Israel is not an apartheid state per any definition of the word.
Apartheid refers to the legal, political and societal structure of discrimination that the white minority of South African citizens imposed on the black and Asian South African citizens from 1948 to 1994. Disenfranchisement was followed by segregation, violence, imprisonment and overall oppression of the non-white majority - a pretty evil affair, to say the least.
Israel, on the other hand, has always been a free and open society where individuals in minority groups are accepted in the realms of public leadership, the arts, healthcare, academic institutions and business.
So, why do so many mainstream voices such as Human Rights Watch (HRW,) the World Council of Churches, particular US politicians, and even Desmond Tutu, who experienced apartheid firsthand, all cling to such a lie? And,
if Israeli apartheid is so easy to disprove, why is it prominently featured in contemporary discourse about Israel?
The answer is both simple and complicated. Ignorance and bigotry can easily explain this phenomenon, but the great debate has become so entangled in the language of the “oppressed” versus the “oppressor” that we need to focus on what these people are actually advocating and not merely attack the language games they play.
WHAT DOES it mean when someone libels Israel by comparing it to the abject evil of South African apartheid? It does a few things simultaneously: it legitimizes opinions hostile toward Israel’s existence that would otherwise be unacceptable in popular discourse regarding other liberal democracies, appropriates actual oppression under apartheid in South Africa, whitewashes and justifies violence against Israelis in the name of “self-defense,” and contributes to the widespread sense of perpetual victimhood found throughout Palestinian communities.
This claim to violence as a defensive measure is particularly dubious. The legitimacy of violence as a form of protest has long been disputed as it undermines democracy at the altar of the mob. In some contexts, it’s been used to justify attacks on police in the US, in others, to weaponize children against Israel. Of course, the immorality of indiscriminate violence poses a big problem for proponents of this kind of political expression, but in the context of Palestinian “armed resistance,” something else is at play. If a group justifies its use of violence as an act of defense, but lies about what prompted said defense, all that’s left is the violence.
(full article online)
If Israeli apartheid is so easy to disprove, why is it prominently featured in contemporary discourse about Israel?
www.jpost.com
unitedwithisrael.org
www.israelnationalnews.com
elderofziyon.blogspot.com
www.breitbart.com
www.jns.org
