DEATH TO ZIONISM

Human Rights In Israel & Occupied Palestine
By Stephen Lendman3-5-9
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) publishes annual reports on "The State of Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories." This article reviews its December 2008 one as human rights activists commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10.

ACRI is Israel's leading human and civil rights organization and the only one addressing all liberty and rights issues. It was founded in 1972, is independent and nonpartisan, believes human and civil rights are universal, and leads the struggle for these issues in Israel and Occupied Palestine (OPT) through litigation, legal advocacy, education, and public outreach.

Ten years ago on UDHR's 50th anniversary, ACRI assessed the status of human rights in Israel and discovered some troubling phenomena and trends:

-- inequality,

-- social gaps,
-- human rights violations in the OPT,

-- eroding social rights,

-- increasing privatization of social services, and more.

Even so, ACRI noted that "The State of Israel has impressive achievements in the field of human rights." A decade later, ACRI concludes that troubling 1997 trends are now worse. Human rights aren't in a constitution. Israel has none. Only some are in the Basic Laws, and those apply only for Jews. Israeli Arab citizens have no rights whatever.

"The State of Israel has increasingly shirked its responsibility to ensure its citizens the most fundamental rights:"

-- to health,

-- education,

-- housing, and

-- to live in dignity.

Quite the opposite:

-- inequality is growing,

-- socioeconomic gaps are widening,

-- free expression and privacy are threatened,

-- racist trends are more common,

-- so are ones that limit basic freedoms and endanger human and civil rights; legislation for them has been tabled in the Knesset,

-- judicial equity is eroding,

-- so is democracy,

-- civil society organizations and activists are threatened,

-- institutionalized discrimination exists,

-- Arab Israelis are disadvantaged, persecuted, endangered, and live under third-world conditions, especially in "unrecognized villages" in the Negev and Galilee;

-- the gap between Arabs and Jews has widened, and

-- all of the above is in Israel.

In Occupied Palestine, conditions are far worse and oppressive. "For forty-one years, Israel has denied fundamental rights to four million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza," effectively controlling their lives, and repressively denying them their rights under military occupation:

-- to life,

-- liberty,

-- personal security,

-- free movement and expression,

-- to earn a living,
-- to health,
-- education,
-- to basic dignity, and much more.

ACRI compiled its data from numerous and varied sources:

-- non-governmental organizations,

-- newspapers,

-- Knesset deliberations and documents, and

-- Israeli published material and court proceedings.

Its report covers equality, civil, and social rights.

The Right to Equality

Click here: http://www.rense.com/general85/hmn.htm to read more.