Israelis Celebrate Apartheid Day, also Known as “Jerusalem Day”

This past Wednesday marked Jerusalem Day.

It’s the day Israel celebrates the unification of Jerusalem by barricading off half the city of Jerusalem. Spoiler alert: it’s the Palestinian Arab half.

This is why a more apt description of the day would be Apartheid Day, since all of Israel’s apartheid practices rear their ugly heads:

It’s the day tens of thousands of Israelis march through Jerusalem chanting, “death to the Arabs,” (1, 2) “may your village burn,” (1, 2) “I hate all Arabs,” (1) “Mohammed is dead” (1) and other slogans of hate (1). It’s the day they vandalize Palestinian property (1, 2, 3, 4), harass Palestinian shopkeepers (1, 2) and physically assault Palestinians (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), all with total impunity. Meanwhile, the police protect the violent, racist marchers, assaulting journalists in the process.

Apartheid Day is also the day Israel erects checkpoints around East Jerusalem that only Jews and internationals are allowed to pass through. I witnessed Palestinians being prevented from passing through checkpoints along Sultan Sulayman Road next to the Old City Walls, as well as Nablus Road and Alanbeya Street. I was personally allowed to pass through checkpoints as a non-Palestinian. Meanwhile, Israeli Jews walk through without even bothering to make eye contact with the soldiers.

Apartheid Day is also the day Israel forces hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian Arab businesses to shut down. Shops in the vicinity of the Old City, and the Old City itself, are forced to close.

Apartheid Day is also the day Israelis assert their control over the part of Jerusalem Palestinians hope to call Palestine’s capital.

Of course, if you follow mainstream media, you might think it was Israel’s “Flag March” Day. A flag march, what a blast! It was even marked with “defiance” and “friction!”

The day also commemorates Israel’s conquest of Jerusalem in June 1967. [Prior to 1967, Israel controlled the Western part of the city, while Jordan controlled the Old City and the surrounding Palestinian towns.]

The day also celebrates Israel’s illegal annexation of some 70 square kilometers of the West Bank, that Israel arbitrarily decided to call “East Jerusalem” to justify such a massive land grab, even though most of the area annexed was never considered part of Jerusalem. In other words, the day celebrates Israel’s application of Israeli law in the annexed territory — a crime in international law.

The day also celebrates Israel’s annexation of the land, but not the people living on it. It’s the core of the Zionist idea: the conquest of the land, but without the people.

The people of East Jerusalem did not get Israeli law applied to them. They were not granted citizenship and thus cannot vote in national elections. The people of East Jerusalem have temporary residency permits which can be taken away if they fail to prove Jerusalem is their “center of life”. Israel also denies Palestinians in East Jerusalem the right to build homes on 87% of the annexed territory, because they are Palestinian. Palestinians reject such blatantly racist laws, and so they build without permits. The result is that tens of thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live in a constant state of fear their homes will be demolished at a moment’s notice.

To Israelis, of course, the day is not Apartheid Day, it’s unification day. Israelis will tell you about Jerusalem’s “unification.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said to Noa Tishby in one of the most epic interviews of unintentional satire in all of history.

Herzog says: "We are in the garden of the President's residence in Jerusalem... here you have a fig and an olive together that has grown in this beautiful garden... the figs and the olives are a symbol of peace..."

Tishby: "Yerushalem means 'city of peace' and the city that is whole."

Herzog: "It is a city of Peace!..."

Tishby: "It's a city of coexistence."

Jerusalem is one of the most violent cities in the world: the gaslighting violence of Herzog and Tishby, the verbal violence of the fascist marchers, the physical violence of its extremists, the apartheid violence of Israel’s legal system and the genocidal violence perpetrated by its government based in Jerusalem.