Hypocrisy on a Truly Epic Scale. “Apartheid”? Blame the Geneva Convention

...In short, it’s precisely all those people who insist the West Bank is “occupied territory” who have no grounds to complain about the discriminatory legal system in place there–because occupied territories are supposed to be governed by the Geneva Convention, which mandates this discriminatory regime. That such people are now accusing Israel of “apartheid” for having bowed to their demand to apply the convention is hypocrisy on a truly epic scale.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
08 May '14..

John Kerry’s infamous apartheid comment continues to make waves in Israel, eliciting push-back from some surprising places–like yesterday’s Haaretz column by Zvi Bar’el. Bar’el, whom nobody could accuse of being an Israel apologist (his column asserts Israeli control over the West Bank is even worse than the apartheid), points out that under apartheid, the legal regime discriminates between citizens of the same country. That’s fundamentally different from an occupation, under which the legal regime discriminates between the occupying power’s citizens and the occupied noncitizens. All occupying powers have given their own citizens more rights than the occupied noncitizens, from the British in India through the French in Algeria to the Americans in Iraq, he noted; yet none of these were ever labeled apartheid. Why should Israel be any different?

But Bar’el neglects to mention one important point: The legal distinction all occupations make between citizens and noncitizens isn’t just a whim of “racist” occupiers; it’s mandated by the Fourth Geneva Convention.

This convention largely bars occupiers from applying their own laws to the occupied population, requiring them instead to maintain the preexisting legal system except where alterations are necessary to ensure the occupier’s security. For instance, Article 64 states “The penal laws of the occupied territory shall remain in force”; Article 51 requires the occupier to uphold the “legislation in force in the occupied country concerning working conditions”; and so forth. One of the most discriminatory practices of all is explicitly mandated by Article 66, which states that if the occupier promulgates laws for its own security in the occupied territory, violators from among the occupied population shall be tried in “properly constituted, non-political military courts.”

Israel has never officially deemed the West Bank occupied territory; it considers it disputed territory to which Israel has a valid claim. But under pressure from the rest of the world, which insists the West Bank is occupied territory, Israel long ago agreed to voluntarily uphold most of the Geneva Convention’s provisions. The ironic result is that in many cases, West Bank Palestinians have fewer rights than Israelis.

In Any Case, Hamas Decision Overshadows Kerry’s Slur

...If the administration should choose to walk down this road toward recognition of Hamas, it will do so to the cheers of the foreign-policy establishment and liberal mainstream media that have always chafed against the idea that Hamas was beyond the pale. But if it does, it should also expect that Congress as well as a united pro-Israel community would make them pay a high political price for this betrayal. This is not a battle Obama wants to be fighting in an already difficult midterm elections year. If Abbas is counting on the president to risk some of his scarce political capital on such a cause, then both he and Kerry may have badly miscalculated. But should the Palestinian alliance last into 2015 with a lame duck president already feeling he has little left to lose, then it is entirely possible that Obama could make Kerry’s apartheid flap look like a picnic compared to a decision to recognize Hamas.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
29 April '14..

Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology for his use of the word apartheid to describe Israel’s future in the absence of peace has done nothing to lessen the impact of this slur. The secretary’s attempt to walk back his remarks was long on umbrage about anyone questioning his dubious pro-Israel bona fides and short on actual contrition. The aftermath of a taped speech in which he uses a misleading attempt to cast blame for the failure of his peace initiative equally between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is not the most appropriate moment to boast of his commitment to the Jewish state, especially when he has damned it as heading inevitably to racist tyranny if it doesn’t do as he says.

But though the Daily Beast’s scoop about Kerry’s speech to the Trilateral Commission has put the administration on the defensive for the moment, the statement has served the purpose of Israel’s critics since it has given them the opportunity to defend his assertion even as the secretary distanced himself from it. The notion that what he said is an unpalatable truth has become a piece of liberal conventional wisdom even though its premise is demographically dubious and rendered nonsensical when one considers that unless one includes the population of Gaza—which is already an independent Palestinian state in all but name—the day will probably never dawn when Arabs outnumber Jews in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel not only, as Kerry conceded in his apology, is not now and has no intention of ever becoming an apartheid state. The entire discussion is specious and tells us more about the effort to delegitimize the Jewish state than it does about Israel’s character. The real damage here is that Kerry has breathed new life into an old canard that neither facts nor logic seems to have the power to extinguish.

