Congresswomen Visit Shiloh and Think Apartheid

I had posted here the impressions of Ruchie Avital who, together with two other women, had met at Shiloh with a Women's delegation brought to Israel by J Street.

JTA has now included details from the other side, among them, the visit to Shiloh:

...The J Street trip also included visits with Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

From Ramallah, the group drove to Shiloh, a Jewish town in the heart of the West Bank halfway between Ramallah and Nablus that because of its location likely would not be incorporated into Israel in any two-state settlement.

A group of Jewish women from several area settlements met with the congresswomen and told them they have no intention of leaving their homes.

“I’m holding the Bible; Shiloh was our first capital before Jerusalem and it has layers and layers of history,” Tzofiah Dorot, the director of Ancient Shiloh, told the women. “This is the heart of Israel and I don’t see a future for the state if you take the heart out.”

All of the women said they were sure that their settlements would remain part of Israel.

“This is our homeland, the homeland of the Jewish nation -- period,” Tamar Aslaf told the delegation. “A Palestinian who lives here is welcome to stay. It’s his home but it’s our homeland.”

Several of the settlers described a scenario in which Palestinians could stay in their homes but not receive national or voting rights. That drew a sharp reply from the congresswomen, five of whom are African Americans. [This isn't true. Tamar presented Naftali Bennet’s plan, that C would be annexed with its 50,000 Arab population becoming full Israeli citizens if they so wished^.]

“Some people would call that apartheid,” * said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the only white congresswomen on the trip.

“It’s easy to sit in your comfortable house and decide what is good for the Jews,” Dorot responded. “I’m begging you to see that we’re not pieces of Lego you can move around. This is life and death. We all need to think out of the box. I’m asking you to forget about the two-state solution.”

Several members of the delegation said the trip gave them a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...

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Naftali Bennett, the co-founder of the right-wing NGO My Israel, has circulated a plan to annex Judea and Samaria...Bennett said he would annex all of Area C. He would offer Israeli citizenship to the 48,000 Palestinians who live in Area C...Granting citizenship to these Palestinians would eliminate all talk of Israel as an apartheid state, he said. But he added that Palestinian refugees who live outside of Area C would not be able to move there.  Under his plan, he said, the Palestinian Authority would remain in control of Areas A and B, where there are no Jewish communities.

*

Apartheid?

Consider this:

Citizens of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., are no longer permitted to vote for US Congressional elections, nor State Elections...DC citizens had voting rights removed in 1801 by Congres...In 1978, Congress proposed a constitutional amendment that would have restored the District a full seat for representation in the Congress as well. This amendment failed to receive ratification by sufficient number of states within the seven years required.

Since then, Congress has consistently refused to offer for ratification a constitutional amendment that would restore District of Columbia residents either representation in both the Senate and the House...

...Puerto Rico is an insular area — a United States territory that is neither a part of one of the fifty states nor a part of the District of Columbia, the nation's federal district. Insular areas, such as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, are not allowed to choose electors in U.S. presidential elections or elect voting members of the U.S. Congress...the U.S. national-electoral process is not fully democratic due to U.S. Government disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico...

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