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Knesset debate interrupted in Newton

Demonstrators who said they were Brandeis students and who wore T-shirts with "Apartheid" in Hebrew on them briefly disrupted a forum last night at Temple Emanuel in Newton by five members of the Israeli Knesset on the topic of "Israel and American Jews."

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The Shas party member listed on the advertising poster did not appear. Also, there was only one Likud member, not the two advertised. Instead, there were two members from Yisrael Beitenu.

I was in the audience when this disruption happened, near the beginning of the program. Someone loudly yelled 'Mic Check!' and that was followed by a bunch of people standing up, wearing blue shirts with Hebrew on them. They yelled for a couple of minutes about Israeli Apartheid and were then removed by Newton police. There were no further incidents after this.

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Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine (the protesting group)

Stand For Israel (an American pro-Likud group)

Jerusalem Post (English-language Israeli newspaper)

Earlier, shorter Jerusalem Post article (not entirely accurate, as it says there were three MK's on stage)

Arutz Sheva (a right-wing Israeli news source)

Electronic Intifada (an American pro-Palestinian news source)

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Apartheid, when used as slander against Israel, has no basis in fact. But it sounds good to anti-Semites.

Arabs make up about 20% of the Israeli population. They hold positions in the Supreme Court, in parliament, and in other influential places. Arabs are treated just the same as Jews in Israeli hospitals.

It is only in the occupied territories where the Palestinians don't hold those same rights - but for the reason that they can't seem to stop lobbing missiles at Israeli citizens. And their situation falls extremely far short of apartheid.

This article explains it better than I can:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/opinion/israel-a...

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But Arabs used to make up about 95+% of the region's population. It might be contextually relevant as to why those in the regions lobbing missiles might be upset that for the past 70 years they have seen their land shrinking to Israel. While I agree that apartheid is not properly descriptive of the problem, I believe you are too lax in how you describe the gestalt of the Arab situation especially in historical context.

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where'd you get your statistics?

Also, you think its ok for people to lob missiles into other countries? And have a charter that explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel?

Palestinians didn't live in that area 70 years ago, and neither did Israelis, except for very small numbers of EACH of those groups. That land hadn't been irrigated and was virtually impossible to live on. The Palestinians that live there now were expelled from Jordan. Ask yourself why a people would be expelled from a country? Does that usually happen? Keep feeding on the Palestinian propagands machine.

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I got my statistics from things like official reports from the League of Nations in 1920.

Second, I never came close to saying it was okay for anyone to lob missles. Nor did I even mention Hamas or whether I think their approach is correct or even justified. Those are all things you have come up with out of thin air.

It is undeniable that Arabs lived in the area 70 years ago. There were about 800,000 to 1.3 million of them between the 1930s and early 1940s. Your description of an arid wasteland comes from a limited number of testimonials from the late 1800s. They don't account for other eyewitnesses who visited regions like the Jezreel Valley and found wheat and barley crops and lush soil (see the above link).

Of course, it's easier for you to characterize the situation as an aggressive Arab population, disgusting outcasts from Jordan really, demanding the now fertile and livable lands from the Israelis that the Arabs had abandoned long ago. It makes it easier to condemn them, right? However, that view of the situation is simply not true and in fact gives rise to the sort of animosity from the remaining Arabs whose families were deposed by the British and still find that process continuing to this day.

I'm not interested in propaganda, Israel's or Palestine's, but it's clear you have a bias against Palestinians. To ignore important historical context as to how both sides have arrived in their current position or to unilaterally support one side over the other given how neither one has remained free from aggression or fault in the matter will never allow for a peaceful solution to both peoples' problems.

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How is Israeli domestic policy toward Palestinians like apartheid in South Africa and how is it different? Peace: Not Apartheid

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