But for all the effort expended on this controversy, an even more important one is looming over Obama administration’s Middle East policy in the wake of the collapse of the peace talks. By entering into a unity coalition with the Hamas terrorist movement, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas put President Obama on the spot. The president has repeatedly pledged that the U.S., like Israel, will not deal with Hamas, at least until it repudiates its genocidal charter, recognizes Israel, and commits itself to peace. That ought to mean the end of all U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority (something mandated by law) as well as putting an end to negotiations that are aimed at empowering the PA. But no one in Israel should be taking the fulfillment of that pledge for granted.

When Palestinian terrorists have a better grasp of Israel’s true nature than the U.S. president

...The spectacle of two Arab deputy speakers of parliament publicly dueling, without any fear of consequences, over whether their country discriminates against Arabs isn’t exactly an example of proto-apartheid behavior. But hey, who you gonna believe: Tibi or your lying eyes?

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
11 March '14..

That Desmond Tutu once again accused Israel of apartheid yesterday is nothing new; he’s one of several Nobel Peace laureates who have made second careers out of Israel-bashing (think Jimmy Carter or Mairead Maguire). But it’s far more worrying when similar rhetoric is used by a sitting U.S. president – as Barack Obama did in the most outrageous but widely overlooked line of his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg earlier this month. Culminating a series of rhetorical questions about what Israel would do if no Palestinian state arises, he asked, “Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?”

As Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Barak Ravid noted, “There is not much distance between this statement and an explicit warning that Israel is liable to turn into an apartheid state.” In short, even if Israel isn’t an apartheid state today, the U.S. president considers it perfectly reasonable to assume it will be someday soon – that instead of a democracy where all citizens are equal before the law, it will become the kind of state that imposes legal restrictions on certain citizens because of their ethnicity. But since Israeli Arabs haven’t been subject to special restrictions since Israel abolished its military administration in 1966, and no subsequent Israeli government has ever contemplated reinstating such restrictions, on what exactly does Obama base this assumption?

The logical conclusion is that he got it from the Israeli Arab leadership and radical Jewish leftists, both of which accuse Israel of apartheid ad nauseam. Yet believing these accusations requires willfully ignoring the facts.

This past December, for instance, one Ahmed Tibi wrote an article for the The Hill accusing Israel of treating its Arab citizens like southerners treated blacks in the Jim Crow era. The analogy was a trifle marred by the tagline at the end, in which Tibi admitted he is currently deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset: Blacks didn’t occupy prominent positions in southern legislatures under Jim Crow, much less in South Africa under apartheid. It was further undermined when another Arab deputy Knesset speaker, Hamad Amar, wrote a riposte in The Hill the next week terming Tibi’s claims arrant nonsense. The spectacle of two Arab deputy speakers of parliament publicly dueling, without any fear of consequences, over whether their country discriminates against Arabs isn’t exactly an example of proto-apartheid behavior. But hey, who you gonna believe: Tibi or your lying eyes?

The Word "Apartheid", More Than Just a Word

Rolene Marks..
Guest Post/Honest Reporting..
10 June '13..

Apartheid. Just the mention of the word is emotive, evocative and provocative. For millions of South Africans who suffered under the apartheid regime, the word is synonymous with suffering, discrimination and racism.

Today the word apartheid has been hijacked by Israel’s detractors as a way to launch a well-orchestrated assault on her legitimacy as a state. They capitalize on the emotional response that the very mention of the word and the images that it conjures up, to plan campaigns that are based on their own particular brand of racism – anti-Semitism.

Why has the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa gained so much trajectory over the last decade? The Durban Conference on Racism that was held in South Africa in 2001 became the springboard where this comparison really gained ground. Not since Nazi Germany has such nasty invective and accusations been leveled against Israel and the Jewish people.

