Name Research Report Rubric - Holy Family: Fill & Download for Free

I asked this question a few days ago, and I’ll take a shot at answering it. Trump came into office saying he would appoint THE BEST PEOPLE. What we have seen instead is incompetence, turmoil, serial turnovers, numerous corruption scandals and many crucial government positions left unfilled. We have lots of “acting” heads of this or that, but looking at the people who have actually been confirmed is a good way to gauge the depth of the cynicism and the contempt that Trump and Republicans feel for the United States of America.A lot of the inadequate staffing is inevitable. Smart, thoughtful, qualified people tend to believe in the fact-based universe. Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath who lies all the time, ignores intelligence and informed opinions, governs via tweets and uses public office to enrich himself — so, quality people in every field are going to think twice about going to work for someone that rude and insulting, that dishonest and that likely to stain and compromise, forever, the reputations of those who serve in his administration.But a lot of the incompetence of the administration is deliberate — intentional. Just as fewer and fewer Republicans believe in American democracy (it’s “mob rule!” they insist), fewer and fewer of them believe in government, in the traditional sense. They prefer the Russian model of oligarchs running a gangster state. They see the entire Federal government as some kind of commie plot. They sneer at public service, and consider people who devote their lives to it, serving both Democratic and Republican administrations in a nonpartisan, dedicated way, to be suspect. They refer to these people who keep government running, and maintain continuity in our agencies over time, as the Deep State. Career civil servants have, indeed, kept things functioning even with Kaos Agent Trump in charge, for over two years … but every month there are fewer of them, as they leave our government in droves, pushed out by this administration. They are replaced by — a vacuum. And that will be a very bad thing if Trump’s threatened trade wars crash the economy, or if his efforts to generate high ratings for himself by threatening wars and then making friendly gestures results in a real war. In a time of national emergency, there may well be no grown-ups left in the room.Besides hating good government in general, Republicans feel special enmity for those who insist science is real. They humiliate and harass top scientists, transferring them around, forbidding people in government to publish real science papers, discouraging them from using terms like “science-based” and “evidence-based,” delaying and burying government reports and research with conclusions that contradict the administration’s lies, and barring people from attending international conferences where established, proven concepts like harmful man-made climate change are discussed.Since this administration’s assault on the reality-based universe is focused on science, it’s no surprise Trump put Scott Pruitt in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt was saturated in fossil fuel money, (he’s a Koch brothers pet), hates the EPA, had sued it fourteen times — so, he was a natural to run it, since Republicans like to have a fox running every government hen house.In a little over a year, there were fourteen investigations by different government agencies into Pruitt’s corrupt/illegal practices. He gave illegal raises to cronies. He had an obsession with secrecy and lack of transparency, liberally spending money on items like his Get Smart-type “cone of silence” booth. He told his security people in cars to use flashing lights and sirens, regularly, to get him through DC traffic to places like his favorite restaurant. He had a mania for hiring extra security people. He had security people pick up his dry cleaning, and go out to look for his special moisturizer. He slavishly worked to empower the industries the EPA keeps tabs on and is supposed to impose fines on, for violations. He fired scientists and replaced them with fossil fuel industry people. He used taxpayer money to fly everywhere first class or business class or on private jets and stay at luxury hotels, costing us hundreds of thousands. He set up a sweetheart rental deal for himself and his daughter in a DC lobbyist’s condo.Pruitt’s level of corruption was breathtaking, even for the Trump administration, and he was pressured to resign in 2018. Now we have former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler continuing Pruitt’s job of running/dismantling the EPA. It probably goes without saying, but Wheeler does not believe science is real, either. A lot of Trump’s people are so incompetent and so focused on self-enrichment, it limits the damage they do, but Wheeler is a busy boy; he is better than Pruitt at changing Obama-era policy and perverting the mission of the EPA, so that not only does more carbon spew into our atmosphere, but also more methane, plus mercury and other things that sicken and kill a lot of Americans. Here are some pieces on him and on what our EPA has been up to:Opinion | This Coal Lobbyist Should Not Run the E.P.A.E.P.A. Rule Change Could Let Dirtiest Coal Plants Keep Running (and Stay Dirty)Trump Administration Wants to Make It Easier to Release Methane Into AirPresident Trump’s Retreat on the Environment Is Affecting Communities Across AmericaTrump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate ScienceAnother notable Trump administration Swamp Dweller was Tom Price, whom Trump made our Secretary of Health and Human Services (and of course Republicans in the Senate confirm Trump’s stinking nominees of this kind). He’s a Tea Party guy, so naturally, as a doctor, he worked on a healthcare plan as an alternative to the ACA that would cover far fewer people and give them shoddier coverage. He doesn’t think it’s important that parents vaccinate their children. He not only opposes abortion, he has claimed no woman has ever struggled to pay for basic contraception. He made stock market decisions affected by policy he was involved in. As head of HHS, he fought for repeal of the individual mandate: “repeal” with no “replace,” of course — though Republicans pretended as they took power that they had a health plan of their own.Price pretended getting rid of the individual mandate wouldn’t result in millions of people losing coverage. Like Pruitt, Price had a penchant for private chartered planes, and he also liked to take military flights — to get to cities that are easily accessible from DC by car or train. He cost tax payers one million with this nonsense, and offered to pay back $50,000. Eventually, he had to resign. Now, our HHS Secretary is Alex Azar, a former head of Eli Lilly and a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist. He is, naturally, also focused on repealing the ACA with no “replace.”Betsy DeVos is married to the heir of the incredibly lucrative, Christian Fundamentalist pyramid-scheme company Amway. She has spent years promoting school vouchers and charter schools and undermining the American system of public education. Her efforts have had a dismal effect on the schools of Michigan; the charter school program she championed there is a disaster. So, naturally, she is now our Secretary of Education. She has no degree in the subject. Her Senate confirmation hearings were eye-opening, as she read quotes plagiarized from Obama administration people, expressed bewilderment over some basic rubrics for measuring how students and schools are doing, and said people might need guns in schools to fight off grizzly bears.Even Republican Senators had trouble voting for her, and Mike Pence had to step in and break the tie. DeVos seems to think that historically black colleges are examples of “school choice” — not understanding what caused them to be founded. She has suggested it’s okay for private schools to refuse to accept LGBT kids or black kids — since it’s all about “choice.” She has worked to take away protection for students who take out loans, and standards to protect students from gimmicky for-profit colleges. She appointed a former dean of DeVry to supervise investigations into scam colleges like DeVry. She does her best to cut funding for the Special Olympics and for programs for kids with disabilities — she has sabotaged their rights that were protected under law.Rick Perry was a governor of Texas who wanted to be president. He memorably ran a campaign ad talking about how it was wrong that President Obama was preventing children from celebrating Christmas (?!) and wrong that gays could serve openly in the military, and how Perry wanted to bring America back to Christian values, and end the “war on religion.” Ironically, the background music of this ad ripped off Appalachian Spring, by gay Jewish New York communist atheist composer Aaron Copland, whose parents were immigrants to Brooklyn:Also when he was running for president in 2011/2012, Perry said in a debate that the US should eliminate three government departments. He mentioned the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and as for the third one? "I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops.” The department he wanted to eliminate but was too dumb to remember the name of later turned out to be the Department of Energy. So, in a nice little joke on America — a way to give the finger to us all — Trump and the Republicans have made Rick Perry our nation’s Secretary of Energy, leading that department! Energy has to do with science, so from the GOP perspective it’s great that Perry is a Fundamentalist who doesn’t think science is real, and would like to see Creationism taught in schools. Perry pooh poohs concerns about climate change. He says “the science is still out” on whether people cause it. He says African countries should use fossil fuels to create better lighting; it would lead to fewer rapes. He goes after the Sierra Club for "exploiting the struggle of those most affected by climate change." He remains on the board of a huge energy company. (Holy conflict of interest, Batman!) He may be leaving soon, to find ways to make more money.Rick Perry Is Done Pretending to Know What the Energy Department DoesWilbur Ross is our Secretary of Commerce. He’s a big believer in Trump’s trade wars; he thinks tariffs on China will modify their behavior, instead of causing them to buy soybeans elsewhere, screwing American farmers. Ross also is a fan of trade wars with Europe. Ross lied to the Department of Ethics, in writing, and said he had divested all of his financial holdings. For most of 2017 he owned stakes in companies that were in China, tied to Putin’s son-in-law and involved in other areas it was now his job to regulate. He has diddled with stocks and engaged in insider trading while in office. He met with Chevron execs to discuss oil and gas in 2018 while his wife owned $250,000 in Chevron stocks. When Trump threw a tantrum and shut down our government over his wall (“I own the shutdown! Except I don’t! Except I do! Except I don’t!”) Ross suggested that Federal workers who were in crisis because they were not receiving paychecks should just go take out loans from the bank, and pay a little interest later. He couldn’t understand why they were going to food banks.Ross and Trump recently had a big defeat; they can’t include a question on the census about citizenship that was designed to intimidate Latino citizens who have loved ones who are undocumented — it was intended to keep those citizens from responding, so the places where they live won’t receive adequate Federal funding, for healthcare and roads and education, in terms of how many people live there. Roberts’ conservative Supreme Court is fine with Republican gerrymandering, which distorts our democracy — but they found Ross’s lying as he made the case about the census so lame and so blatant, they just couldn’t sign off on it.Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen left her job recently. She will not be missed. Her lies for Trump extend way beyond pretending not to know whether Norway is a predominantly white country. (Trump had said in a meeting that we get too many immigrants from sh*thole countries — why can’t we have more from places like Norway?) She pretended not to know, in May of 2018, that the intelligence community had concluded that the Russians interfered in the 2016 elections to help Trump win. (This is our Secretary of Homeland Security talking.) Months later, she said she didn’t think Russia had been trying to help either side — after Putin had said he’d wanted Trump to win. Nielsen was the one who started implementing Trump’s policy of family separation in 2018 — and she lied about it, again and again, sometimes under oath to Congress. She said they had no such policy when they had already separated 2,000 children from their families, and Jeff Sessions and others were bragging about the innovative approach. She said Trump could not sign an executive order ending family separations, then was at the ceremony where he signed the meaningless order he had no intention of respecting. Nielsen expressed to Congress that she did not know how many children and how many people apprehended at the border had died in custody during her tenure.There is now even more incoherence and chaos in the DHS. The current Acting Secretary has appointed Mark Morgan to run Customs and Border Protection. According to the New York Times, Morgan won over Trump on TV in 2017. “In one appearance on Fox News, Mr. Morgan said that when he looked into the eyes of detained migrant children, he saw a ‘soon-to-be MS-13 gang member.’” Now, there’s the guy to turn around the problem of children dying and being traumatized in custody, and our national honor being stained by inhumane abuses!‘A Constant Game of Musical Chairs’ Amid Another Homeland Security Shake-UpIn another Times piece, by Gail Collins in January about this stinking, putrid cabinet, we learn that: “Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who once advocated an end to birthright citizenship and policies that would require employees to speak English, was picked last month to oversee United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for legal immigration.”Opinion | Help Pick the Worst of TrumpJeff Sessions was Trump’s Attorney General until the 2018 elections. Sessions is a good-old-boy racist who lost the chance to be a Federal judge in 1986 due to a letter from Coretta Scott King calling him out for his racist behavior as an attorney in Alabama. Senator Elizabeth Warren cited what Ted Kennedy had said about that earlier nomination, and started to read Coretta Scott King’s letter, which had been read into the Congressional record in 1986. Republicans objected, “nevertheless, she persisted,” and McConnell and Republicans shut Warren down — they voted to silence her. Jeff Sessions perjured himself before the Senate during his confirmation hearings, saying he’d never talked to the Russians during the campaign and didn’t know of anyone else in the Trump campaign who had. Once this lie was exposed, he had to come back to the Senate to do some ‘splaining, talking about his honor as a Southern gentleman or some such, and wound up recusing himself from supervising the Mueller Investigation. Trump never forgave him for it, and Trump liked to publicly humiliate him, regularly.Sessions hung on because being AG allowed him to pursue policies dear to his heart — policies otherwise in tune with the Trump administration. He was the one who proudly unveiled the policy of hurting refugee children on purpose, to punish and deter their parents who brought them here, seeking asylum! There was a good deal of bi-partisan consensus that we need criminal justice reform, that people shouldn’t go to jail for decades for marijuana charges when pot is legal in many states, and that people who are addicted need treatment rather than to be treated like criminals. But Sessions did away with all those ideas. He’s against even medical marijuana. He was proud that we’re the most incarcerated country, he was into mandatory sentencing rules and against consent decrees for police departments found to be chronically racist. He was into cops seizing property from people who were suspected but not convicted, and fining the poor to the max. Our Attorney General seemed not to see Hawaii as a real state, saying, of Trump’s proposed racist Muslim Ban, that he was "amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power," though the Supreme Court, it turned out, had issues with the original version of the Travel Ban also.Trump has said he wants an Attorney General who will be his “Roy Cohn.” Roy Cohn broke the law, talking privately to the judge and getting the death sentence for both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who died in the electric chair. He was the right-hand man of Senator Joe McCarthy who called everyone who opposed him a communist; though gay himself, Cohn helped enhance the Lavender Scare. Cohn threatened to “wreck the Army” if they didn’t give his friend David Schine cushy treatment once he was drafted, which led to the Army-McCarthy hearings and Joseph Welch standing up to McCarthy: "Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Later as a lawyer in NYC, Cohn represented Mafiosos like John Gotti, and Donald Trump, and the guys who ran Studio 54, and he and they were part of that Studio 54 partying scene. Cohn represented Trump when the government went after him and his father for their racist rental policies — not showing apartments to black applicants, marking black people’s applications with a “C” for “Colored,” etc. Cohn got Trump off. He introduced Trump to Rupert Murdoch. As Cohn was with the young rat-f*cker and self-described dirty trickster Roger Stone, Roy Cohn was key in teaching Donald Trump to have no morals whatsoever.How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed AmericaSessions obeyed the laws sometimes, and was capable of feeling shame, and so, even though he advanced the racist agenda of Trump, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, Trump became disgusted with him. Trump got rid of Sessions and brought in Scott Whitaker as acting Attorney General — a guy who’d auditioned for the job by writing an op ed piece saying Mueller’s investigation into Trump was going too far, and retweeted a piece calling the investigation a “lynch mob.” Whitaker had run a shady, opaque group that pretended to be non-partisan with the Orwellian acronym name FACT that urged investigations of Hillary Clinton. He’d also been involved with a group supposedly promoting inventions — a group that rivals Trump University and Trump Model Management for the rancidness of its sleazy, dishonest practices. It created a false impression that some inventions it promoted were successful. Whitaker threatened people who were out to expose the company. It sold deep, “masculine toilets” to manly men with penises so long, they’d land in the water in a toilet bowl of the normal height, and it claimed to have Bigfoot’s DNA, or proof that it had been collected.So many people had a problem with the endlessly acting, never confirmed Whitaker, that Trump brought in William Barr to be our AG. And now, at last, the Donald has his Roy Cohn! He has, in Barr, both a Mafia Don’s lawyer and a consigliere to him. Barr is a longtime proponent of mass incarceration, ending parole, new laws to monitor people’s phone records without getting proper vetting of these laws — and he helped orchestrate George Herbert Walker Bush pardoning a bunch of Bush’s Iran/Contra co-conspirators. Like Whitaker, Barr auditioned for the job of AG, letting Trump know he’d get him off in relation to Mueller in 2017 by saying it was fine for Trump to fire Sally Yates, there’s more point to investigating Hillary and Uranium One than there is to investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, and the Mueller Investigation into obstruction of justice was “asinine”; it was looking like a plot “to overthrow the president.” Barr lied about the contents of the Mueller Report months before releasing it, lied under oath to Congress about whether Mueller had communicated to him what Mueller thought of Barr’s representation of the report … and Barr is fine with using the word “spying” for those in our intelligence community who, after presenting evidence to FISA judges, conducted authorized investigations of what happened between Trump and Russia in 2016. He says the term “spying” isn’t pejorative. Senator Kamala Harris made mincemeat of Barr for his squishy, dishonest testimony in the Senate:After that, Barr blew off a subpoena to testify before the House Oversight Committee, and they held him in Contempt of Congress.It’s not good for the United States to have an Attorney General who is a liar, a perjurer, a man with contempt for firewalls, and contempt for the Separation of Powers and the system of Checks and Balances, and who forgets that he is America’s lawyer, not the president’s. But that’s Bill Barr.Alexander Acosta is our Secretary of Labor. He is in the news right now for the sweetheart deal he gave child predator Jeffrey Epstein back in Florida. The prosecution lawyers met with Epstein’s lawyers in the spirit of good ol’ boy camaraderie, and cut a deal where he only got a slap on the wrist; for thirteen months, Epstein had to sleep in a Federal facility but he could go work in his office six days a week … We’re talking about a man who molested multiple children, and trafficked in children. But then, rich white men in this country are above the law. The deal also protected his co-conspirators, known and unknown from prosecution. Of course, President Trump has been accused of having sex with a little girl at one of Epstein’s parties, (there is a corroborating witness, a woman who said she recruited the child to come to the party and witnessed the rape) and has joked about how Jeff is a great guy, they both like beautiful women, Jeff likes them really young …Alex Acosta saw to it that important information was withheld from the judge in the case — and crucial information was also illegally withheld from the many young women who had been abused as children by Epstein. They did not even know the deal had been cut. They never had a chance to appear at his sentencing hearing and say what they thought of Epstein’s light sentencing for a charge of “prostitution.” At last, Epstein (along with, possibly, his co-conspirators) is being prosecuted properly, by New York and Federal authorities. July 12th Update: Alex Acosta is gone. Yay!Ben Carson is a doctor, a neurosurgeon, a man with some impressive credits and also some very odd comments and actions on his scorecard, a sometime presidential candidate … and he had no experience, over the course of his career, in managing a big agency or dealing directly with policies involving housing and urban development. So, why did Trump choose Carson to run HUD? Was it that our president saw the word “urban” and thought … oh, urban … I better give it to the black guy …? With Donald Trump, who knows? It’s also possible that Trump liked how Carson had opposed HUD’s long-term anti-discrimination policies. Another fox to run another hen house! Carson seemed open, during his confirmation, to steering government money to Trump’s businesses. His son, Ben Carson Jr, has been cashing in on his father’s position. The Trump administration keeps eliminating HUD money that Dr. Carson promises the public will be part of infrastructure spending. In his testimony before Congress over the last few years, Dr. Carson has repeatedly made it evident that he doesn’t understand basic things HUD does. Here he is in 2019:He said after this hearing that Democrats were using “Saul Alinsky” tactics.Carson fired a career HUD official for refusing to spend more than $5,000, the legal limit, on new office furnishings for him. He went on to spend $31,000 of tax-payer dollars on a new dining set. He lied about whether he’d had input in choosing it.