'Apartheid' Not Sufficient To Describe Israeli Settler Colonialism

By David Kattenburg, The Real News

Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East has come and gone. Biden dropped in on Israeli and Palestinian leaders, then flew to Saudi Arabia for the top of his agenda—getting the Saudis to pump more oil, countering Russia and China’s challenge to US hegemony in the region, and uniting Arabs and Israelis against archenemy Iran. Israel’s permanent subjugation of 5 million Palestinians did not come up. Accountability for the murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was soft-pedaled. Against the backdrop of US indifference on these and other human rights matters, a handful of international bodies are taking a much closer look, and building a legal case. One of them, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry, has just issued its first report on the root causes of violence in Palestine in May 2021, triggered by the imminent eviction of Palestinian families from their homes, and the police attack on worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque which killed nearly three hundred Palestinians, including 66 children, and thirteen Israelis. Independent journalist David Kattenburg interviews Miloon Kothari, a former UN Human Rights Commissioner and one of the three members of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.