The rationale behind this is that if Israel is compared to and demonized just as much as apartheid South Africa was, then treating the Jewish state like a pariah and meting out the same treatment in the form of boycotts, divestment and sanction policies is the logical step. In fact, if Israel is as odious as South Africa was, should it exist at all? And herein lies one of the fundamental differences. At no point during the apartheid years was South Africa’s legitimacy or existence as a state challenged, just the racist governmental policy.

Israel being singled out for opprobrium at the expense of other conflict regions and states that are guilty of human rights abuse smacks of something more sinister.

What was apartheid? Apartheid is defined as the discriminatory and oppressive laws based on race that deemed one group of people (non-white) as inferior and legislation in all spheres to support that. It also pertains to the forced removal of people of color from their neighborhoods and relocation to less desirable areas.

Does racism exist in Israel? Yes it does. Just as it does in Canada, the U.S., Brazil, South Africa or any other country in the world. It is abhorrent and inexcusable but is it state legislated and policy like it was in Nazi Germany or South Africa? No, and to single Israel out exposes a shocking double standard. Israeli Arabs who are citizens of Israel enjoy equal voting rights, representation in government, the right to education in the same schools and universities as anyone else (in fact Arabic is an official language) and all inalienable rights. Israel’s critics will argue but what about the Palestinians? Aren’t they subject to apartheid that is worse then South Africa at the hands of Israel?

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Eydar - The perils of the peace industry and one man's foolishness

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
26 June '12..

For quite some time, former Foreign Ministry director general Alon Liel has called for peace with Syria with his one-man organization. This organization is part of the peace industry that has sprung up alongside the familiar industry of lies. A quick look at Syria now indicates how firm Liel's grasp on reality is.

Now his bizarre political stance is also emerging: The same man who headed the Foreign Ministry and served as an Israeli ambassador to South Africa is now encouraging a boycott on products made in "occupied Palestinian territory" because "settlements are a violation of international law." He even hinted that Israel was an apartheid state — where of all places? In a South African newspaper. That's great! The peace industry wants to undermine Israel's industry.

Liel has an original take on why the peace process is dying — it is not because of the terror and the suicide attacks, but rather because Israel's desire for peace was "myopic." He wrote that "this hope belittled the sense of outrage Arabs felt about what they considered a foreign intrusion." Oh, now we understand why rockets are being fired from Gaza into southern Israel. Whew, I feel better. Silly me, I thought that the myopia stemmed from Israel's irresponsible policy of bringing Palestinian terror gangs into the land west of the Jordan River, and hoping that they would ensure our safety. This stupid mistake was wrapped in media euphoria and international support until it blew up in our faces. The Palestinians proved time and time again that they are not interested in peace, because it would force them to recognize the Jews' right to a part of the historical Land of Israel, and that is not acceptable to the Arabs.

And the Real Apartheid Winner is ... Palestinian!

Emily Amrousi..
Israel Hayom..
20June '12..

A well-known radio broadcaster recently told me that, as a settler, I am fine and my arguments may also be convincing. The problem, he said, is the "occupation." The thought that people might finally stop blaming "the settlers" for the problem felt like a breath of fresh air, pure oxygen. But then the broadcaster continued: people around the world see our apartheid roads in Judea and Samaria and this severely damages Israel's image. He asked me to consider what I would think if I were a Palestinian and someone told me that I could not drive on certain highways. That fresh oxygen I mentioned earlier quickly turned into non-breathable carbon-dioxide.

One can't even begin to confront this claim without starting with the firm truth that there are no apartheid highways here. This radio broadcaster was simply perpetuating a made up narrative. There are no highways anywhere in Judea and Samaria which Palestinians are forbidden from driving on, but which Jews are allowed to use. This includes all of the bypass roads and all of the settlement highways. It includes the road inside the community where I live as well, (according to a High Court verdict from just a year ago) which a Palestinian can drive on to get from their children's kindergarten to the grocery store, just as I drive on it to get from my house to my neighbor's house. Along the Trans-Samaria Highway there are signs cautioning all drivers to watch out for bicycle riders on the shoulder; both Palestinian and Israeli registered cars drive at the same high speeds. If there is such a thing as an "apartheid highway," it would refer to highways closed only to Jews.

