Exposing The Lie Of Israel Apartheid / Moscow's role

Q: Why have there been several recent headlines about activists levelling the ā€˜apartheidā€™ slur at Israel?​

A: Beginning early last year, successive reports by anti-Israel organizations have attacked Israel as allegedly being guilty of ā€œapartheid.ā€ The Israeli organization Bā€™tselem levelled the accusation in January 2021, followed by Human Rights Watch three months later, Amnesty International in February 2022, and a UN ā€œSpecial Rapporteurā€ in March 2022.


Israel stands out as rare a ā€œFreeā€ state in the Middle East on a map by the NGO Freedom House.

And yet, despite the suddenness of this sequence of reports, the organizations donā€™t argue that any change in the political or civil rights of Arab-Israelis or Palestinians justify their new allegations. Indeed, nothing new over the past years or even decades would have changed Israel from a ā€œfree country,ā€ as the NGO Freedom House designates the Jewish state, to a supposed apartheid state.

What has changed over those years, rather, is that a stand-alone Arab political party has joined the government coalition for the first time; Israel has withdrawn from hostile territories, including the Gaza Strip; Israeli governments have made clear their willingness to further withdraw from virtually all of the West Bank as part of proposed peace plans with the Palestinians; Israel has survived and defended itself from waves of Palestinian violence marked by suicide bombings from the West Bank and indiscriminate rocket barrages from Gaza, both grave violations of international law; and even after such waves of violence, Israel had again offered a Palestinian state in exchange for peace.

Palestinian leaders, however, walked away from peace offers by Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton, and Ehud Olmert ā€” with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas proclaiming that they donā€™t need to compromise with Israel because ā€œin the West Bank we have a good reality ā€¦ the people are living a normal life.ā€

That despite this, four bodies in quick sequence suddenly charge Israel with the crime of apartheid, which seems to suggest an organized campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state.

See more on the context of the current delegitimization here.



Q: But arenā€™t these reports written by credible defenders of human rights?​


(full article online)

 
Hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian women met by the Dead Sea on Friday to encourage their leaders to launch negotiations toward a political agreement ensuring a future of freedom, peace and security for both peoples.


The Israeli women were represented by Women Wage Peace, the largest grassroots movement in Israel with 50,000 registered members. The movement was granted special consultative status to the United Nations and works to promote political solutions with the Palestinians.


The Palestinian women were represented by a movement called Women of the Sun, founded last July. Its members come from different parts of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

(full article online)

 
The Gaza Strip has been blockaded by both Israel and Egypt for over 15 years in an attempt to contain the enclaveā€™s Hamas rulers. Israel says the tight restrictions on goods and people are necessary due to the terror groupā€™s efforts to massively arm itself for attacks against the Jewish state.

(full article online)

 
[ This is not any different from Jimmy Carter using the word Apartheid as part of his book on Israel. It was just a catchy word, and there was no truth to Israel being Apartheid, at all. ]

Former Irish Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has branded Amnesty International's use of the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's treatment of Palestinians as a "headline-catching big lie" at a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs on Tuesday. He said the Amnesty report misrepresents a territorial and political conflict relating to Israeli and Palestinian nationhood and identity as a racial conflict.

Shatter said the committee - which has been holding meetings on the report - is "on the wrong side of history." He argued that the committee has had nothing positive to say on recent peace deals between Israel and some Arab countries and "nothing also is ever said about Palestinian political parties, terrorist and civil groups celebrating in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank murderous terrorist atrocities." He said the obstacle to peace was "the incapacity of people on the Palestinian side to constructively engage."

Yousef Haddad, an Arab-Israeli citizen, told the committee, "It is true that Israel is a Jewish state but it is also a democratic state. While Israel is imperfect and racism exists, it is not systematic but individual. Every day, Arabs and Jews are standing side-by-side working to resolve the problems in our society. You know what doesn't help our society? White Europeans and Amnesty International telling our sovereign nation of Arabs and Jews how to run our country."



 

Israel Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai. Photo: Israel Police via Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org ā€“ Israel Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai on Tuesday condemned Joint List chief Ayman Odehā€™s call the previous day for Arab Israelis to quit the countryā€™s security forces.

