Dr Uri Davis is a philosophical anthropologist; honorary research fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Durham and at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.
He is the author of "Apartheid Israel: Possibilities For the Struggle Within" ( Zed Books). Uriel (Uri) Davis (born 1943 in Jerusalem, Palestine) is an academic and a civil rights activist in Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Middle East. He has served as Vice-Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and as lecturer in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, describes himself as "a Palestinian Hebrew national of Jewish origin, anti-Zionist, registered as Muslim and a citizen of an apartheid state - the State of Israel”, has been a member of Fatah since 1984, and was elected to the Revolutionary Council for the Palestinian party in 2009 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Davis
and http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/israels-apartheid/3451430 ).
According to an Australian ABC summary, "Uri Davis believes it's the truth that the state of Israel is possibly the last surviving apartheid state amongst the member states of the United Nations. He advocates international sanctions against the government of Israel, with the aim of dismantling the state's apartheid structures as a state for Jews only, and to assist the establishment of a democratic state of Palestine." . [1].
Uri Davis on Israeli Apartheid (2004): “The Geneva Accords fail to secure the removal of apartheid legislation from the Israeli statute books. Besides the Absentees Property Law mentioned earlier, key laws in this context are the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency Status Law of 1952 and the Jewish National Fund Law of 1953. The Accords also fail to address the circumstances of the one million Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (20 per cent of the total population of the pre-1967 Israel). While all Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel suffer the effects of Israeli apartheid legislation, some two hundred thousand among them suffer additional disabilities by virtue of being internally displaced persons. They are citizens of the State of Israel, yet, insofar as their pre-1948 property rights are con-cerned, their status is identical to that of the 1948 Palestine refugees. These fundamental omissions are likely to bring about the demise of the Geneva Accords, in a similar way as the Oslo Accords collapsed because a “peace process” and “interim arrangements” were used to avoid confronting the issues at the core of the Palestine question.” [2
Uri Davis on the “political-Zionist apartheid JNF" and the Palestinian Genocide (2011): “On 30 March, Palestinians will celebrate the 35th anniversary of Land Day, commemorating the death of six Palestinian Arabs (five of whom were citizens of Israel) who actively resisted the decision of the Israeli Government in the 1970s to intensify the confiscation of Arab lands for settlements designated for “Jews” only. Also in March, the 81st issue of PYALARA’s Youth Times was printed, featuring Raniya Atallah’s splendid investigative report on the development of the new Palestinian city of Rawabi, nine kilometers north of Ramallah with a panoramic view of the Mediterranean, project of national importance and the symbol of the Palestinian right to build. On 8 February 2011, I published the summary of my research on Rawabi, and its acceptance of a large donation of pine trees from the Zionist charity the Jewish National Fund (JNF)… As I explained in my earlier article, the JNF is an organization largely behind the “greenwashing” of the expulsion of Palestinians from their villages by planting trees (mainly conifers), over the lands of many of the some 500 Palestinian Arab villages ethnically cleansed by the Israeli army in the 1948-49 war (the Palestinian Nakba) as well as by developing recreational parks named after various local and international dignitaries and after various member states of the United Nations. The JNF also developed Canada Park, this time over the ruins of and over the lands of the three Latrun villages of ‘Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba ethnically cleansed by the Israeli army in the 1967 war. The mission of the political-Zionist apartheid JNF is the “redemption” of lands in “Eretz Israel,” including Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and beyond for Jewish settlement. In accepting the donation of the JNF 3,000 saplings, Rawabi becomes complicit in the actions of the organization, particularly as cases go forward in the UK and Canada, seeking to have their charitable status revoked.” [3].
[1]. Dr Uri Davis, interviewed by Phillip Adams,“Israel’s Apartheid”, :Late Night Live, : http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/israels-apartheid/3451430 .
[2]. Uri Davis, “Apartheid Israel: a critical reading gof the Geneva Accords”, Peace News, March-May 2004: http://peacenews.info/node/3978/apartheid-israel-critical-reading-geneva-accords .
{3]. Uri Davis, “Rawabi remains settler-colonial sub-contractor”, BDS, 31 March 2011: http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/davis-rawabi-5931 .
[4]. Uri Davis, “Ten theses on the marketing of Israeli Apartheid as “The only democracy in the MiddleEast,” the question of support for the boycott of Israeli industrial, academic, cultural and scientific institutions and international U.N. sanctions against the rogue government of the state of Israel”: http://www.uridavis-official-website.info/ .
Dr Uri Davis (Jewish Palestinian academic, writer and human rights activist) on Zionism, 93% ethnic cleansing of Israel, and Apartheid Israel (2005): “Zionism is not a swear word, Zionism is not a conspiracy. When I refer to myself as an anti-Zionist, I do so with reference to the mainstream. The mainstream and the dominant element in Zionist history is political Zionism. But there have been other schools, and some of these schools within the Zionist environment have been bitter opponents of the mainstream of political Zionism. I would refer in this connection for instance, to the school known as spiritual Zionism, founded and led by a very distinguished Jewish intellectual known as Ahad Ha'am , Asher Ginsburg. And the vision is significant, whereas the political Zionist school aimed to establish a sovereign State, and attempt to secure in that territory both in law and in practice, a demographic majority of ethnic Jews. Spiritual Zionism were very vehement and strongly opposed to that. Ahad Ha'am argued very much in favour of establishing in Jerusalem, a cultural centre for the Jewish people, and was dead opposed to the establishment of a Jewish State. He had a series of seminal articles published in the wake of his visit to Palestine, and these should be re-read again today. They were prophetic, he explained, that the banner or the slogan of "A Land without the People, for a People without the Land" is wholly false, that the country is populated, that attempting to establish a State there would result in a protracted and unjustified conflict he was against, then, to our project… You're quite right, you don't see petty apartheid in Israel. But the core is very similar, both in South Africa and in Israel; the core is a conflict between a settler-colonial State and the indigenous population, and these conflicts are anchored in the quest of the settler State to appropriate control of the land and the sub-soil, and deny the indigenous peoples their rights in the land and the sub-soil. The consequence of this project in South Africa resulted in some 87% of the territory reserved in law for white settlement cultivation and development. In Israel it's worse. At the core, namely access to land, housing and sub-soil, 93% of the territory of the State of Israel, 93% is reserved in law exclusively for Jewish settlement, cultivation and development” (Uri Davis in interview, “Apartheid Israel?”, ABC Radio National, The Religion Report, 8 June 2005: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/religionreport/apartheid-israel/3442902#transcript ).