Ostroff - Playing ducks and drakes with the apartheid canard

Maurice Ostroff..
The Times of Israel..
29 May '12..

A May 24 article in The Times of Israel titled “Bibi, there’s a duck in our backyard,” by the co-founder of Forum Tzora, Jonathan Zausmer, calls to mind the phrase “playing ducks and drakes,” defined by the Oxford dictionary as treating a subject frivolously.

The author’s frivolous and inaccurate claim that, apart from Bibi, “everyone else” recognizes the duck in our backyard as apartheid is vigorously contested by a sizable group of concerned citizens who have extensive knowledge and experience of the subject and who have been in correspondence with the author, expressing a diametrically opposite view that is very widely shared.

This group’s considered opinion is that while there is much to criticize in Israel, as in most countries, there is absolutely no justification for the lazy attitude of adopting the language of Israel’s enemies in falsely accusing Israel of apartheid within or beyond the Green Line. The group contends that the declared aims of the Forum to uphold the liberal spirit of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and actively opposing ultra-nationalist and anti-democratic forces should be addressed without resorting to the totally unnecessary, irrelevant and unjustified “apartheid” bogeyman that is “born of ignorance” as described by persons more qualified than most of us to comment on the subject.

Curtis - Apartheid: The Big Lie

Michael Curtis..
Gatestone Institute..
21 may '12..

The time is now long overdue to recognize that Adolph Hitler's contribution to political wisdom -- the Big Lie -- has reappeared in the Palestinian narrative of the state of Israel as an "apartheid state." "[T]he broad masses of a nation," Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "will more readily fall victim to the big lie than to the small lie." The constant repetition of the Big Lie, he explained, made it acceptable, especially when it could be manipulated to appear to have a certain credibility. The world is all too familiar with the success of Hitler's Big Lie narrative that the Jews were internationally powerful, responsible for World War I -- and, in his view, for most of the problems of the world.

This new Big Lie about Israel being an "apartheid state" that has been trumpeted by the Palestinian narrative of Middle Eastern history and politics has, in recent years, been accepted not only been accepted by "the broad masses," but also by more educated and supposedly politically sophisticated individuals in the media, the churches, and academia.

Shay/Baker - Manipulation and Deception: The Anti-Israel "BDS" Campaign

Adam Shay/Alan Baker..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
Vol. 12, No. 2..
19 March '12..

One of the weapons presently being used in the campaign to delegitimize Israel in the international community is the so-called "BDS movement," targeting and manipulating social society and the general public at the grass-roots level to act against Israel in academic, commercial, social, and cultural fields.

This movement, inspired and generated by the infamous 2001 Durban UN Conference against Racism, bases itself on a number of very basic, general, and widely used political slogans, deliberately couched in terminology reminiscent of South Africa's apartheid regime and oft-repeated anti-Israel slogans prevalent in resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the Durban NGO Plan of Action. Such slogans include accusations that Israel is an "apartheid and colonizing state," a "discriminatory occupation regime," a violator of international law, a "repressive occupier," and the like.

The nature of the campaign is such as to appeal to the genuine humanitarian sentiments of the grass-roots groups to whom they direct their efforts - whether these are students on campuses, members of the general public frequenting stores and supermarkets, attendees at cultural events, performers, or commercial entities trading with Israel. The aim is to manipulate these people, who are generally unfamiliar with the intricate details and history of the issues in the Middle East, by instilling into their minds an inherent bias against, and hostility towards, Israel. This targeted audience can easily and sincerely identify themselves with and support any movement that ostensibly opposes apartheid, discrimination, inequality, and colonialism.

This movement is composed of a relatively small number of full-time, well-financed, anti-Israel activists, who are inspired and encouraged by senior figures in the Palestinian public, including Omar Barghouti, Mustafa Barghouti, Nabil Sha'att, and others. They organize events mostly throughout Europe and in North America, raise funds, and arrange seminars, conferences, and demonstrations in support of isolating and boycotting Israel in every way possible. They claim to enjoy the support of hundreds of Arab, Palestinian, and other non-governmental organizations signatory to their basic documentation. However, upon examination, many of these NGOs appear to be either fictional, non-existent, and even, in some cases, front-organizations for Hamas and other terror groups.

