Calling Israel an “Apartheid State” and the barrier built to keep out suicide bombers the “Apartheid Wall” is part of the standard lexicon of the Islamist-Lefist Anti-Israel Coalition.
In The New York Times today, Richard Goldstone calls the apartheid terminology a slander, Israel and the Apartheid Slander:
One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is going to be one-sided and the members of the “jury” are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.
While “apartheid” can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.
Much as he recanted his report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, Goldstone’s op-ed is a good first step but does not go far enough.
For starters, Goldstone does not point out that the conflict in Israel is not racial, it is religious. Jews in Israel are multi-racial, with approximately half the Jewish population being refugees or descendants of refugees from Arab countries; this is the great untold story of the conflict, that as many Jews fled Arab lands in the wake of the Israel War of Independence as non-Jewish Arabs fled what now is Israel. Israel also is home to black Ethiopian Jews who were rescued in Operation Solomon. Israel’s Jewish population is the most racially diverse in the world.
More important, Goldstone does not compare ethnic and religious practices in Israel to those in the Arab Muslim world which is being depopulated of Christians and other non-Muslims, and where discrimination frequently is written into the law of the country. Indeed, many of the countries which attend various “Israel Apartheid” conferences themselves engage in ethnic and religious cleansing, and openly practice religious supremacy.
So there is Apartheid in the Middle East, if that term is meant to signify institutionalized racial and religious discrimination. Goldstone was right to defend Israel, but also should have called out the hypocrites.
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Damn those Georgia-Pacific people; they plant pine trees in their forests…then cut them down!
Why dignify this gasbag or any other NYTers with a junior high talent for stating the obvious with a precocious freshman’s talent for doing it in fifteen hundred words. His audience is not NYT readers, they agree with him – all nine hundred of them. You can see their heads bob up and down when they read it, like the kids in the first row. The audience is anyone in the conservative media who can be tempted to rise to the bait in defensive indignation as you did. He’s as interested in enlightening debate as Hamas is in peace. If you want react to these blowhards dismiss them in one sentence then provide several sources containing honest facts (why does this redundancy seem so necessary any more); don’t waste time and energy arguing with them.
News flash – the Pakistanis, Afghanis, Saudi Arabians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Iranians, Yemenies, Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Moroccans, Tunisians, Somalis, Russians, Swedes, Danish, French, British, and others to numerous to list, persecute Jews. There are virtually none left anywhere in the middle east – except in Israel. Most persecute Christians too.
Nor did he note that no less Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah leader, pledged that any Palestinian state would be judenfrei…which of course Gaza already is.
I’d live in Israel in a heartbeat. Somebody offered me a teaching job in Saudi Arabia the other day. Thes not enough black gold in them thar sands! To enter Saudi, I’d have to give up the Cross and the Bible and watch both defaces and destroyed. Islam does not coexist unless Muslims are a very small minority.
My buddy at work lived there a few years when his dad, a microbiologist, took a job in a hospital there.
Judging by his stories … you wouldn’t want to live there.
He also spent time in an English boarding school where he was bullied … and recalls that experience with comparative fondness.
Thanks for pointing out the racial richness of the State of Israel, a source of her strength. She is also religiously rich, again a source of her strength. Of Arab nations the same cannot be said. Their racial and religious orthogenesis renders them weak and fanatical. Compared to their condition under self-determination, Arab societies were stronger under British stewardship, under French stewardship not so much, under Italian stewardship mixed.
Israel is a cynosure in Arabs’ midst were they but humble and contrite, thinking for themselves rather than cowering and burning at incitements from their scholars/lawyers of the Koran and clerics.
GWOT never has aimed its missiles at the heads of the snake: Asharite scholars and clerics. So the snake’s teeth keep bearing down and its coils keep extending and tightening. That way lies poverty, although not for Asharite scholars and clerics. Israel and the West have a better way, one of richness.
“Today, and in the same spirit, the Bertrand Russell Foundation supports the setting up of a Russell Tribunal to examine the violations of international law, of which the Palestinians are victims, and that prevent the Palestinian People from exercising its rights to a sovereign State.”
Why the need for a tribunal? They’ve already ruled in favor of closed minds. It’s case closed. The only remaining question is … will the BDS dancers provide the entertainment?
Followed by …
“It will reaffirm the supremacy of international law as the basis for a solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.”
I think Jews must shudder when they here outside groups speaking of “solutions” for them …
I assume the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, whose website is peppered with “social justice” and Noam Chomsky, is headquartered in the U.K.
After seeing parts of the U.K. ablaze this past summer … isn’t there work closer to home to keep them busy?
I guess Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby isn’t the only “telescopic philanthropist” bored with the U.K.’s own problems.
Blood libel, that is what it is. Excerpts from:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31947
“… Far from being mistreated, the Arab population in Israel and in the territories administered by Israel has been freer than the population in any Arab state. Arabs in Israel vote. They elect leaders to the Knesset. They have their own political parties. They have their own newspapers. They have full rights to citizenship. They are free to speak their minds. As an Arab-American journalist who has spent a good deal of time covering the region, I can tell you there is more freedom for Arabs in Israel than in any Arab state.
