March 4th, 2010 | 
Author: 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.
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Posted in apartheid, democracy, fatah, gaza, Israel, Israeli, Jerusalem, jihad, Jimmy Carter, muslims, Palestinian, Saudi Arabia, south africa
Israel cannot accurately be called an apartheid state because Israeli law guarantees Arab citizens of Israel the same rights as other Israeli citizens without distinction of race, creed or s**.
Israel’s Arab citizens can run in elections and become ministers in the Israeli government
During the past decade probably no falsehood has gained greater traction than the big lie that Israel is an apartheid “racist state” – not only towards the Palestinians but in relation to the wider world. In retrospect, this canard can be seen as the greatest single triumph of Soviet propaganda in the mid-1970s, when the USSR and the Arab states masterminded the notorious UN Zionism=Racism resolution.
Cynical political warfare
Since then (and especially after Durban I), the charge has become solidly entrenched in many Western countries. Despite its obvious mendacity, it underlies the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel on university campuses in the West and the accompanying “Israel Apartheid Week” events as well as many of the anti-Israel condemnations by NGOs and in the UN Human Rights Council.
The apartheid analogy and the myth of Zionist racism are classic examples of cynical political warfare aimed purely at stigmatizing or delegitimizing Israel out of existence. Such fabrications totally disregard the context and content of South African apartheid, based on an institutionalized discrimination anchored in a formidable array of strictly enforced racial laws.
From birth to death it was always skin color and statutory race classification that determined human and civic rights in white-controlled South Africa. The black majority (90% of the population) had no right to vote or to be elected; it could not freely choose its place of residence, work or occupation. Mixed marriages or even sexual relations across the race barrier were criminalized, there were separate benches in parks for whites and blacks, separate buses, hospitals, libraries, restaurants, as well as segregated places of entertainment.
Any person even casually acquainted with Israel’s vibrant democracy knows that there is not even the remotest comparison between its free and open society and the grim reality of South African apartheid. But then ideological delegitimization and slanderous misuse of the apartheid analogy is not about the “criticism” of Israel, let alone “learning the lessons of history” or achieving freedom for the Palestinians. The objective is not to help solve an intractable national conflict (made even more difficult by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism) but to demonize Israel as the embodiment of ultimate “racist evil” – an accusation designed to remove any moral grounds for its existence.