Tobin - German Opposition Leader Smears Israel as “Apartheid Regime”

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
15 March '12..

Anyone wondering about how much progress those promoting hatred of Israel have made in recent years need only look at Germany. German governments have combined an understanding of the legacy of the Holocaust with a natural reticence about criticizing the Jewish state even when European political fashion has made such sentiments commonplace on the continent. But apparently that appears to be giving way to a willingness on the part of some of the country’s elites to promote some of the worst slanders against Israel.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, Sigmar Gabriel, the head of Germany’s Social Democratic Party and a likely challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in the next parliamentary election, posted on his Facebook page today a statement that Israel “is an apartheid regime, for which there is no justification.” Though he subsequently sought to explain the remark by seeking to limit his slur as applying only to the situation in Hebron (where an embattled small Jewish community lives under siege conditions surrounded by a hostile Arab majority) and also expressed his support for Israel’s existence and right to defend himself, that a possible future German chancellor would be willing to use such language illustrates the extent to which Palestinian propaganda has come to dominate mainstream discourse in Europe.


Hebron is a ticking time bomb where the proximity of Jews and Arabs to each other has led to much violence and hatred. But to imply that the Jewish presence in this place where a Jewish community was massacred in the last century by Palestinian mobs is somehow a form of racism is outrageous. For Gabriel to employ the language of South Africa to Israel is a short step to the delegitimization of the Jewish state. Those who would deny to Jews the same rights they reserve for themselves and others are practicing anti-Semitism. That is a line that no European, let alone a German, should dare to cross.

That the leader of Germany’s second largest party would think nothing of writing in this manner speaks volumes about the way the SPD has adopted the terminology of the far left on Israel. It also highlights the way European elites, even those in Germany where a special relationship has always existed with the modern Jewish state, have come to view the Middle East conflict through the prism of Arab nationalists and Islamists who view the Jewish presence in the country as the cause of the conflict. The real advocates of apartheid and racial cleansing in the region are not the Jews but Palestinians who think Jews must be evicted from the country. Even if Gabriel expressly opposes that goal, by using the language by which Israel may be made a pariah he has strengthened the expectation by the Palestinians that they can reject peace without paying any price.

Though Merkel’s attitude toward Israel has often been critical, it appears that if she is defeated by Gabriel, the result will be even more isolation for Israel in Europe.

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/15/sigmar-gabriel-israel-apartheid-regime/

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Israel Matzav - The education of R*I*C*H*A*R*D* G*O*L*D*S*T*O*N*E

Carl
Israel Matzav
01 November '11

The Jewish community is very small and the word is that Richard Goldstone is trying to make amends for his pernicious Goldstone Report due to his virtual excommunication from the Jewish community. The latest effort is an op-ed in the New York Times, in which Goldstone defends Israel from charges of apartheid. This passage made me wonder whether he gets it yet.

The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here too there is no intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” This is a critical distinction, even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there. South Africa’s enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority, to the detriment of other races. By contrast, Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.

(Read full "The education of R*I*C*H*A*R*D* G*O*L*D*S*T*O*N*E")

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Apartheid, the Mahdi and the Surprise

By Tuvia Brodie
05 June '11

This article is also published in the Jewish Leadership Blog


Once again, the official Palestinian daily Al Hayat al-Jadida has printed yet another Arabic propaganda attack, calling Israel “the Israeli apartheid state.”

Apartheid is a dirty word. It suggests oppression and institutionalized hatred.

Arabs –and their friends—have adopted the word as a fashionable description for Israel.

Jews don‘t agree with this characterization. But that’s not news: Arab and Jew don’t ever seem to agree.

But there is one thing they might agree to: there will be no apartheid in the new ‘Palestine’.

At first glance, the white-only National Party of 1940’s South Africa and the Hamas-Fatah alliance in the Palestinian territories seem similar: both share a strident, even vicious animus towards a homogeneous group each sees as impure and tainted: the black in South Africa and the Jew in Israel.