Speaking during a ceremony for outstanding units in the Israel Police at the National Police Academy in Beit Shemesh, Shabtai paid tribute to the 2,120 Druze officers, 1,232 Muslim officers and 745 Christian officers in the Israel Police, praising their decision ā€œto take part in safeguarding the security of the state.ā€



(full article online)

 
Part 1

I was born and raised in South Africa during apartheid. Those of us who witnessed that crime up closeā€”to say nothing of our compatriots who were its immediate victimsā€”know full well that the political status of Israelā€™s Arab citizens bears no resemblance in any imaginable way to that of blacks who suffered for 45 years under a monstrous system. Despite the socioeconomic inequity that exists in Israel (as in every other country), Israeli Arabs are promised by law the full panoply of political and civic rights that were denied non-white South Africans. Any comparison is a perversion of history, reason, and morality. It is an offense to the victims of apartheid. And it is a slander against the State of Israel.

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Why such single-minded perseveration? Recall that in 2002, thenā€“Harvard University president Lawrence Summers noted that calls to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel were ā€œanti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent.ā€ With the benefit of two decades of hindsight, the rise in global anti-Semitism, the frontline battles against Jew-hatred on our college campuses, and yet another Amnesty publication to add to the apartheid file, Summersā€™s observation now bespeaks quaint understatement. The human-rights crowd charges Israel with apartheid not merely to defame, but to dismantle and destroy.
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Amnestyā€™s apartheid analogy is wrong both as a matter of fact and as a matter of law. One need look no further than the admission of the reportā€™s authors: The ā€œreport does not seek to argue,ā€ the introduction concedes, that ā€œany system of oppression and domination as perpetrated in Israel and the OPT isā€¦ the same or analogous to the system of segregation, oppression and domination as perpetrated in South Africa between 1948 and 1994.ā€ (Note, however, the presumption that there exists a ā€œsystem of oppression and dominationā€ that is ā€œperpetrated in Israelā€ā€”i.e., within Israelā€™s pre-1967 boundariesā€”separate and apart from the ā€œOPT.ā€) The concession is compelled, of course, for the reasons noted at the outset and elaborated on below: No one can plausibly claim that Arab citizens of Israel in any way resemble the non-white victims of South African apartheid.

(full article online)

 
Part 2

The legal analysis is equally flawed. Apartheid in international law involves, as the report states, ā€œsegregation, oppression and domination by one racial group over another.ā€ Furthermore, an accuser must prove this is undertaken with intent: ā€œThe system and crime of apartheid is best understood as the intentional, prolonged and cruel control of one racial group by another.ā€ The focus on race is central, given the context in which the term apartheid arose and the events that gave birth to the 1976 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. The convention defined ā€œthe crime of apartheidā€ to ā€œinclude similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa,ā€ and ā€œinhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.ā€ The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court likewise defines the term as ā€œin the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.ā€

All of which raises obvious questions. What is the ā€œone racial groupā€ of Israeli oppressors that Amnesty imagines to be subjugating the ā€œone racial groupā€ of Palestinians? Does Amnesty mean to suggest that Jewish Israelis, who hail from North and South America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, represent a single monochromatic race? The notion would be humorous to Israelā€™s Jews of Middle Eastern descent (the one group of refugees always omitted from the Palestiniansā€™ ā€œright of returnā€ discussions), as well as to Ethiopian, Asian, and Indian Jews. The diverse melting pot of modern Israel belies Amnestyā€™s caricatured depiction of Jews as a homogenous group of European colonizers.


This is to say nothing of Israelā€™s airlifting persecuted Jews of all races and ethnicities to find a safe haven in the Jewish state. Israelā€™s extensive record of saving these people from the human-rights violations of their native countries is additional evidence that it lacks the racial animus Amnesty ascribes to it. Would a racist regime have undertaken herculean efforts and dangerous risks to rescue black Africans from persecution in Africa? The historical irony was not lost on the late columnist William Safire, who observed, regarding Israelā€™s daring rescue of Ethiopian Jews, ā€œFor the first time in history, thousands of black people are being brought to a country not in chains but in dignity, not as slaves but as citizens.ā€ That modern-day Exodus motif has been replayed at Ben Gurion Airport repeatedly. This ingathering of exiles and the reverseā€”Israelā€™s export of humanitarian assistance all over the globeā€”offer a more accurate glimpse of the Israeli national soul than Amnestyā€™s distorted portrait.


 
Part 3

The mirror image of Amnestyā€™s depiction of the Jewish Israeli community as a single homogenous race is its conflation of two very different groups under the category ā€œPalestinians.ā€ Amnesty lumps together both Israeli citizens of Arab descent (whom Amnesty refers to as ā€œPalestinian citizens of Israelā€) and Arabs without Israeli citizenship living in Judea and Samaria. But this difference is crucial.

