresponding duty that Israel implements its promises enshrined in those documents and principles (not to mention those of Israel's own laws that are supposed to safeguard human rights and prevent crimes against humanity) If need be, Israel should be stopped by the international community by force. More than anything else, the arrogant power of the USA, including its undemocratic UN Security Council veto power, is of course blocking enforced implementation, but Israel itself has to take full responsibility for its continued violations of international law and basic human rights. Israel has most of the options now, Palestinians hardly have any. But the Palestinians must also take responsibility for human rights violations and gross human rights violations committed by them. The following in my view, the specific requirements necessary for jump-starting a peace process in the real meaning of the phrase:
(Briefly-read pages 311-314 for full text)
1. The Law of Return (Aliya) must be eliminated from Israel's basic law, and it is not to be
replaced by anything that can be interpreted in the same way. The Law of Return (Aliya)
is a racist repopulation law.
2. The Basic Law text on the "Jewish Character of Israel" must also be scrapped. It goes
against all principles of democracy elsewhere to define a country's people in ethnic terms,
rather than in terms of its citizens. Despite the Bible, and despite Jewish suffering in the
past, Jews should not expect special treatment or ethnist privilage. Israel is obligated
under international law.
3. The Israel Land Authority which allows only Jews to own land must be scrapped......
4. Secular and/or interfaith marriage must also become possible.......
5. Israel must recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.....
6. All Israel troops must immediately evacuate the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East
Jerusalem.......
7. Truly democratic elections must be introduced.....
8. Negotiations must on the right of return of and/or monetary compensation for Palestinians
who lost their property and family members due to the formation of the Israeli state in 1948.
.......
9. Work must begin on a Truth and Reconciliation Commision......similar to South Africa.
10. Other measures must follow involving..........
