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Why I tried to stop Avigdor Lieberman in Brussels

Posted Wednesday, March 2, 2011 on the site info-palestine.net
by David Cronin / The Electronic Intifada

RESPECT!

If apartheid is a crime, there is only one way to treat its authors: to stop them. This is precisely what I tried to make me Standing opposite to Avigdor Lieberman, the architect of a series of laws to make even more draconian Israeli apartheid than it already is.

(video: 17 seconds)

While the Israeli foreign minister was about to begin his press conference on 22 January in Brussels, I am standing before him and shouted: " Mr Lieberman, this is an arrest of a citizen . You are accused of the crime of apartheid. Please follow me to the police station nearest you. I was about to clarify the charge when two security agents spread my Lieberman and his unfathomable gaze in fury. So I shouted: " Free Palestine "and" Israel is an apartheid state ", to mark key ideas .

My action will likely lead to the confiscation of the badge which was given to me to have access to the seats of the main institutions of the European Union. Most journalists with whom I discussed the last few hours seem to regard this as a big problem. For me, it is a futile. Palestinians are deprived of their freedom every day because of politics pursued by Lieberman and his colleagues in government. Compared to the restrictions on movement caused by military checkpoints in the West Bank or the blockade of the medieval Gaza Strip, the loss of my press card is not of great consequence.

The decision to stand up against Lieberman was taken after my recent visit to the occupied Palestinian territories. Passing just a Friday afternoon in the area of Silwan in East Jerusalem, I felt like back in Derry or Belfast in the early seventies . I was shocked by the way including police and Israeli soldiers, with all equipment riot, fired their tear on young boys who were doing nothing more sinister than throwing stones at the occupying forces.

was the first time I came to Silwan for nearly two years, and there was a marked proliferation of Israeli flags in relation to my previous visit . That was a sure sign that Palestinians living in Jerusalem since moult generations were now forced to leave their homes to make way for Israeli settlers. Dispossession takes place so that an extremist group, which is called Elad, can realize its plans for the archaeological park of the City of David. With the blessing of the leaders of the State of Israel, Elad finds that the settlers have more rights to live in this area than its present inhabitants, because the remains of a royal palace dating back three thousand years have been discovered in Silwan.

Apartheid is the best word I can think to describe the machinations of these settlers and their friends in government. Although this word, apartheid, is synonymous with South Africa it is recognized as a crime by the UN since 1973. The agreement concerned UN ( Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid ) refers to the domination of one racial group over another. Israel has always been intended to be a state based on the notion of racial supremacy deleterious, Theodor Herzl, the founding father of political Zionism, wrote in 1896 that he hoped to establish " a preliminary post of civilization against barbarism .

Over a century later, Lieberman is back in effect the proposal of Herzl. During the two years that Lieberman and his party, Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home), the government just passed a score of laws and bills have been filed before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, with the target specific welding apartheid Israel. The party wants the Palestinian citizens of Israel - which represent about one fifth of the population - an oath of allegiance to a " Jewish and democratic state " (JPG) it takes strong action against the commemoration of the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing that led to the creation of Israel in the forties), and limits the rights of Palestinian prisoners to have a lawyer. Last week, the Knesset held a discussion on the proposal to declare illegal activism which promotes a boycott of Israeli institutions and products.

If you have a sense of déjà vu in Reading these measures favored by Lieberman, because they are for much like those introduced by the minority white government in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Not only apartheid is recognized as a crime by the UN since the seventies, but it was also recently included in crimes covered by the Rome Statute (pdf - Article 7 - j) which establishes the International Criminal Court. The European Union is, theoretically, is a staunch supporter of the ICC, although its representatives mostly not only open his mouth about Israeli apartheid and its consolidation.

Apartheid is not the only crime today, in my opinion. Bertrand Russell, the great British intellectual, formerly referred to the crime of silence. It commits the crime that the European Union when it supported Lieberman, as it did this week in Brussels. If our politicians are silent, then it is for ordinary people to scream as loud as they can.

Video on the manifestation of UPJB and ABP against the coming of Lieberman in Brussels.

(JPG) Born in Dublin in 1971, David Cronin is the Brussels correspondent of news agency Inter Press Service. He first held this position for the Irish newspaper The Sunday Tribune after working as a research and press officer with the European Parliament. Between 2001 and 2006 he worked at the European Voice weekly The Economist Group .