For starters, if Amnesty views Palestinians beyond the 1967 lines as ā€œoccupied,ā€ then Israelā€™s different treat-
ment of them is expressly permitted under international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict) applicable to occupying powers. As the report states: ā€œThe law of occupation allows, and in some cases requires, differential treatment between nationals of the occupying power and the population of the occupied territory.ā€ Thus, Amnesty recognizes that ā€œthe differential treatment is primarily required because international humanitarian law prohibits the occupying power from applying its own laws to the population in the occupied territories and therefore envisages different laws applying to its citizens and the population of the occupied territories.ā€

One hardly need accept the notion of Israel as occupier to understand that laws apply differently to people living outside a given state than to citizens of it. In any event, stabbings, lynchings, kidnappings, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians have earned the Palestinian inhabitants of the ā€œOPTā€ dissimilar treatment by Israel, precisely as contemplated by international humanitarian law.

In sharp contrast, those whom Amnesty considers ā€œPalestinian citizens of Israelā€ include people who not only donā€™t think of themselves as Palestinians and wouldnā€™t wish to live in a Palestinian state, but who take pride in Israeli citizenship. Among them are those who have reached the highest echelons of Israeli society. It is an odd form of apartheid state that selects as its representative flag-bearers in foreign capitals the very group it purportedly intends to subjugate. Israelā€™s alleged subjugation has produced such members of its elite foreign service as Ali Yahya, Israelā€™s first Arab Muslim ambassador (to Finland and Greece); Ishmael Khaldi, Israelā€™s first Bedouin ambassador (to Eritrea); Rasha Atamny, Israelā€™s first female Arab Muslim ambassador (to Turkey); and George Deek, Israelā€™s first Arab Christian ambassador (to Azerbaijan).

ā€œMere window dressing!ā€ the human-rights cynics may exclaim. If so, it would mark another difference from apartheid South Africa, which, as far as I recall, never appointed a black ambassador for the sake of appearances. Indeed, South Africa wanted to be understood as the apartheid state that it was.


 
Part 4

Then there are the domestic achievements of Israeli Arabs within Israeli society. Consider Mansour Abbas, who leads the United Arab List Party (a conservative Islamist party, no less). He sits in the Knesset as a member of the national governing coalition and was the kingmaker responsible for the current premierā€™s ascension. There are Israeli Arab Supreme Court Justices Salim Joubran, George Karra, and now Khaled Kabub. Major General Ghassan Alian, the first Arab commander of the Israel Defense Forceā€™s Golani Brigade, was embraced at the time of his appointment by now Prime Minister Naftali Bennet as ā€œa brother.ā€

Sometimes, familial relationships between high-profile Israeli Jews and Arabs go beyond the metaphorical. Tzachi Halevy, a Jewish actor on Israelā€™s hit Netflix series Fauda, married Israeli Arab TV news anchor Lucy Aharish in 2018. This is a strange expression of apartheid life if ever there was one. The couple had their first child last year.

Down at the level of ordinary, noncelebrity life, victims of South Africaā€™s old system would be shocked to learn whatā€™s being labeled ā€œapartheidā€ in Israel. Unlike the Johannesburg General Hospital, where my father was head of the Department of Gastroenterology, Israeli hospitals (staffed by Jews and Arabs alike) admit all, including both terrorists and their victims. Israelis are familiar with stories of organ transplants traversing one side of the national divide to provide life to the other and cases such as the bone-marrow transplant provided to the niece of Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh. She was treated in an Israeli hospital during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021, even as Hamas rained down rockets on civilian targets. Haniyehā€™s daughter has also reportedly benefited from treatment in an Israeli hospital.

Despite such inconvenient facts, Amnesty accuses Israel of ā€œconsider[ing] and treat[ing] Palestinians as an inferior non-Jewish racial group,ā€ with ā€œsegregationā€¦ conducted in a systematic and highly institutionalized manner through laws, policies and practices, all of which are intended to prevent Palestinians from claiming and enjoying equal rights to Jewish Israelis within the territory of Israel and within the OPT, and thus are intended to oppress and dominate the Palestinian people.ā€

This is, as weā€™ve seen, self-evidently false. As for Palestinians living ā€œwithin the OPT,ā€ it is true they do not share the rights and privileges of Israeli citizenship because, well, they are not Israeli citizens. Furthermore, unlike Israeli citizens, those Palestinians are, generally speaking, ideologically committed to Israelā€™s destruction with varying degrees of fervor. This, along with the Palestiniansā€™ existence under an entirely different legal regime, means that Israel does, appropriately, treat those Palestinians differently than her own citizens. If this is apartheid, then so too is the United Statesā€™ failure to extend citizenship to the Taliban.



 

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