'African-American student leaders from a variety of historically black colleges and universities took out full page ads in numerous American college newspapers Thursday, displaying an “Open Letter to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP),” to convey that they were offended by SJP’s use of the term “apartheid” at recent Israel Apartheid Week events at campuses across the country.'

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=215811

Ever wonder where a millenium of European anti-semtism disappeared to following 1945? It transmogrified itself into prejudice against Israel.

There are countries that truly are comparable to apartheid (e.g. Saudi Arabia, where non-muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca). But it is always democratic Israel that gets equated with apartheid, not undemocratic, discriminatory Saudi Arabia.

One set of rules is enforced on Palestinians and another for Israelis living in the same area. That is the definition of apartheid.

South African apartheid discriminated based on the race of South African citizens. Israeli only roads because Palestinians are not Israeli. They are Palestinian. The word youre looking for is occupation.

I consider the occupation terminology BS because there has been no progress on the two state solution for 50 years. It is one country defacto ruled by Israel. Israel tries to claim the Palestinian territories as a weird hybrid state, not independent but not part of Israel, just so they can claim to be democratic, but they are not.

Unless you misunderstand the meaning of "requirement," you're either misinformed or making things up. There are plenty of Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel. There are even Muslim Israeli Arabs in the Knesset, Israel's version of the Parliament. In short: being Jewish is not a "requirement" of citizenship.

But as far as Arab Israelis, they are discriminated against in all sort of ways including discrimination encoded into laws. Israel proudly claims to be a Jewish state and they intend to keep it that way by discriminating against Arabs in any way they see as necessary.

So the country established by all the western powers as a home for Judaism shouldn't permit Jews citizenship based on religion? You're an idiot and you can't comprehend it and are publicly flaunting it.

Seriously read a book with a viewpoint not espoused by a neo-nazi group and you might actually learn something about the Israel-Palestine issue.

Israel isn't the only country that's actively discriminating against Arabs, they're just the easy one to point to. Let's forget that the Caucasus are in the middle of a religious war led by Arab religious sects attempting a religious coup in many parts of Russia. Let's forget that the Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years and Israel is surrounded by people trying to kill them simply because their Jews. Hey no shit, those ancestors of the jews who survived all their families being killed and robbed don't like that shit. Who knew!

You're complaining because Israel isn't being considerate to the poverty stricken Palestine that elected a terrorist organization as its leaders and that fire mortars into Israeli cities and use UN outposts so Israel can't return fire. Hey here's news to Palestine not spending money on things that destroy themselves could get you out of poverty.

Sorry I give Israel kudos because if any country was launching mortar strikes on US cities it would have been carpet bombed to rubble inside a week and with or without a religious or racial motives, no one would be complaining.

A closer analogue to Israeli discrimination based on religion is America's race- and class-based discrimination. As one example among the hundreds available, prison sentences are many times higher for crack cocaine abuses than pure cocaine abuses -- because the American underpriveleged (who are often minorities) are more likely to use crack, and the American wealthy (who are often white) are more likely to use pure cocaine. The Israeli legal system inarguably has systemic bias, but it's much closer to American legal systemic bias than South African apartheid.

Also known as Jus Sanguinis with the twist being that one can convert to Judaism. Judaism is a remnant from a time when nation and religion were interchangeable terms. Hence why conversion is possible.

And in case you were unaware, this isn't the only way to acquire Israeli citizenship. Non-Jews can acquire Israeli citizenship through a typical naturalization process.

> including discrimination encoded into laws.

I challenge you to find an Israeli law that discriminates against Israeli Arabs. The closest you'll find are laws which specify state-funded opportunities only provided to those who have done civil or military service.

For someone who has gone so far as to boycott Intel products because of their connection with Israel, you are shockingly ignorant about very basic facts.

- The racist Jewish National Fund, which manages a big chunk of Israeli land exclusively for Jews, was authorized by the Knesset to refuse to lease land to Arab citizens.

- Arab citizens are not allowed to obtain citizenship for foreign spouses while Jews can.

With regards to the second law, that is a result of national security concerns. Spouses of Arab citizens are not allowed to obtain citizenship automatically (they can of course, as I stated above, go through a naturalization process) because if that were the case it would effectively be the Right of Return.

BTW, do you consider Jews that make these same arguments to also be anti-semitic?

Yes you can be racist against your own people. That's like saying a black landlord isn't racist because he thinks all black people are unemployed and won't pay their rent. Of course its racist.

Anti-Semitic speech is speech against Semitism. I don't get how that's hard to understand.

Flagged.

Meta:

When you flag something you're not supposed to also comment on it since it is better to shun and ignore spam or offtopic material than it is to try to bring attention to it, according to the site guidelines: If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

Also, since I'm making a comment on the actual story it is not spam or offtopic.

I meant strong supporter of a controversial cause, not of a particular political party.

Israel is not closed to Western investment. Apple getting this through did not require significant action on the part of local government. In the North Korean case, the regime has to be talked about.

The reason I brought it up is because the Israel issue affects me personally since I try to maintain an Israel boycott. There is a growing group of boycotters around the world. Things are already hard enough with Intel having a big facility over there. This new facility by Apple is big news to us.