I note that John Kerry is backing away from his (self-evident) statement that without a two-state solution, Israel would become an apartheid state.
Daily Beast: John Kerry apologized Monday for warning last week that the lack of a two-state solution in the Middle East could lead to Israel becoming an “apartheid state.” Kerry’s remarks, made in a closed door meeting of the Trilateral Commission and first reported by The Daily Beast Sunday night, provoked strong reactions from across the political spectrum.
In a statement issued Monday evening, Kerry defended his record as a supporter of Israel but also said, “if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution.”
But Israel is already an apartheid state.
The simple reality is that all states which have or have had an official state religion have practiced apartheid. They inevitably created different classes of citizenship. Some countries (UK, Scandinavia) have now softened their positions and have legislation to protect those of other religions while still maintaining an “official religion”. In the UK the top 25 servants of the Church of England still have an automatic place in Parliament. Many states still give strong preference to those following the official religion and in such states – whether they admit it or not – a form of religious apartheid is in place. Many of these are Muslim countries (Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, Afghanistan and the Muslim countries of the Middle East and Africa).To be a non-Jew in Israel is to be a second-class citizen. Israel still has no provisions for civil marriage or for marriage between people who do not belong to one of the 9 recognised religions. To be a Hindu in Sri Lanka is currently a distinct disadvantage. To be a non-Buddhist in Cambodia has its difficulties.
Religious discrimination is much more widespread and is practiced at community level and at the level of individuals all over the globe. In most of Europe it is a clear disadvantage to be visibly a Muslim. Most of the right-wing, nationalistic parties would like to return to a “Christian” state religion – but that is not because they wish to be Christian but because they want to give their anti-Islamic views a cloak of “officious” respectability.
Politics and religion make a heady mix and nationalistic and religious fanaticism will continue as long as religions continue and nation-states continue.
I won’t live to see it but there will come a time when individual faith takes precedence and organised religions and their brainwashing will be abandoned. And nation-states could – hopefully – have become obsolete by then.
Tags: Apartheid, nation-states, religion, religious discrimination
The k2p blog 
April 29, 2014 at 7:22 am
This is patently and categorically False. Do some research on demonize before making such an ignorant post.
April 29, 2014 at 7:29 am
Complete falsehood. Try researching it next time. The most murderous practices of apartheid, democide and genocide come from religious practice of atheism. It is individualistic belief that gave us Hitler genocide against a religious and ethnic people group. Stalin, Lenin, Amin, Pol Pot, Mao, and the Kims, all focused on themselves murdered on a scale never seen in the last century. Your dogmatic anti – religious screed is totally backward. More people die at the hands of their own government in application of the will to power in one century than in all the wars of history.
April 29, 2014 at 7:31 am
Another crusade, another jihad. N Ireland, the Spanish Inquisition, the Taliban, Boko Haram ………
April 29, 2014 at 7:43 am
You are a babe in the woods my friend on this topic. I have studied genocide since Anfal province in 1988. Do you really want to pretend any compare to what Atheists caused in the 20th Centtury? Nationalists that told their people if they had enough “elan” bullets would pass right through them?
To help open your eyes to the reality of how backward you have it: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM
There is a very thorough, academic study in numbers for you.
April 29, 2014 at 8:07 am
I don’t know what I don’t know but I am not very impressed by organised religions or nationalism.
Why don’t you write a post on the subject on your blog?
Instead of appealing to authorities who have no relevance for me?
Or send me a post as a possible guest post here?
May 1, 2014 at 8:48 pm
“Another crusade, another jihad. N Ireland, the Spanish Inquisition, the Taliban, Boko Haram ………”
CRUSADES – Primarily a response to Muslim aggression.
JIHAD, TALIBAN, BOKO HARAM – Fruits of Islam: ‘nuf said.
N.IRELAND – More political than Religious. There’s nothing explicit in Christianity requiring such behavior that I’m aware of.
INQUISITIONS – The number of dead from the Spanish Inquisition (one of many) was, as with the violence in N.Ireland, each on a par with just one hour of Jihad on 9/11, from about 2,000 to 3,000 apiece. While evil, it in no way approaches the diabolic magnitude of the atrocities perpetrated by atheists of the last century.
The body counts racked by atheist self-worshipers listed by lehautegryphon were in the tens of millions. If anything, religion (excepting Islam) results in an attenuation of the human impulse to kill anyone we disagree with. Blaming it as a cause just because it cannot totally irradicate said impulse is just irrational.
Finally, there’s absolutely no justification for Kerry’s anti-Semitic slander of Israel, at all. It arises from the same failed ideology as do the warmist fantasies, which is the control of humanity by the very same self-appointed elitists as are propagating the climate hysteria (as is Kerry, btw).
Human nature unchecked is the problem, not religion per se.
May 5, 2014 at 7:06 am
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