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the brain child of Elizabeth Warren. It was authorized by Dodd-Frank and it was meant to protect average people against predatory lenders and others who had screwed us and had led to the 2008 crash. Richard Cordray, a Warren ally, ran it well, He appointed a person who should have taken it over when he left — but Trump trashed the protocol and put in Mick Mulvaney to run it. Mulvaney is supposedly fiscally cautious, but running the Office of Management and Budget, he was fine with Trump dramatically swelling the deficit with tax cuts for the rich. Now he says “nobody cares” about the deficit. Mulvaney told Trump to cut Social Security and Medicare. He introduced himself to Gary Cohn saying: “Hi, I’m a right-wing nutjob.” He got confirmed at OMB despite the fact that he failed to pay payroll taxes for years on his kids’ nanny. As a Congressman, Mulvaney attacked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau non-stop, calling it “sick” and “sad” and “a joke.” He co-sponsored legislation to get rid of it. So, of course, he was the perfect guy to run it for Trump! By 2019 he had undermined its enforcement and regulatory powers. It lets banks and businesses get away with screwing consumers once again, no problem! It has dropped investigations of predatory payday lenders. A leading business group praised Mulvaney for his “passivity.” But he fired all 25 members of the CFPB’s Consumer Advisory Board after eleven of them criticized him — he wasn’t passive about that! Now Mulvaney is Trump’s Chief of Staff.Donald Trump spent the 2016 campaign bellowing about how he was going to “Drain the Swamp!” He cheerfully admitted he’d been handed that slogan, he thought it was stupid and meaningless, but crowds loved it so he kept yelling it. He criticized Hillary Clinton for being too close to Goldman Sachs — and then brought Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin into his administration. Let’s talk about Mnuchin. He is our Secretary of the Treasury. He says his number one priority is dismantling parts of Dodd-Frank. When asked about the threat of AI taking jobs away from people, he says oh, don’t worry, that’s 50 or 100 years off. Mnuchin had a “Mnuchin Rule,” saying they wouldn’t give the rich a big tax break. He walked it back. He said Trump’s tax cut for the rich would finance itself. Budget deficits rose 17% by the next year. Mnuchin had not ordered the Treasury to do any analysis of the proposed huge tax cuts and their impact. The Treasury ultimately issued a one-page document acknowledging that the tax cuts would not pay for themselves. Mnuchin has ignored Congress’s subpoena of Trump’s tax records, saying they didn’t want them for legitimate reasons, even though the law clearly states that the Secretary of the Treasury “shall furnish” requested tax records of any individual to Congress. What are laws worth, after all? He can be remarkably rude when talking to Congress, especially when speaking to House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters.He told parents to take their kids to the Lego Batman Movie he executive produced, right after acknowledging, in the same interview, it was unethical for him to promote things he’s involved in. Mnuchin is another Swamp Dweller who loves him some plane rides: government planes, military planes … he reimbursed us for his wife’s part in one plane jaunt, nearly $600, in a trip that cost tax payers nearly $27,000. He wanted a military jet for their honeymoon, but later said: "I'm very sensitive to the use of government funds. I've never asked the government to pay for my personal travel ... The story was quite misreported.”Eleanor Chao likes to ride some of the same planes as Mnuchin. When she was George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor, she was famous for sticking it to the American workers whose rights she was supposed to uphold, and siding with those who exploit them. She did not defend laws protecting wages and hours and workplace safety. She was fine with people being underpaid, and with mines that ignored safety rules — which led to a number of miners’ deaths. Chao is now our Secretary of Transportation. She labels a lot of her time on the job “private,” avoiding transparency in terms of what she does with it. But she does lots of public interviews, as Secretary of Transportation, with her father, a shipping tycoon with ships that go to China. Her sister now runs the family business. The company gets lots of very unusual deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars in China; Chao is using her position to help her family’s business cash in, as the Trumps do. Chao pledged in 2017 to sell her stock in a road-paving company, but she lied; only when newspapers exposed her lie in 2019 did she sell the stock. Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — the man who delights in undermining our Constitution by not letting President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee get considered by the Senate as the Constitution stipulates, etc. In 2017, Chao had her aide Todd Inman become a special envoy between the Department of Transportation and Kentucky, the state McConnell represents in the Senate. This led to $78 million in sweetheart deal projects for pro-McConnell counties in Kentucky. (No conflict of interest there!) Inman had worked for McConnell’s campaigns in the past. Now he’s Chao’s Chief of Staff. Chao’s father and family have given millions to McConnell and his campaigns.Mike Flynn was President Trump’s National Security Adviser for several weeks when Trump first came into office. Before that, Flynn had an Army career: a Lieutenant General. He led our Defense Intelligence Agency for a while under Obama. He was forced out, perhaps because his close relations with a Russian woman made him seem potentially compromised, or because of his apoplectic views about Muslims, or his nutty management style, abusive treatment of staff, and truth-challenged pronouncements that caused his staff to talk about “Flynn facts.” He retired from the military soon after. He became a consultant, and got $45,000 for a speech at an RT dinner in Russia where he was seated next to Putin. He criticized Erdogan in Turkey during the attempted coup there. But then he went to work for the Turkish government. He wrote an op ed attacking Erdogan’s opponent, Gulen, without disclosing that he worked for a Turkish company. In March 2017 he registered as a foreign agent who had received over $500,000 in lobbying money. But that was after the election — and after he had left the Trump White House.During the 2016 campaign Flynn was an adviser to Trump. He gave a keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, attacking Hillary Clinton and leading/encouraging the chants of “Lock her up!” He said if he’d done a tenth of what she’d done, he’d be in jail. He re-tweeted Pizza-gate garbage. President Obama when he met Trump after the election warned him not to hire Flynn to hear sensitive national security information. Trump ignored it. Chris Christie also warned Trump not to hire Flynn. Flynn himself told people he was under investigation. Before Jeff Sessions was confirmed, Sally Yates was Acting Attorney General. She warned Trump that Flynn should not be his National Security Adviser anymore because there was proof Flynn had lied to Pence and others when he said his phone call to Sergei Kislyak before Trump took office was just to wish Kislyak Merry Christmas. In fact, Flynn told Kislyak that Russia should ignore the sanctions imposed on Russia by Obama, who was still president, because Trump would come in and repeal them — did this in violation of the Logan Act, which says a private citizen should not negotiate with foreign powers in US government disputes. Because Flynn had lied about the call, he was compromised — the Russians could blackmail him. Trump ignored Yates’ warning and kept Flynn around hearing highly classified intelligence for two more weeks. Trump fired Yates. Flynn had to resign when his lie became publicly known. Trump leaned on FBI Director James Comey to “let Flynn go,” and when Comey would not pledge that the FBI would not investigate Flynn and Trump, Trump fired Comey over “the Russia thing,” as he told Lester Holt in an interview on national television and told the Russians in the Oval Office the next day. This led to the Mueller Investigation.Mueller went after Flynn (and his son) for, among other things, plotting to kidnap Gulen, the enemy of Erdogan in Turkey; Gulen lives here. Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI, but got into trouble because he kept on lying when he said he was cooperating. The Trump administration improperly contacted him to try to learn what he was saying, and dangled indirect offers of a pardon. Michael Flynn was one of 34 people indicted in the course of the Mueller Investigation, which according to Republicans has uncovered nothing.Mueller's investigation is done. Here are the 34 people he indicted along the wayOther criminal people from the Trump campaign and administration exposed by the investigation include Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen who illegally paid off women Trump slept with during the campaign and is now in jail (court papers call Trump aka “Individual One” Cohen’s un-indicted co-conspirator) and fellow Roy Cohn protege and campaign adviser Roger Stone who is also in jail, for lying to Congress and witness tampering. Former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort took the Trump Tower meeting with Jared and Don Jr to get dirt from the Russians on Hillary Clinton. (An invitation to collude with the Russians? “I love it!”) Manafort had groomed Russia’s stooge leader in Ukraine before grooming one here, and gave the Russians the Trump campaign’s internal polling data. (No, collusion, though, right?) Manafort had a plea deal he violated, continuing to lie to investigators and to coordinate with the Trump team. Now he’s in jail, for tax fraud and bank fraud. He’s another foreign lobbyist who registered as one a little “late.”George Papadopoulos was a Trump campaign aide who only served fourteen days in prison for lying to the FBI. He bragged to an Australian diplomat in 2016 about how the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians, which helped lead to the FBI investigation into the matter. He also offered more substantiation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ lied to Congress. Attorney Alex Van Der Swann only served thirty days in jail for lying. Rick Gates, like Michael Flynn, has had his sentencing delayed, as he continues to cooperate and provide more dirt. Richard Pinedo served six months for identity fraud. He helped the Russian cyber trolls get onto Facebook and influence the election. The other people indicted are Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Manafort gave the polling data to, and a bunch of other Russians.Compare that nest of crooks to Bill Clinton’s campaigns and administration. Compare it to the Obama campaigns and administration.Here’s one more Trump Swamp creature, one very close to the Swamp Lord — Jared Kushner! His father is a sleazy real estate developer. Because his father’s brother-in-law was cooperating with Feds against him, Jared’s dad hired a prostitute, had her go sleep with his brother-in-law and taped the encounter to send to his sister. He went to jail for that witness tampering, plus illegal campaign contributions, plus tax evasion. Jared came away from the experience furious on his father’s behalf — and made sure Chris Christie, who negotiated his father’s plea agreement, did not serve in Trump’s administration. He was indignant that