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Israpundit » Blog Archive » Goldstone: Israel and the Apartheid …

www.israpundit.com11/1/11

In assessing the accusation that Israel pursues apartheid policies, which are by definition primarily about race or ethnicity, it is important first to distinguish between the situations in Israel, where Arabs are citizens, and in West …

The Yeshiva World Goldstone: There Is No Apartheid In Israel …

www.theyeshivaworld.com11/2/11

Goldstone: There Is No Apartheid In Israel. (Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011). Back in November 2009, the United Nations approved the Goldstone Report that probed the IDF's counter-terrorism offensive in Gaza known as Operation Cast …

 

It’s Not Even Close To Being One

In his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, Jimmy Carter implied that Israel is an apartheid state although he didn’t actually say so, and although one could perhaps argue that he was only referring to the West Bank,

even that wouldn’t be appropriate either.

Israel proper is in no way an apartheid state, and although the West Bank does have security restrictions, they cannot be compared to the apartheid that existed in South Africa of days gone by.

To Carter’s credit, he did apologize but the apology was late in coming and intentionally vague.

So What Is Apartheid?

The Oxford English dictionary describes apartheid as;

The South African (policy of) racial segregation of the White inhabitants from the remainder.

Also transf. & fig., any other form of (esp. racial) segregation.

[Afk., lit. ‘separateness’, f. Du. apart apart + heid -hood.]

The term “apartheid” would most often be understood to mean a State where political and civil rights are withheld on the basis of race and race alone, so let’s look and see if this can be applied to Israel.

In Israel

In Israel, Arabs make up about one about one-fifth of the population and they have exactly the same civil and political rights as Israeli Jews.

Arabs sit in the Knesset and although some opt to serve in the military, most decline and are not drafted as are Jewish Israelis.

Arabs use the same buses and can enter any shop or restaurant as Jewish Israelis and use the same toilets etc.

In South Africa

In South Africa, the whites were the minority and not the majority as in Israel, and non-whites were not only denied civil rights, but as of 1958, they were even deprived of citizenship.

Non-whites had to use separate buses, separate shops, restaurants and toilets etc.

No Comparison

So it should be clear from the above that Israel proper is in no way similar to apartheid S. Africa.

The West Bank

In the West Bank the minority does govern the majority, because the area is under Israeli military rule, but the rule is based on security concerns and not on race or color and successive Israeli governments have proposed returning up to 98% of it once a peace plan has been agreed.

Again, there are no segregated cafes, shops and toilets etc.

Slanderous Comments

Israel’s critics do themselves no favors by continually calling Israel apartheid, because it’s not only clearly untrue but it’s also slanderous, and it also makes it easy for Israeli leaders to simply point to countries like Saudi Arabia, where women can’t even drive, let alone vote.

What’s more, it also encourages Israel to point a finger at many countries in the Muslim world where Palestinians frequently have far fewer rights than they do in Israel.

Israel Is Far From Politically Perfect

Israel like every country has its faults and Palestinians have their case, but when their case is bolstered by lies and slander, it denigrates the Palestinian cause; which if valid should not need lies.

It’s a strong indictment of our MSM (main stream media) and perhaps of our western society too, that the saddening and historic events that are taking place in Iran have been pushed off of the headlines because of Michael Jackson’s death.

Human Rights Watch just reported that the Iranian paramilitary Basij forces are now carrying out nightly raids and “trashing entire streets” in an attempt to stop rooftop revolutionary cries. It says that the Basij are “breaking down doors and beating residents in an attempt to stop protests against Iran’s disputed election”.

One witness to the attacks in the Velenjak district said, “On June 22, while we were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ from the rooftops, the Basiji entered our neighborhood and started firing live rounds into the air, in the direction of the buildings from which they believe the shouting of ‘Allahu Akbar’ is coming from”.

A second witness reported, “Basijis climbed over walls to enter homes after they failed to kick down doors when people were shouting from rooftops on June 23. When they entered the homes, they beat the residents. The neighbors took to cursing the Basijis and throwing stones at them to divert them from beating the residents, but then the Basijis attacked those neighbors’ houses and tried to enter them”.

Another eye witness said, “the Basijis spray-painted a sign on the doors of houses in a central district where they thought protesters had fled. A few minutes later, they came back and attacked the marked houses, breaking down the doors and entering them. They beat the owners, and broke the windows in the house and of their cars”.

Human Rights Watch says that similar reports have come in from other parts Tehran including Farmanieh, Niavaran, Saadat Abad, Shahrak Gharb, and Vanak Square, all of which might be considered upper-class districts.

What has not been widely reported is why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using the Basijis and not the Revolutionary Guard to crush dissent.

General Ali Fazli, who was the head of the guard in Tehran refused to fire on his own countrymen and was subsequently arrested.

The Guard has its own institutions, and is to a large degree independent of the both the government and Khamenei’s Guardian Council, and it now seems likely that there will be a division of religion and state, with the guard effectively operating a military dictatorship.

It is clear that Obama hadn’t and hasn’t got a clue as to what or say or do about the situation, and similarities are already being noted between him and Jimmy Carter, who famously talked of “America’s inordinate fear of Communism”, but later implemented a military buildup that Reagan continued with, and which Obama is now threatening to reduce.

What Obama has referred to as the “robust debate” taking place in Iran, has so far meant the deaths of hundreds of debaters being killed, and who knows how many others being clubbed, and then thrown into jail, where they are most likely still undergoing torture and abuse.

One can only wonder if he held such robust debates at Harvard.

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