Land cannot possibly be the contentious issue as the Arab and Muslim states in the region already have 800 times as much territory as Israel. The Arabs have 50 times the population of Israel. The Arabs have all of the oil reserves of the region. They have 21 states of their own – all varying shades of police states. It’s difficult to imagine how one more will bring peace to a region that has known some of the most devastating and costly wars of the last century.
But, to top it all off, I seem to be the only observer asking pointed questions about the Arab-Israeli conflict: If conditions for Arabs are so bad in Israel, why is the Arab population exploding — and I don’t mean because of suicide bombers? Why do Arabs continue to flock to the tiny Jewish state from virtually every Arab and Muslim land in the world?
In 1949, the Arab population of Israel was about 160,000. Today, it is over 1.2 million.
This is hardly attributable to higher birth rates. Most of the growth in Arab population is due to migration. In other words, Arabs are picking up stakes in Arab lands and choosing to live in Israel.
This trend, of course, doesn’t include Arab Jewish migration to Israel. No one talks about the staggering number of Arab Jewish refugees – as many as 1 million – who fled the Muslim world with little more than the clothes on their backs to reach the safety and security of the Jewish state in the last 50 years.
We’re led to believe Arabs hate Israel – and, indeed, it’s true there is an irrational, inexplicable form of virulent anti-Semitism growing in the Arab and Muslim world. But when they vote with their feet, Arabs seem to love Israel. They continue to choose it as a place to live over life in their native countries as they have for the last half-century.
I’d love to hear one of the Arab nationalists explain this phenomenon….”
Israel treats all its citizens well, Arabs, Bedouins, Samaritans.http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/number-of-israeli-arab-idf-recruits-dramatically-increases-in-2008-1.255275
“…The number of Israeli Arab recruits to the IDF has increased dramatically in the first nine months of 2008, official figures obtained by Haaretz indicate.
The rise in the Bedouin recruitment rate is attributed to Bedouin’s difficulty in finding well-paid jobs outside the military and problems with the local authorities. The IDF has also improved its treatment of Bedouin army veterans and is helping them find employment…”
Bedouin officers, however, emphasize their commitment to the state. Second Lieutenant Amir Juamis, 27, of Beit Zarzir, joined the army at the age of 26 after his brother was discharged. His father was wounded in the first war in Lebanon, and another was wounded in Gaza in 2002. He joined as a combatant, trained as an officer and now commands a military team.
“I feel like an Israeli citizen and it’s my duty to serve and contribute to the state. This is also the Bedouin’s state,” he said a few weeks ago.
Asked about how he feels fighting with his people on the other side of the border, he said: “a terrorist is a terrorist. Islam doesn’t say you have to kill. He comes to kill here and can kill a Jew or an Arab. It’s my duty to prevent that.” ….”
Israel is a wonderful democracy to live in because Israel treats its citizens well. It’s time for Bibi to take back Judea and Samaria (inappropriately called the West Bank) because of the 900 Samaritans(from the census) whom have lived there continuously from biblical times. That would be right of return.
Apartheid in Israel:
Over 7 million people.
Approximately 1.8 million are not Jewish.
Most non Jews are Arab.
Of the non Jews, approximately 1.3 million (17%) are Muslim.
All 7 million people are citizens with full rights and privileges afforded to them.
Any “apartheid” occurs when people voluntarily segregate themselves into homogenous communities (e.g., little China, Korea, Africa, etc.).
That’s a pretty good outcome for a minority population following a war of aggression initiated by their leaders.
It’s unfortunate the two state solution where Jordan was to host the “Palestinians” was a failure. Oh well, the “Palestinian” leadership would have served its people better by not attempting to overthrow the existing government. They were aggressors and lost twice. Their people continue to lose because of their leaders’ lust for power.
I was misled: may I have a refund? I thought this was going to be all about how the North Africans in Libya were treating the sub-Saharan Africans. My bad. Considering the way Arabs have treated Black Africans over the years their recent treatment shouldn’t be a surprise. More slaves were taken out of Africa for Arab lands than for the Americas. While most of those taken to the New World were men for labor, most of those taken to Arab lands were women and young boys for sex trade purposes. Did the Arabs practice an efficient form of birth control? No, when the Black women had babies those babies were murdered upon delivery.
Before the creation of Israel, the people of Arab descent in that area defined themselves by nationality: Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, or Arab, not as “Palestinian”. The only reason they have given for a Palestinian state is to have a better platform to destroy Israel.
What’s the count again?
Number of Muslim MP’s in the Knesset?
Number of Jewish MP’s in Egyptian, Iranian, Syrian, Saudi, Iraqi for that matter Parliaments? Woop’s don’t forget the new Al-Queda flag flying Sharia Libya.
I don’t know the current count of the Knesset beyond greater than zero. Want religious freedom, racial freedom, political freedom…..Israel
Just remember that the new caliphate’s objective is to take back Andalusia and the rest of Europe, Israel, and Southern Asia.