his father didn’t get out of prison early, and he has no sense that what his father did was wrong. In other words, Jared Kushner, like his father-in-law Donald Trump, is a princeling con man raised to break the law without batting an eye. Jared’s father’s donations to Harvard may have helped Jared get in. The two of them made the disastrous $1.8 billion purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue just before the 2008 crash. Jared worked closely with Manafort during Trump’s campaign on media strategy, and together they hired Steve Bannon’s Cambridge Analytica. Once Trump was elected, Jared lied multiple times on his security clearance forms, omitting hundreds of meetings with foreign nationals. He’d re-submit them and lie again. (To lie intentionally even once on those forms is a felony that can lead to jail time.) A person as compromised as Jared would never be granted clearance to hear sensitive intelligence — except Trump over-rode all the professionals and got him clearance anyhow. Trump said he had no role in getting Jared clearance, but then, Trump lies all the time.So, what is Jared Kushner in charge of ? What isn’t he in charge of! He’s been in charge of peace between Palestine and Israel; apparently his plan is stuff seen many times before, and a non-starter. He’s in charge of solving the opioid crisis (how’s that going?) and information-technology contracting. He was heavily involved in us selling weapons to Saudi Arabia for $100 billion. All government correspondence is supposed to be over official systems (do you remember Hillary getting criticized for using private email for government work? Guess what Jared has used?) and there is supposed to be a record kept of it, for history. (Again, do you remember Hillary getting in trouble because people thought some of her official emails might not have been saved? It was for the historical record.) Jared communicates with MBS of Saudi Arabia via encrypted apps with no record. He tipped off MBS about guys in Saudi Arabia who might be a threat to MBS, and they were rounded up and taken to a hotel. They’re not a threat to Adnan Khashoggi’s murderer anymore. Jared owes a billion dollars in debt. Our nation’s foreign policy of punishing our ally Qatar, and our policy toward Saudi Arabia, seem at least partially to have been geared over the last two years toward finally getting someone to pay for the 666 Fifth Avenue boondoggle that Jared is still saddled with.During the campaign, Jared also had calls with Kislyak, and of course went to the Trump Tower meeting, and may have leaned on Flynn to talk to people in the Middle East to undermine Obama’s policies after Trump was elected but Obama was still in office. He may have told Flynn to talk to Kislyak. Jared was very keen on getting Comey fired — he figured Democrats would be great with it because Comey had violated the Hatch Act several times to make Hillary look bad. But, it turned out Democrats had a problem with Trump firing him for the reasons he did. Jared and Ivanka cash in on their position in various obvious and offensive ways, and their conflicts of interest are pretty straightforward.That’s not the whole Rogues’ Gallery, but it’s an intro to a lot of the key ones. I feel like we should be aware of them. Their faces should haunt our nightmares. I’m sorry it took so long — sorry there was so much to write about. But no, none of those Trump appointees is focused on making the agencies and departments they run, and the US government overall, succeed. These are not THE BEST PEOPLE. These are THE WORST PEOPLE. Either they actively seek to destroy the organizations they head, or they are primarily focused on making a buck. Yes, that’s often true when Republicans are in office. But Trump likes to talk about how the things he does are unbelievable, amazing, nobody’s ever seen anything like it before — and in this case, the hyperbole is justified. The graft of these grifters, the idiocy of some of the drivel that comes out of their mouths, the slimy, wormy filth that they have reduced our government to … is simply unprecedented. Trump has not drained The Swamp. Trump is The Swamp Lord. Trump has widened and deepened The Swamp, and added extra scum. Again, we’ve been relatively lucky so far, as we were during the first eight months under W. But luck can run out, and things can go seriously wrong. We could get in a situation where we need statesmen, not con men, and wisdom, not smug, self-satisfied ignorance. And even if no seismic national emergency arises, the policies that do not seem to have done too much damage yet will continue to hurt us (and the whole planet) for a long, long time to come.

If you’re studying for your AP Psychology exam, you’ve probably stumbled across the term “Stockholm Syndrome.” But what is Stockholm Syndrome, exactly? As it turns out, Stockholm Syndrome is a complicated diagnosis that is still surrounded by quite a bit of controversy.In this guide, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about Stockholm Syndrome, and we’ll answer the following frequently asked questions:What is Stockholm Syndrome?Where does it come from?What causes Stockholm Syndrome, and what are its symptoms?Is Stockholm Syndrome a real diagnosis?Ready? Then let’s jump in!What Is Stockholm Syndrome?Stockholm Syndrome—which is also sometimes called “trauma bonding” or “terror bonding”—is defined as the “psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor.” In other words, Stockholm Syndrome occurs when someone who is held against their will starts to have positive feelings toward the person (or group) who is holding them captive.Also, despite being a psychological phenomenon, Stockholm Syndrome isn’t a mental disorder. Instead, it’s classified as a syndrome, which is a condition that’s characterized by a set of symptoms that often occur together. In order to be diagnosed with a syndrome like Stockholm Syndrome, a person has to exhibit most—but not all!—of the major symptoms that are associated with the syndrome itself.The History of Stockholm SyndromeUnlike most syndromes, which are discovered over time as doctors uncover trends in their patients, the origin of Stockholm Syndrome can be traced back to one specific event.On the morning of August 23, 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson—who was already on parole for robbery—walked into Kreditbanken, a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. He opened fire on two Swedish police officers before taking four bank employees hostage. As part of the list of demands he issued to authorities, Olsson asked that Clark Olofsson, one of his friends from prison, be brought to him. (Olofsson would become Olsson’s accomplice in the Kreditbanken hostage situation, and he would go on to rob another bank two years later.)The hostage situation would last six days before police would use tear gas to subdue Olsson and rescue the hostages.The unfolding drama captured the world’s attention. However, over the course of those 130 hours, another strange thing happened: Olsson’s hostages began to feel sympathy for their captor.One hostage, Kristin Ehnmark, told reporters after the ordeal that she and her fellow hostages were more afraid of the police than Olsson. She and her fellow hostages would later tell authorities that they were treated kindly by Olsson, even though he was holding them captive. For instance, Olsson gave his jacket to Kristin when she began to shiver, and when Elizabeth Oldgren—another hostage—became claustrophobic, Olsson allowed her to walk outside of the vault where he was holding everyone hostage. The hostages’ sympathy for Olsson continued on even after their ordeal was over, and some of them even went to visit Olsson in prison!The psychiatrists who treated the victims compared their behavior to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, that they saw in soldiers returning from war. But that diagnosis didn’t quite fit, especially since the Kreditbanken hostage victims felt emotionally indebted to Olsson. They felt that Olsson, not the police, spared them from death, and they were grateful to Olsson for how kind he was to them. This unique set of symptoms led psychiatrists to label this phenomenon “Stockholm Syndrome,” which is still what we call it today.What Causes Stockholm Syndrome?Stockholm Syndrome occurs in people who have been kidnapped or taken hostage and held against their will. It’s common for people to think that someone must be held hostage for a long period of time to develop Stockholm Syndrome, but new research suggests that isn’t true. Experts believe that it’s the intensity of the experience—not the length of it—that’s one of the primary contributors to whether someone will experience Stockholm Syndrome.Additionally, some psychologists believe that Stockholm Syndrome is more likely in situations where the captors don’t physically abuse their hostages. Instead, captors rely on the threat of violence instead. This can be aimed toward the victim, the victim’s families, or even other hostages. If victims believe their captors will carry through on their threats, it makes them more compliant. Additionally, the lack of violence becomes a sign of kindness. In other words, because a captor could—but doesn’t—act on their threats, victims begin to see that as a sign that their captors care about them.This tension creates the defining characteristic of Stockholm Syndrome, where victims start to sympathize with and/or care about their captors.We can definitely see this in the case of the Kreditbanken robbery. Olssen threatened his hostages with physical violence but never carried through. The hostages told the press that they didn’t feel Olssen was a bad person, especially since he didn’t physically mistreat them during the hostage crisis. Circumstances like these can cause victims to think of their captors as essentially nice—or sometimes even good—people who are taking care of them.Cases of Stockholm Syndrome can show evidence of emotional manipulation or abuse, however. In these instances, the captors use emotional tactics to convince victims to sympathize with them and comply with their demands. This can involve convincing victims that the outside world is more dangerous than staying with their captors or persuading victims that the kidnapper is a victim, too. This makes victims feel like they are unable to escape from their situation, which is why people with Stockholm Syndrome stay with their captors.From a psychological perspective, most psychologists and psychiatrists believe that Stockholm Syndrome is, at its core, all about the survival instinct.When people are put into extremely dangerous or traumatic situations, they often behave instinctually in order to survive. You’ve probably heard of this phenomenon phrased as “fight or flight” instinct, where you either run, freeze or attack when you’re scared. (For the record, we’re runners.)But survival instinct is actually much more complicated than that, especially when it comes to complex trauma. In the case of Stockholm Syndrome, victims become attached to their captors as a way to cope with their situation. This is also a way for victims to try to make their captors sympathize with them, and thus make it less likely for their captors to hurt or kill them. In other words, building an emotional connection becomes a victim’s way to both copes with his/her new reality and, hopefully, to survive.Having said all of this, there’s one last—but an important—thing to realize about Stockholm Syndrome: it doesn’t involve any conscious choice on the part of the victim.Here’s what we mean. Say you’ve been kidnapped, and you’re being held against your will. You might decide to be nice to your kidnappers in an attempt to stay alive and, hopefully, escape. In this scenario, you choose to act in a certain way. Stockholm Syndrome, on the other hand, only occurs when the victim starts subconsciously and involuntarily sympathizing with their