{"id":905,"date":"2010-03-11T14:16:07","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T13:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/?p=905"},"modified":"2010-04-13T12:46:14","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T11:46:14","slug":"israel-apartheid-week-hoping-mud-sticks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/03\/11\/israel-apartheid-week-hoping-mud-sticks\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Apartheid Week – hoping mud sticks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Across the world anti-Israel activists are holding Israel Apartheid week.<\/p>\n

The claim is that Israel is like Apartheid South Africa, that Israel is a racists state where Arabs = Blacks and Cape Coloureds and Israelis = whites.<\/p>\n

The absurdity of this claim is patent. Just walk down any street in any Israeli city. You will see blacks, browns and whites freely mingling. The IDF is multi-ethnic. Arabs sit in promenade shelters along Tel Aviv beachfront. \u00a0There are no Jews only signs anywhere. Racism is not enshrined in the laws of the land. Arabs can and do from political parties, practise medecine in Israeli hospitals, become members of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

This is not to say there is no discrimination. Israel is not a perfect society.<\/p>\n

If we move to the West Bank, which is not Israel, of course, we have the Israeli Jewish settlements in land which is disputed and internationally recognised as ‘occupied’. Settlers are at risk of violence from Palestinians. You may not like settlements but they exist. The state has taken extraordinary lengths to protect settler communities: Israeli-only roads, checkpoints, gated communities.<\/p>\n

The Israeli settlements do well. The Palestinians not so well. Is this really Apartheid? It may be very ugly but what is the alternative? Open season on Israelis? Whatever you think of the settlements you can’t expect them to leave themselves defenceless. The motivation is security and not racism. And that’s the point.<\/p>\n

The security barrier \u00a0is often used as a symbol of Apartheid but as the barrier has reduced suicide bombings by 99% it is clear that this is a security success, nothing to do with racism.<\/p>\n

The fall out for Palestinians of these security measures can be criticised but it is still not Apartheid.<\/p>\n

Indeed the Jerusalem Post has an article <\/a>by Dore Gold in which he quotes Benjamin Pogrund a former Apartheid activist:<\/p>\n

In 2006, Benjamin Pogrund, a former anti-apartheid activist, who now lives in Israel (he also served as a deputy editor of Johannesberg\u2019s Rand Daily Mail) responded to a report in The Guardian comparing Israel and apartheid South Africa. As a journalist, Pogrund had specialized in apartheid, and was even imprisoned by the South African authorities for his reporting. Looking at the situation in Israel, he noted that when he had been hospitalized in Jerusalem for surgery, he looked around and noticed that the patients, nurses, and doctors were both Arabs and Jews.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I saw in the Hadassah-Mt. Scopus hospital was inconceivable in the South Africa where I spent most of my life,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

The apartheid system was based on legalizing racism. As former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Robbie Sabel has pointed out, in Israel even incitement to racism is a criminal offense.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gold continues:<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s accusers also try to focus on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but here too their arguments are extremely weak. The majority of Israelis do not want to annex the whole West Bank, but rather feel that they are entitled to \u201cdefensible borders\u201d in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 242. This is not a case of establishing a different legal system for a specific racial or ethnic group within the Israeli state, but rather a territorial dispute between the parties over Israel\u2019s future borders. In fact, it is the Palestinian Authority that has legal jurisdiction over the Palestinians in these disputed territories, not Israel.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Israel delegitimisers are fond of using highly potent words and adjectives to smear Israel: apartheid, nazi, racist, war criminals, organ thieves. As Gold so eloquently states:<\/p>\n

WHAT underlies the Israel Apartheid Week campaign is not international law, but rather a highly politicized interpretation of Israel\u2019s history in which the Jewish people are viewed as a colonialist movement that recently came from Europe to usurp lands from the indigenous Palestinian population, rather than the authentic claimants to sovereignty in their historical homeland.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words truth and human rights of Israelis go out the window to be replaced by assertion, lies, bad history, incitement and the teaching of hatred. Add to this the attempt within many parts of the Arab world to deny any Jewish historical claim whatever to the land and you arrive at a conspiracy to delegitimise the state by any means even if that involves smear and lies.<\/p>\n

What is especially galling is that those who accuse Israel are often mired in racism and bigotry and their own forms of apartheid. By law, in the Palestinian Authority, if you sell land to a Jew you face the death penalty. In Saudi Arabia non-muslims cannot even become full citizens. In Jordan, Jews cannot become citizens.<\/p>\n

In Israel, Arabs enjoy in law full citizenship rights and enfranchisement. There are many mixed schools. Jews lie in hospital beds next to Arabs and are treated by doctors and nurses who are themselves Jews and Arabs.<\/p>\n

So for Israel Apartheid Week read – Israel delegitimisation Week.<\/p>\n

Problem is that the mud sticks and that is what the activists rely on. They are prepared to believe their own lies and then feed them to others as the truth. I recall another group of people doing that to the Jews a while back. Now what were they called…?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Across the world anti-Israel activists are holding Israel Apartheid week. The claim is that Israel is like Apartheid South Africa, that Israel is a racists state where Arabs = Blacks and Cape Coloureds and Israelis = whites. The absurdity of this claim is patent. Just walk down any street in any Israeli city. You will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[434],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-delegitimisation-of-israel","tag-israel-apartheid-week","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":912,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}