Interview · moment 15 of 28
Self-Defense, Hostages, and What Apartheid Looks Like Day-to-Day
from Bonus Episode: Abby Martin
4 min
Guest
They discuss whether Israel has a right to self-defense versus Palestinians', the imbalance in hostage/prisoner situations including child detentions, and Abby details specific discriminatory laws against Arab citizens of Israel.
- Does Israel have the right to defend itself when Hamas takes hostages, and how does that differ from collective punishment of Gaza?
- Hamas holds hostages, but Israel holds thousands of political prisoners, many children never charged with anything, held for years under administrative detention.
- Israel is the only country in the world with military courts for children.
- The conversation about self-defense only centers on Israel's right to defend itself, ignoring the occupied Palestinians' right to self-defense.
- Apartheid is an institutional system of discrimination and segregation—and the Israeli system meets that definition structurally.
- Arabs sitting on Israel's Supreme Court is presented as evidence against apartheid, but it's part of the theatrical ruse of the system.
- Palestinian Israelis are tokenized with minute roles in society; a couple in the Knesset allow the state to claim Arabs have a voice.
- Palestinian citizens of Israel face dozens of discriminatory laws: they can't unify with family members who marry outside Israel, can be expelled from Jerusalem, can't celebrate Palestinian heritage.
- Palestinian businesses in East Jerusalem face firebombing and rock attacks; residents chant death to Arabs at them regularly.
- The West Bank is unambiguously an apartheid state, and the real solution depends on whether Palestinians choose one state or two.
- Given the atomization of the West Bank by settlements, the outcome is actually up to Israelis because Palestinians lack the power to enforce it.