captor. In these instances, victims don’t have any conscious idea of what they’re doing, and their feelings toward their kidnappers last long after they’ve been freed.What Are the Symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome?At this point, it’s clear that Stockholm Syndrome is situational, which means that it’s something a person develops in a certain set of very traumatic circumstances. (Namely, the victim has been taken hostage by a stranger and is being held captive.)Now let’s take a look at the four major symptoms someone with Stockholm Syndrome experiences.Symptom 1: The Victim Has Positive Feelings Toward the CaptorLike we’ve mentioned before, this is the hallmark of Stockholm Syndrome. Despite being in a terrifying situation, someone developing Stockholm Syndrome will start to sympathize, care about, or feel positive about the person (or people) who are holding them hostage. These positive feelings make the victim more likely to comply with their captors’ demands and feel guilty when they don’t. This was certainly true for the hostages in the Kreditbanken robbery. After her release, Kristin Ehnmark—one of the hostages—would tell reporters that she “felt like a traitor” when she gave the police information behind Olsson’s back.Additionally, these feelings come from a perception that the captors are treating them kindly. Another of the Kreditbanken victims, Sven Safström, remembers his reaction to Olsson’s threats. “All that comes back to me [now],” he would tell reporters later, “is how kind I thought [Olsson] was for saying it was just my leg he would shoot.” These perceived acts of kindness make victims feel like their captors are caring for or protecting them, even in a bad situation. This can make victims think of their captors as good people in a bad situation, rather than criminals who are breaking the law.And remember: for the victim, these positive feelings develop subconsciously and are completely outside of their control. This reaction is their instinctual reaction to a dangerous and traumatic situation, and it’s a survival tactic.Symptom 2: The Victim Has Negative Feelings Toward Family, Friends, or AuthoritiesBecause the victim is aligning with their captor, victims also begin to adopt their way of thinking. Since the captors are afraid of being caught and prosecuted, the victims often take on the same anxiety as well.Additionally, some kidnappers also convince their victims that they are protecting them from a dangerous world, not the other way around. This was the case in the Kreditbanken case, where the hostages became afraid that the police—not Olsson—were the real threat. In a phone call with Sweden’s Prime Minister, Kristin Ehnmark explained that while she was being treated well, she was afraid “the police will attack and kill us” instead.Experts explain that the phenomenon of sympathizing with the captor is a type of hypervigilance, where victims believe that the happiness of their captors is critical to their own wellbeing and safety. In other words, when the captor feels happy and safe, the victims are, too. That’s why victims displaying symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome turn on people who threaten the captor-captive relationship, including the authorities.Symptom 3: The Captor Has Positive Feelings Toward the VictimThere are two ways this works. In one aspect, the victim perceives that their captor actually cares about them. This has a lot to do with the “kindness” we mentioned earlier. When captors don’t act on their threats—or when they do small, seemingly nice things for their victims—it can seem like they actually care about the people they’re holding captive.For example, during her time as a hostage in the Kreditbanken robbery, Elizabeth Oldgren was used by Olsson as a human shield. But he also gave her his jacket when she got cold, which Elizabeth saw as a sign of Olsson’s goodness. She would later tell reporters that although she had “known him a day when I felt his coat around” her, she was also “sure [Olsson] had always been that way.” Despite Olsson’s threats and posturing, his one act of compassion made Elizabeth think that he cared about her well-being, too.The second way this works is when authorities, like FBI or police negotiators, use tactics to get captors to see their victims as humans. By doing things like asking captors to call their hostages by their first names, the authorities work to humanize the victims. Doing so makes captors less likely to kill their victims because they’re afraid of getting caught, and the FBI trains its members to use this tactic to “help preserve life.”Symptom 4: The Victim Supports or Helps the CaptorThe final symptom of Stockholm Syndrome comes when a victim, instead of trying to escape, tries to help their captor rather than the authorities. In this case, the victim is putting the needs of their captor above their own freedom in order to survive.By this point, someone displaying the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome already believes that their captor might hurt them or people they care about if they don’t comply with their demands. But more importantly, the victim has started to see the world from their captor’s point of view. Helping their captor isn’t something they’re forced to do—people with Stockholm Syndrome do so out of their own free will and their survival instinct.This last symptom can be particularly confusing for authorities, especially when they don’t realize that the victim has Stockholm Syndrome. During the Kreditbanken incident, Kristin Ehnmark was allowed to speak to the then-Prime Minister, Olof Palme, on the phone. Not only did she express distrust of the police, but she also demanded that the victims be allowed to escape with Olsson, not from him!To make things more complicated, this symptom can also manifest itself in a desire to help captors even after the victim has been freed. In fact, Kristen and the other victims of the Kreditbanken robbery visited Olsson in prison for years after the incident.Is Stockholm Syndrome a Real Diagnosis?Although Stockholm Syndrome has captured the public imagination, there is controversy in the medical community about whether it should be classified as its own disorder.Psychologists and psychiatrists use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, as the holy grail of psychological diagnoses. It’s the standard diagnostic tool for any and all psychiatric illnesses and disorders...and Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t appear in the DSM-5.That’s the case for a few reasons. First, the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome are very similar to those of trauma bonding or post-traumatic stress disorder, both of which do appear in the DSM-5. Psychiatrists and psychologists, however, aren’t in agreement about which classification Stockholm Syndrome falls under. Because there’s no extensive body of research or consensus to help solve the argument, Stockholm Syndrome is left out of the DSM-5 entirely.Second, Stockholm Syndrome is incredibly hard to study because it’s so rare. (More on that in a second.) That means it’s hard to come up with a widely accepted metric for diagnosing Stockholm Syndrome since each case is so unique. That makes it nearly impossible to develop a diagnostic rubric for Stockholm Syndrome, which is the DSM-5’s primary purpose.Lastly, Stockholm Syndrome is a syndrome, not a mental disorder or a mental illness. That means that it’s a collection of associated symptoms with no root biological or mental cause. While there are ramifications of Stockholm Syndrome that are similar to a post-traumatic stress disorder, the onset of Stockholm Syndrome is situational, not pathological.So that brings us back to our first question: is Stockholm Syndrome a real diagnosis? Yes and no. While Stockholm Syndrome is not a recognized psychological diagnosis of a mental illness or disorder in the DSM-5, it is a clinical way to explain the unique symptoms that some kidnap and hostage victims display.Thanks for reading

I’ve answered this question before, most recently here, so I’ll just restate that. TL;DR, yes, certainly according to experts on Apartheid and other matters like Mandela, Tutu, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah, the Haifa-based Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, D'Alema the former premier of Italy, Ronnie Kasrils as a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era and former government minister, Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, John Dugard, John Reynolds and many others. An example biography of one of the experts I quoted :Apartheid in Occupied Palestine: A Rejoinder to Yaffa Zilbershats“John Dugard is Emeritus Professor of International Law at the University of Leiden and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. He served as a member of the International Law Commission from 1997–2011 and as UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory from 2001–2008. He has also served as judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice. John Reynolds is the EJ Phelan Fellow in International Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway.”“John Reynolds (pictured right) is the EJ Phelan Fellow in International Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway.Since I first wrote an answer, it’s actually worse with the nation state law described in Vox, i.e.:Israel’s hugely controversial "nation-state" law, explained“The law does three big things:It states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.”It establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, and downgrades Arabic — a language widely spoken by Arab Israelis — to a “special status.”It establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” and mandates that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.””“The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an Israeli human rights organization, has documented entrenched discrimination and socioeconomic differences in “land, urban planning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, and education.” More than half the poor families in Israel are Arab, and Arab municipalities are the poorest in Israel, according to ACRI.What’s more, ACRI says that Arab Israelis are treated with “hostility and mistrust” and that “large sections of the Israeli public [view] the Arab minority as both a fifth column and a demographic threat.”For Arab Israelis, then, the new nation-state law is merely the culmination of years of institutional discrimination. Only now the discrimination is officially enshrined in Israel’s basic law — the country’s constitutional equivalent.”Other experts make similar conclusions - Israel worse than an apartheid state“Recently Yigal Elam, the known Israeli historian, wrote: “The state is, first and foremost, the rule of law, this is its essence, it is not the authority of the people, or the rule of the majority, it is not either the rule of the elites.” He added: “But things have been mixed up with us lately. Israel has given up and removed from under its feet the rule on which any civilised country stands, because the state, which does not recognise its civil content as a priori, appears to be an abnormal state.”Elam concluded: “With the [new Israeli] National Law, the principle of achieving and guaranteeing equality in the social and political rights of all citizens, regardless of religious, ethnic or gender affiliation, is removed. Within such a situation, Israel is not a state but a quasi-state, because the state that denies its civil essence is not worthy of being recognised as a State”.”So back to my original answer, why do people say that Israel is an apartheid state, because of the evidence. It’s easy to cherry pick the odd Arab Muslim celebrity that makes it through the system, so instead I’ll start with Rima Najjar excellent answer Rima Najjar's answer to Do Palestinians from the West Bank all require a biometric ID card to get into Israel, or are their traditional hawiya and permit enough?, specifically this part, the infographic below Identity Crisis: The Israeli ID System which highlights the differential treatment:Another one from Visualizing Palestine shows how roads are separated:Israel's System of Segregated Roads in the Occupied Palestinian TerritoriesAlso, these areas are what Ariel Sharon referred to as the "bantustan model", the same model as the “homelands” in South Africa. This was reported by many news organisations, including here below in Haaretz: People and Politics / Sharon's Bantustans are far from Copenhagen's hope:“The former premier from the Italian left said that three or four years ago he had a long conversation with Sharon, who was in Rome for a brief visit. According to D'Alema, Sharon explained at length that the Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict.The defender of Israel quickly protested. "Surely that was your personal interpretation of what Sharon said."D'Alema didn't give in. "No, sir, that is not interpretation. That is a precise quotation of your prime minister."Supplementary evidence backing D'Alema's story can be found in an expensively produced brochure prepared for Tourism Minister Benny Elon, who is promoting a two-state solution - Israel and Jordan. Under the title "The Road to War: a tiny protectorate, overpopulated, carved up and demilitarized," the Moledet Party leader presents "the map of the Palestinian state, according to Sharon's proposal." Sharon's map is surprisingly similar to the plan for protectorates in South Africa in the early 1960s. Even the number of cantons is the same - 10 in the West Bank (and one more in Gaza). Dr. Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, notes that the South Africans only managed to create four of their 10 planned Bantustans.The Bantustan model, says Liel, was the ugliest of all the tricks used to perpetuate the apartheid regime in most of South Africa's territory. By 1986, unrest in the Bantustans turned into ongoing rioting and terror, which descended into coups in the so-called independent regimes, and South African intervention. The minuscule support the Bantustan governments did enjoy evaporated, so by January 1994, they were finally dismantled and became integrated into the united South Africa of black majority rule.”read more: People and Politics / Sharon's Bantustans are far from Copenhagen's hopeFrom Rula Jebreal in the New York timesChief among the more than 50 discriminatory Israeli laws documented by Adalah, the Haifa-based Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, is the Law of Return, which automatically guarantees Israeli citizenship for every Jew regardless of birthplace. Often, they are shepherded into settlements in the West Bank (illegal under international law), where they receive government benefits. Palestinian Israeli citizens, meanwhile, are subject to a ban on family reunification: If they marry a fellow Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza, they are prohibited from living in Israel under the Citizenship and Entry Into Israel Law.In September, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging the Admissions Committees Law, which allows communities to reject housing applicants based on “cultural and social suitability” — a legal pretext to deny residency to non-Jews. In practice, even before the law was passed, it was virtually impossible for a Palestinian to buy or rent a home in any majority-Jewish city.Further ethnic separation is maintained by the education system. Aside from a few mixed schools, most educational institutions in Israel are divided into Arab and Jewish ones. According to Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a Hebrew University professor of sociology who has produced the most comprehensive survey of Israeli public school curriculums, not one positive reference to Palestinians exists in Israeli high school textbooks. Palestinians are described as either “Arab farmers with no nationality” or fearsome “terrorists,” as Professor Peled-Elhanan documented in her book “Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education.”Calling Israel's occupation of Palestine apartheid isn't lazy or inflammatory – it's based on fact“Do Israeli laws and practices match this definition? In the words of the US State Department, Palestinian citizens face “institutional and societal discrimination”. This affects areas such as immigration and family life, land and housing.”I fought South African apartheid. I see the same brutal policies in IsraelRonnie Kasrils“I was shut down in South Africa for speaking out, and I’m disturbed that the same is happening to critics of Israel now• Ronnie Kasrils was a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era and former government minister‘Benjamin Netanyahu said recently: ‘Israel is not a state of all its citizens … Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and them alone.’ Photograph: Amir Levy/Getty ImagesAs a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist I look with horror on the far-right shift in Israel ahead of this month’s elections, and the impact in the Palestinian territories and worldwide.Israel’s repression of Palestinian citizens, African refugees and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza has become more brutal over time. Ethnic cleansing, land seizure, home demolition, military occupation, bombing of Gaza and international law violations led Archbishop Tutu to declare that the treatment of Palestinians reminded him of apartheid, only worse.”Someone who understood Apartheid well - Nelson Mandela:Nelson Mandela Speaking on Palestine [Extracts]From Mandela’s address at The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (4 December 1997). Tellingly, he CHOSE TO USE the word “Palestinian”."Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians "Nelson Mandela’s harsh attack on Israel at the start of his three-day visit to Australia.“The deputy president of the African National Congress likened Israel to a terrorist state.”We identify with them because we do not believe it is right for the Israeli government to suppress basic human rights in the conquered territories.” Mandela declared.”"If one has to refer to any of the parties as a terrorist state, one might refer to the Israeli government, because they are the people who are slaughtering defenseless and innocent Arabs in the occupied territories, and we don’t regard that as acceptable.”"My view is that talk of peace remains hollow if Israel continues to occupy Arab lands””From a BBC report - Tutu condemns Israeli 'apartheid'“South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused Israel of practising apartheid in its policies towards the Palestinians.The Nobel peace laureate said he was "very deeply distressed" by a visit to the Holy Land, adding that "it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa".In a speech in the United States, carried in the UK's Guardian newspaper, Archbishop Tutu said he saw "the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about".Tutu: Issue is the same in Palestine as it was in South Africa, ‘equality’ – Mondoweiss“I have been to the Ocupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.”Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? - A study coordinated by the Middle East Project of the Democracy and Governance Programme, Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa“Israel’s practices in the Occupied Territories, (OPT) can be defined by the same three ‘pillars’ of apartheid. The first pillar derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews. The product of this in the OPT is an institutionalised system that privileges Jewish settlers and discriminates against Palestinians on the basis of the inferior status afforded to non-Jews by Israel. At the root of this system are Israel’s citizenship laws, whereby group identity is the primary factor in determining questions involving the acquisition of Israeli citizenship. The 1950 Law of Return defines who is a Jew for purposes of the law and allows every Jew to immigrate to Israel or the OPT. The 1952 Citizenship Law then grants automatic citizenship to people who immigrate under the Law of Return, while erecting insurmountable obstacles to citizenship for Palestinian refugees. Israeli law conveying special standing to Jewish identity is then applied extra-territorially to extend preferential legal status and material privileges to Jewish settlers in the OPT and thus discriminate against Palestinians. The review of Israel’s practices under Article 2 of the Apartheid Convention provides abundant evidence of discrimination against Palestinians that flows from that inferior status, in realms such as the right to leave and return to one’s country, freedom of movement and residence, and access to land. The 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law banning Palestinian family unification is a further example of legislation that confers benefits to Jews over Palestinians and illustrates the adverse impact of having the status of Palestinian Arab. The disparity in how the two groups are treated by Israel is highlighted through the application of a harsher set of laws and different courts for Palestinians in the OPT than for Jewish settlers, as well as through the restrictions imposed by the permit and ID systems.The second pillar is reflected in Israel’s grand policy to fragment the OPT for the purposes of segregation and domination. This policy is evidenced by: Israel’s extensive appropriation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink the territorial space available to Palestinians; the hermetic closure and isolation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the OPT; the deliberate severing of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank; and the appropriation and construction policies serving to carve up the West Bank into an intricate and well-serviced network of connected settlements for Jewish-Israelis and an archipelago of besieged and non-contiguous enclaves for Palestinians. That these measures are intended to segregate the population along racial lines in violation of Article 2(d) of the Apartheid Convention is clear from the visible web of walls, separate roads, and checkpoints, and the invisible web of permit and ID systems, that combine to ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory. Whether the confinement of Palestinians to certain reserves or enclaves within the OPT is analogous to South African ‘grand apartheid’ in the further sense that Israel intends Palestinian rights ultimately to be met by the creation of a State in parts of the OPT whose rationale is based on racial segregation engages political questions beyond the scope and method of this study. Within the scope of this study is that, much as the same restrictions functioned in apartheid South Africa, the policy of geographic fragmentation has the effect of crushing Palestinian socio-economic life, securing Palestinian vulnerability to Israeli economic dominance, and of enforcing a rigid segregation of Palestinian and Jewish populations. The fragmentation of the territorial integrity of a self-determination unit for the purposes of racial segregation and domination is prohibited by international law.The third pillar upon which Israel’s system of apartheid in the OPT rests is its ‘security’ laws and policies. The extrajudicial killing, torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of Palestinians, as described under the rubric of Article 2(a) of the Apartheid 22 | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Convention, are all justified by Israel on the pretext of security. These policies are State-sanctioned, and often approved by the Israeli judicial system, and supported by an oppressive code of military laws and a system of improperly constituted military