But as similar as they might appear, a closer look reveals that they are different.

To understand the difference, consider that—while this is not commonly noted-- an ‘apartheid’ political system, such as the prototype in South Africa, will have two major, easily identifiable components. First, there will be laws and regulations designed to force a specific group to remain subservient; and second, those laws and regulations will be supported by a persistent and aggressive propaganda-style attack from both national media and national religious leaders.

The laws and the negative propaganda will be omnipresent—in the churches, the media, the schools, the legislature, the neighborhoods and the marketplace.

There is no respite.

Generally speaking, if only one of these two components is active, the label, ‘apartheid’ may not fit. This is why, for example, the laws and regulations in Arab countries that keep women subservient are typically not called ‘apartheid’: the propaganda-style attack is absent, and the oppressive laws are simply considered to be unique to local culture.

In my opinion, it is not just the existence of repressive law that creates the ugliness called apartheid; it is the public, religious and omnipresent demonization that goes with it, that transform the legal restrictions into something so ugly.

So while white South Africans wanted to oppress blacks with both these components to enforce political repression, the modern Arab Muslim is not interested in treating the Jew this way, for an important reason: he sees the Jew as being reserved for a different consideration altogether.

What appears to separate the National Party of the 1940’s South Africa from the modern Arab is intent: the white-only South Africans wanted only to oppress; the Arabs want to eradicate.

Major controversy erupts again as top UK Jewish leader reaffirms apartheid-Israel discourse

Mick Davis

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
14 February '11

http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/major-controversy-erupts-again-as-top-uk-jewish-leader-reaffirms-apartheid-israel-discourse/

In an astonishing re-run of the most controversial moment in British pro-Israel advocacy for many years, Mick Davis, the man at the centre of that storm, has launched a second broadside defending his judgement in warning of the prospect of Israel becoming “an apartheid state”.

Mr. Davis, who is chairman of the United Jewish Israel Appeal and chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, made his original remarks in November last year. Among the formal UK Jewish leadership there was a mixed reaction –see here for comments by supporters and opponents — while the Israeli embassy issued a scathing protest and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its supporters reacted with jubilation.

In this week’s Jewish Chronicle Mr. Davis sought to clarify his remarks as follows:

“… I said clearly that Israel was not an apartheid state. I reject any comparisons between Israel today and apartheid, an analogy which is often used as a stick to beat Israel. I did say that if the world came to believe that a two-state solution was not possible and that a single unitary state (“a one-state solution”) was seen to be the only way forward, then that unitary state may be characterised as an apartheid state as you would have a minority ruling over the majority – or at least a majority of Palestinian non-citizens in the West Bank and Gaza. The international pressure for full civic rights for all, including the right to vote, would be enormous and would mean the end of Israel. This is not a new or controversial point. Prime Minister Olmert said as much in 2007 as did Defence Minister Barak last year”.

Unless forced to do so it is my policy not to get involved directly in the internal affairs of the UK Jewish community over discussion of Israel since Jews and non-Jews face a different calculus of risk. For example, as a non-Jew defending Israel I will never be accused of dual loyalties, (though I am accused of pretty much everything else!). The wider debate about Israel, however, is an entirely different matter. And since, as Mr. Davis acknowledges, the apartheid analogy is such an insidious and dangerous weapon in the arsenal of Israel’s opponents I would like to offer some thoughts from a purely analytical perspective on why it is so wrong to raise it in the Israeli context, and why it always will be under any future scenario:


1) As a political system, apartheid refers to the institutionalised policy of racial segregation which existed in South Africa between 1948 and 1993. The central principle underpinning apartheid was a belief in the inherent, genetic superiority of white people over black people. In the absence of that principle, apartheid would not have existed. Since there is no equivalent to this white supremacism in the Israeli case today or in any imaginable future, apartheid is impossible in Israel.