courts. Additionally, this study finds that Israel's invocation of 'security' to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement also often purports to mask a true underlying intent to suppress dissent to its system of domination, and thereby maintain control over Palestinians as a group. This study does not contend that Israel’s claims about security are by definition lacking in merit; however, Israel's invocation of 'security' to validate severe policies and disproportionate practices toward the Palestinians often masks the intent to suppress Palestinian opposition to a system of domination by one racial group over another.”In the European Journal of International Law - Apartheid, International Law, and the Occupied Palestinian TerritoryJohn Dugard, John Reynolds“The available evidence suggests that Israel is responsible for committing inhuman acts within the meaning of Article 2(a), (c), (d), and (f) of the Apartheid Convention, while it does not suggest Israeli culpability for the inhuman acts described by Article 2(b) and (e) of the Convention.Article 2(a) relates to the denial to a member or members of a racial group of the right to life and liberty of person. Israel’s policies and practices in the West Bank include denial of the right to life through state-sanctioned extra-judicial killings of Palestinians opposed to the occupation, including the targeting of political leaders and militants at times when they were not participating in hostilities and were thus protected by international humanitarian law.127To aggravate matters, such targeted killings have often resulted in the killing of innocent bystanders as ‘collateral damage’.128The Israeli Supreme Court has placed restraints on this practice short of declaring it unlawful,129but it continues unabated. In many cases the killing of Palestinian militants constitutes the extra-judicial killing of persons who could be arrested and brought to trial rather than summarily executed. South Africa’s apartheid security forces on occasion killed political opponents in an arbitrary and secretive manner,130but in most instances they preferred to bring such persons to trial. This was because treason and terrorism were capital crimes in a country that then practised the death penalty. Arguably, South Africa’s judicially approved execution of militants was more forthright than Israel’s extrajudicial executions, which allow militants to be killed while at the same time allowing Israel to proclaim proudly that it does not practise the death penalty. Certainly apartheid South Africa did not practise systematic extrajudicial killings openly and with the public authorization of senior security and political officials as is done by Israel.”ISRAELI APARTHEID FACTSHEET - War on Want NGOUN OFFICIALS AND COMMITTEES ON ISRAEL AND APARTHEIDIsrael’s treatment of Palestinians has been regularly cited by UN Special Rapporteurs on the Human Rights Situation in Palestine as evidence of an Apartheid system in action. For example:● Richard Falk, emeritus professor of law at Princeton University and UN special rapporteur 2008-2014, wrote in a report to the UN Human Rights Council that Israel is guilty of racial discrimination, apartheid and torture in its “systematic oppression” of the Palestinian people. (UN document A/HRC/25/67)● John Dugard, South African law professor and Falk’s predecessor in the post of UN Special Rapporteur, wrote a detailed study in 2013 on whether the charge of apartheid applies to Israel, concluding: “On the basis of the systemic and institutionalized nature of the racial domination that exists, there are indeed strong grounds to conclude that a system of apartheid has developed in the occupied Palestinian territory. Israeli practices in the occupied territory are not only reminiscent of – and, in some cases, worse than – apartheid as it existed in South Africa, but are in breach of the legal prohibition of apartheid.”● The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination censured Israel in 2012 for implementing “two entirely separate legal systems and sets of institutions for Jewish communities grouped in illegal settlements on the one hand and Palestinian populations living in Palestinian towns and villages on the other hand.” The Committee declared itself “particularly appalled at the hermetic character of the separation of two groups, who live on the same territory but do not enjoy either equal use of roads and infrastructure or equal access to basic services and water resources”. It called on Israel to eradicate all policies and practices of “racial segregation and apartheid” affecting the Palestinian people (UN document CERD/C/ISR/CO/14-16).● In March 2017, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) commissioned and published a report called 'Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid' which concludes, "on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it." The report also recommends that national governments and civil society actors should support boycott, divestment and sanctions activities in response to Israel's Apartheid regime.ISRAELI OFFICIALS ON APARTHEIDA number of Israeli government officials have used the term apartheid in reference to Israeli control over Palestinians:● Reuven Rivlin, the currently sitting President of Israel, was quoted in the Israeli press on 12 February 2017 saying that Israel’s newly passed ‘Regularisation Law’, which formally expropriates several tracts of Palestinian land, “will cause Israel to be seen as an apartheid state.”● One of the first people to use the word apartheid in relation to Israel was Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. Following the 1967 June war, he warned of Israel becoming an “apartheid state” if it retained control of the occupied territory, which it has done.● In 1999, then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak stated: "Every attempt to keep hold of [Israel and the occupied territory] as one political entity leads, necessarily, to either a nondemocratic or a non-Jewish state. Because if the Palestinians vote, then it is a binational state, and if they don’t vote it is an apartheid state.” In 2010, Barak repeated the apartheid comparison, stating: "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic… If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."LEGAL SCHOLARS ON APARTHEID AND ISRAEL: ‘OCCUPATION, COLONIALISM, APARTHEID’● In 2009, an international team of legal scholars working under the auspices of the Human Sciences Research Council in Cape Town, South Africa published a study called Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? The study concluded that the Israeli state has imposed a state of Apartheid on the Palestinian people, in that Israel is guilty of many of the practices and policies of Apartheid identified in the Apartheid Convention adopted by the United Nations in 1973, and that these acts together constitute the “integrated and complementary elements of an institutionalised and oppressive system of Israeli domination and oppression over Palestinians as a group; that is, a system of apartheid.”● The study noted that Israel has implemented all three of the pillars that characterised apartheid in the South African context, namely: (a) the categorisation of the population along racial lines; (b) the segregation of the population on the basis of this categorisation into different geographical areas allocated to different racial groups; and (c) a system of laws and policies that subject the Palestinian people to extrajudicial killing, torture and arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as sweeping restrictions on Palestinians’ rights to freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement.PollsPalestinians are seen as second class citizens including the desire to implement ethnic transfer, segregation and exclusion from voting. Looking at the survey, the majority acknowledge Apartheid! One can start with the Times of Israel: Nearly half of Jewish Israelis want to expel Arabs, survey showsPew study finds 79% believe Jews should get preferential treatment over Arab citizensOrSurvey: Most Israeli Jews wouldn't give Palestinians vote if West Bank was annexed (Haaretz)BBC NewsIsraeli anti-Arab racism 'rises'“Israeli Arabs complain they are treated differently to Israel's JewsAn Israeli civil rights group has said racism against Arab citizens of Israel has risen sharply in the past year.In a report, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said expression of anti-Arab views had doubled, and racist incidents had increased by 26%.Christian or Muslim Arab citizens of Israel make up 20% of the population.But the civil rights quoted polls suggesting half of Jewish Israelis do not believe Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights.About the same amount said they wanted the government to encourage Arab emigration from Israel.In another poll, almost 75% of Jewish youths said Arabs were less intelligent and less clean than Jews.”Ynet News‘Marriage to an Arab is national treason’“Recent poll reveals steep rise in racist views against Arabs in Israel; many participants feel hatred, fear when overhearing Arabic, 75 percent don’t approve of shared apartment buildingsRoee Nahmias|Published: 27.03.07 , 19:55Over half of the Jewish population in Israel believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to a recent survey by the Geocartography Institute. The survey, which was conducted for the Center Against Racism, also found that over 75 percent of participants did not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews. Sixty percent of participants said they would not allow an Arab to visit their home. Five hundred Jewish men and women participated in the poll, which was published Tuesday. “Ynet news againPoll: 36% of Jews want to revoke Arabs' voting rights“While few Israeli Jews say they are nationalistic, many favor anti-democratic values, survey findsThirty-six percent of Israeli Jews are in favor of revoking the voting rights of non-Jews, Yedioth Ahronoth reported, citing findings by the Dahaf polling agency, headed by Dr. Mina Tzemach.”Poll: Half of Israeli high schoolers oppose equal rights for Arabs”“In response to the question of whether Arab citizens should be granted rights equal to that of Jews, 49.5 percent answered in the negative. “Catrina Stewart in The IndependentThe new Israeli apartheid: Poll reveals widespread Jewish support for policy of discrimination against Arab minority“47 per cent of respondents would like to see Israel's Arab citizens stripped of their citizenship rightsClassroom shortages and unequal property rights are ‘proof’ of Israeli Arabs’ second-class status ReutersA new poll has revealed that a majority of Israeli Jews believe that the Jewish State practises "apartheid" against Palestinians, with many openly supporting discriminatory policies against the country's Arab citizens.A third of respondents believe that Israel's Arab citizens should be denied the vote, while almost half – 47 per cent – would like to see them stripped of their citizenship rights and placed under Palestinian Authority control, according to Israel's liberal Haaretz newspaper, which published the poll's findings yesterday.”Times of Israel - Ashkelon warned over Arab worker ban, as poll shows public support“Weinstein wrote in a letter to Shimoni that his singling out of a specific ethnic group for the directive was “likely to have serious public and legal repercussions.”“Not employing workers due to their being Arabs, and having a public official sending the message that employing Arabs is undesirable, does not comply with the law,” Weinstein wrote.In his letter, the attorney general demanded an explanation from Shimoni.Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein (Photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)Weinstein’s warning followed fierce condemnation of the Ashkelon mayor’s move from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin and politicians from both sides of the political spectrum.But many Israelis backed the directive, which came on the heels of a Tuesday terror attack by Palestinians from East Jerusalem on a synagogue in Har Nof, in which five Israelis were killed, in a part of Jerusalem far from the violence that has wracked the city in recent weeks.A Channel 10 poll showed 58 percent of Israelis supported Shimoni’s move, 32% did not support it and 10% did not know. The channel did not release methodology details.”Academic Research on “Ethnic Democracy”The concept of ethnic democracy dominates the question of Apartheid. Here is an academic paper on the topic with some quotes below it.As’ad Ghanem, Nadim Rouhana and Oren Yiftachel, Questioning “Ethnic Democracy”“As an ethnic state, Israel makes equality between Arab and Jew impossible in practice or in theory. It is membership in the Jewish people, not citizenship in Israel, that is the chief criterion for the claim of state ownership. The state system is predicated on a constitutional arrangement that contradicts the conditions of equal citizenship and, therefore, democracy. The essence of this contradiction stems from Israel’s very raison d’être. As argued elsewhere, (Rouhana 1997), Israel embodies in theory, ideology, and practice exclusive Jewish state ownership in the sense that Israel is the state of the Jewish people only. It is the political tool of the Jewish people regardless of citizenship; thus the state is structurally and openly biased in favor of one of its two main ethnic groups.Accordingly, Israel is an “ethnic state,” in which the exclusive privileges of the dominant ethnic group is constitutionally grounded in a number of most important Basic Laws including the Laws of Return and Citizenship, and Basic Law: the Knesset (Section 7A), which defines Israel as the state of the Jewish people and limits the right of citizens to campaign democratically for representation in the parliament if they do not recognize that Israel is the state of the Jewish people.(Kretzmer 1990; Rouhana 1997) Thus Israel has been termed a “constitutionally exclusive ethnic state,”[9] whose exclusion of the Arab citizens from its national goals, identity, and mission is constitutional.Furthermore, as elaborated below, a number of laws that deal with most important issues, such as land ownership and control, education, and distribution of resources, openly base privileged treatment on being Jewish. In addition, there are numerous regulations that do not use the term Jewish or Arab explicitly, but which make it clear that preferential treatment of Jewish citizens is supported by statutory law and institutional regulations.[10] These regulations cover a broad range of individual and collective state-supported assistance. Thus, Israel, by imposing the criterion of belonging to a group—ethnic affIliation—for privileged and discriminatory treatment, anchors the violation of equal opportunity in its own law. A Jewish state (in the form established in Israel) cannot provide the prerequisites for equal citizenship and, hence, for democracy. Furthermore, the violations of equal citizenship that are anchored in constitutional law and the legal system itself are supported by broad segments of both the Jewish public and the Jewish elites.Unequal citizenship that is obviously inferior deprives Arab citizens of a meaningful identity that derives from their citizenship. Under the existing ethnic structure that so openly prefers Jew to Arab, and that sometimes treats Arabs as an internal or potential enemy, identification with the state is paramount to accepting constitutional inferiority and being existentially unequal. One of Smooha’s fundamental theoretical and empirical claims is that the Arabs have undergone a profound process of Israelization,[11] a conclusion that is based on conceptual and methodological pitfalls.[12] Israelization, in the sense of accepting Jewish exclusivity and privilege and the Arab inferiority that comes with it, and in the sense of accepting Israel as the state of the Jewish people, is an illusionary identity at best and a distorted identity at worst. The failure to over—even theoretically—equal citizenship means that the only identity Israel can provide is, at its center, one which enforces inequality and exclusion.”The history of Zionism.I’ll begin this part by looking at Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940) and then Arthur Ruppin. Jabotinsky is a huge figure in this narrative:Jabotinsky helped lead Revisionist Zionist Movement which eventually evolved into the post-1948 Herut Party and eventually the Likud Party. His Secretary, a historian Benzion Netanyahu is the father of Binyamin Netanyahu. Benzion’s final book, The Founding Fathers of Zionism, described Israel as a country that—like America—was built on the intellectual foundations of its founders: Leo Pinsker, Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Israel Zangwill, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky.Jabotinsky also set up the party's youth movement, Betar, which was characterized by militaristic, almost fascist, appearance including dark brown uniforms. Jabotinsky admired Mussolini. His movement repeatedly sought affiliation with and assistance from Rome.In his IRON WALL article that was published in Ha'aretz Daily in 1923. Jabotinsky stated:".... Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an IRON WALL which they will be powerless to break down. ....a voluntary agreement is just not possible. As long as the Arabs preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed in getting rid of us, nothing in the world can cause them to relinquish this hope, precisely because they are not a rubble but a living people. And a living people will be ready to yield on such fateful issues only when they give up all hope of getting rid of the Alien Settlers. Only then will extremist groups with their slogan 'No, never' lose their influence, and only then their influence be transferred to more moderate groups. And only then will the moderates offer suggestions for compromise. Then only will they begin bargaining with us on practical matters, such as guarantees against PUSHING THEM OUT, and equality of civil, and national rights."From "Eliminate the Diaspora, or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you." (From "Tisha B'av 1937"), Jabotinsky said“the source of national feeling … lies in a man’s blood … in his racio-physical type, and in that alone … a man’s spiritual outlooks are primarily determined by his physical structure … For that reason we do not believe in spiritual assimilation. It is inconceivable, from the physical point of view, that a Jew born to a family of pure Jewish blood … can become adapted to the spiritual outlooks of a German or a Frenchman … He maybe wholly imbued with that German fluid but the nucleus of his spiritual structure will always remain Jewish”“A Jew brought up among Germans may assume German custom, German words. He may be wholly imbued with that German fluid but the nucleus of his spiritual structure will always remain Jewish, because his blood, his body, his physical-racial type are Jewish. ... It is impossible for a man to become assimilated with people whose blood is different from his own. In order to become assimilated, he must change his body, he must become one of them, in blood. ... There can be no assimilation as long as there is no mixed marriage. ... An increase in the number of mixed marriages is the only sure and infallible means for the destruction of nationality as such. ... A preservation of national integrity is impossible except by a preservation of racial purity, and for that purpose we are in need of a territory of our own where our people will constitute the overwhelming majority”Jabotinsky stated in 1923, according to the book America And The Founding Of Israel, John W Mulhall (Author), p.90:"The Arabs loved their country as much as the Jews did. Instinctively, they understood Zionist aspirations very well, and their decision to resist them was only natural ..... There was no misunderstanding between Jew and Arab, but a natural conflict. .... No Agreement was possible with the Palestinian Arab; they would accept Zionism only when they found themselves up against an 'iron wall,' when they realize they had no alternative but to accept Jewish settlement."Moving on to Arthur Ruppin :He headed the Jewish Agency between 1933 and 1935, ‘The Father of Jewish settlement in Palestine’ and helped to settle the large numbers of Jewish immigrants. (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Benny Morris)"This very likeness to the Asiatic peoples, from whom they have been separated for 2000 years, shows that the Jews have remained unchanged, and that in the Jews of today we may say we may have the same people who fought victoriously under King David, who repented their misdeeds under Ezra and Nehemiah, died fighting for freedom under Bar-Kokhba, were the great carriers of trade under between Europe and the Orient in the early Middle Ages….Thus the Jews have not only preserved their great natural racial gifts, but through a long process of selection these gifts have become strengthened. The terrible conditions under which the Jews lived during the last 500 years necessitated a bitter struggle for life in which only the cleverest and strongest survived… The result is that in the Jew of today, we have what is in some respects a particular valuable human type. Other nations may have other points of superiority, but in respect of intellectual gifts the Jews can scarcely be surpassed by any nation.” (The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand)“I do not believe in the TRANSFER of an individual. I believe in the TRANSFER of entire villages.” (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Benny Morris)What ‘The Father’ had in mind? Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943), cultural identity, weltanschauung and action“Ruppin’s constant aspiration for racial purity in the Jews emerged from within the scientific and medical discourse which praised racial purity”Review of “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel” by Ari ShavitIn Shavit’s words, the Arabs living there “are hardly noticeable to a Victorian gentleman,” who as a “white man of the Victorian era, cannot see non-whites as equals.” Shavit’s great-grandfather “does not see because he is motivated by the need not to see.” And in this respect, he was typical of the early Zionists. [Cf. also Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, by John B. Judis.] Shavit says that among the early Zionists only Israel Zangwill had a clear view of the Arab population of Palestine, and Zangwill asserted that the Zionists must “drive out by sword the tribes in possession, as our forefathers did.”Prior to 1948, few Zionists would have admitted to agreeing with Zangwill. At the same time, few of them would have looked on their Arab neighbors as equals. Shavit describes the early Zionists as living in a state of denial about the Arabs.Finally, one cannot claim that the Palestinians haven’t made pece offers as shown by leaked papers:Secret papers reveal slow death of Middle East peace process“The offers were made in 2008-9, in the wake of George Bush's Annapolis conference, and were privately hailed by the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, as giving Israel "the biggest Yerushalayim [the Hebrew name for Jerusalem] in history" in order to resolve the world's most intractable conflict. Israeli leaders, backed by the US government, said the offers were inadequate.”To summarize, the comparison with Apartheid is done via:Direct quotes from politiciansLegal structuresExternal expertsFeedback from key players in the South African modelPollsAcademic researchHistorical concepts based on race theoryHard evidence of offers of peace from the Palestinian side