Eldertoons: Israeli "apartheid"

Elder of Ziyon
21 December '10

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BDS and South Africa - 2

Jon Haber
Divest This!
02 October '10

I’ve always been curious whether certain words create their own power or simply draw upon the power of that which they describe. The term “Holocaust,” which starts with soft vowels implying vastness and ends with knife-sharp consonants, seems like it would be evocative regardless of what it describes. Yet once this term came into general use to describe the Nazi’s extermination of European Jewry, it drew upon the massiveness of that event, eventually pushing out other terms (some foreign like “Shoah,” some euphemistic such as “Final Solution” – a simple phrase which itself can mean only one thing to today’s ears) to become synonymous with history’s most horrific crime.

Fights over the term simply demonstrate its unique power to move people emotionally. As horrific, vast and mind-numbing as other historic mass murders have been (such as the Armenian genocide, which many see as an historic “warm up” for other 20th century ethnic exterminations), there is a reason we describe these as the “Armenian Holocaust,” the “Rwandan Holocaust,” etc., rather than describing the Shoah as the “Armenian genocide of the Jews.”

“Apartheid,” meaning “seperateness”, resonates as a word, even to those unfamiliar with the Dutch dialect used by South Africa’s white Afrikaans population, implying as it does the English terms “Apart” and “Hate.” And yet the ugliness of the system it describes, a form of mass racial discrimination masquerading under formal legalism, certainly contributes to this term becoming synonymous with bigotry as state policy.

(Read full post)

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Sullivan and Company Go on the Attack, and as usual, Blame Israel for the World’s Faults

Ron Radosh
Pajamasmedia.com
12 May '10

I have been called a lot of names in my life, especially since breaking with the political left of which I once was a part. Usually the accusations come with words such as “counter-revolutionary,” “renegade,” “traitor to the left,” “he went over to the right-wing to get their money,” “FBI or CIA agent,” etc. etc. etc. But Andrew Sullivan today comes up with a new charge: “pro-Israel fanatic.” Faced with a choice between all of those I list, I think I’ll live with this one. To be called this by Sullivan, who previously referred to those who defend Israel as a bunch of “Likudniks,” is a badge to wear proudly, especially when it appears on his own Hamasnik blog.

When he accuses me and others of engaging in the politics of “personal smear,” however, he misses our major point. It is a quite simple one, which Sullivan and some of those who have posted comments hostile to my blog post yesterday do not understand. We are not trying to “stifle debate” on the Middle East. Calling attention to the still rather unknown record of Justice Richard Goldstone as an apartheid era judge who ruled in favor of the Afrikaner state is not a smear; it speaks to Goldstone’s very credibility of his pose as a moral exemplar whose report critical of Israel is supposed to be taken seriously.

Moreover, in my case, I was not depending for my view on the newspaper investigation that appeared in Yedioth Ahronoth, but particularly on the report I linked to in a few of my blogs, the one written by a South African who knew Goldstone well in those days, Ayal Rosenberg. He documents how Goldstone had what he calls “an illustrious career in the service of apartheid.” My blog readers and Sullivan and anyone else can read this report themselves. I find it most instructive that to date, he and others have failed to comment on and analyze the very scrupulous and newsworthy analysis that Rosenberg gives in what he calls a “Critique of Self-Apotheosis.” He notes that Goldstone’s career dovetailed with the years of the worst repression, during the reign of P.W.Botha. He gives chapter and verse on how Goldstone portrayed himself as a defender and supporter of Both, his government, and the system of lawlessness known as apartheid.

(Read full article)

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The Un-Goldstone

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
08 May '10

Richard Goldstone, the former judge for apartheid South Africa (should that not be his lifelong description?), pleads that he was simply following the law when he handed out death sentences and orders to whip blacks. He had no choice, you see. What was a lawyer to do? Well, we are presented with the alternative today. A sharp-eyed reader spots an obituary for Sheena Duncan that explains her role in the South African legal system:

Sheena Duncan, who led the Black Sash, a group of middle-class white women in South Africa who protested against apartheid and counseled blacks victimized by the racist laws of that era, died Tuesday at her home in Johannesburg. She was 77. …

Over decades of volunteer work — counseling thousands of black South Africans, plotting legal strategy, writing pamphlets, holding silent vigils and speaking out in churches and at universities — Mrs. Duncan moved far beyond the traditional sphere reserved for white women of her day.

(Read full post)

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The Importance of Being Desmond Tutu

Avi Davis
The Intermediate Zone
18 April "10

Being an ex-Apartheid activist must surely exist one of the best jobs in the world. What could be better than being invited to prestigious university campuses to deliver highly paid lectures on the evils of Western imperialism and then be fêted as a hero?; Or being able to make the most hateful pronouncements about white Anglo- Saxons and watch while everyone smiles in quiet acknowledgment? Or then again having carte blanche to unleash your vitriol against other unsuspecting nations whom you deem to have inflicted apartheid regimes on their own minorities, and have no one challenge you?

Yes Desmond Tutu, one of his country’s most famous anti-Apartheid activist, has made it. The former South African Archbishop, who built a reputation manning the barricades in the South Africa’s long struggle against apartheid, collecting a Nobel Peace Prize along the way, is universally hailed as a fair minded advocate of peace, love and freedom.

Everywhere, that is, except Israel. In Tutu’s mind, Israel is the equivalent of the South African Apartheid regime, for its discrimination against Palestinian Arabs. Since 2002, he has called strenuously and aggressively for universities around the world to conduct campaigns of divestment from companies doing business with Israel, an obvious replication of the same boycott that contributed to the collapse of his homeland’s former Apartheid regime.

(Read full article)

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Who Needs Apartheid?

Mark Steyn
National Review Online
17 April '10

This is a question that should be asked more often:

Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israel Defense Forces general who now serves as Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic affairs minister, posed the following query in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post: “If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews? Why do those areas have to be Judenrein? Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?”

As Jonathan Tobin points out, the official goal of the Middle East "peace process" is a "two-state solution", in one of which Muslims live alongside Jews and have voting rights and representation in the legislature, while in the other there are no Jews at all and, as in "moderate" Jordan, to sell your house to a Jew is a crime punishable by death. There goes the neighborhood, right? When the western campus left holds its annual "Israeli Apartheid Week", presumably it's in philosophical support of the notion that you don't need to run an "apartheid" system if you just get rid of everyone who's not like you.

If Muslims are so revolted by Jews that they cannot tolerate any living among them, well, they're free to believe what they want. What is less understandable is the present position of the United States government. The President and his Secretary of State have made it very clear that they regard a few dozen housing units in Jerusalem as a far greater threat to Middle East peace than the Iranian nuclear program. Why is it in the interest of the United States to validate, enthusiastically, the most explicit and crudest bigotry of the Palestinian "cause"?

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The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel With the False Charge of Apartheid

Robbie Sabel
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
19 November 09

If Israel's detractors can associate the Jewish movement for self-determination with the Apartheid South African regime, they will have done lasting and maybe irreparable damage. Yet the comparison of Israel to South Africa under white supremist rule has been utterly rejected by those with intimate understanding of the old Apartheid system.

Israel is a multi-racial and multi-colored society, and the Arab minority actively participates in the political process. There are Arab parliamentarians, Arab judges including on the Supreme Court, Arab cabinet ministers, Arab heads of hospital departments, Arab university professors, Arab diplomats in the Foreign Service, and very senior Arab police and army officers. Incitement to racism in Israel is a criminal offence, as is discrimination on the basis of race or religion.

The accusation is made that the very fact that Israel is considered a Jewish state proves an "Apartheid-like" situation. Yet the accusers have not a word of criticism against the tens of liberal democratic states that have Christian crosses incorporated in their flags, nor against the Muslim states with the half crescent symbol of Islam. For a Western state, with Jewish and Muslim minorities, to have Christmas as a national holiday is permissible, but for Israel to celebrate Passover as a national holiday is somehow racist. For various Arab states to denote themselves as Arab Republics is not objectionable.

Zionism is perhaps the only national movement that has received explicit support and endorsement both from the League of Nations and from the United Nations. It was the League of Nations that approved the mandate for Palestine with its ringing endorsement of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

The real goal behind the Apartheid campaign is the denial of the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the determination that the only status the Jewish population in Israel can hope for is that of a "protected" ethnic minority in an Arab Palestinian state.

Click here to read the full paper.
*Dr. Robbie Sabel served as Legal Adviser to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1985 to 1993, and is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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