It’s a Lie to say Israel is an Apartheid State

August 22, 2009

 

 

 

 

Conventional wisdom asserts the Palestinians are suffering from an Israeli apartheid in much the same way as the blacks were in South Africa under the apartheid regime there. Moreover, it’s fashionable to further hold that Israelis are racist like the Nazis, and that Israel, alone among all nations of the globe, has no right to exist. It is additionally asserted, incredibly, that the Jews are perpetrating a holocaust upon the Arabs of Palestine such as the Jews themselves had inflicted upon their own lives by the Nazis.

 

 

Thus, Richard Corliss of Time magazine recently reviewed the new movie District 9. It’s set in South Africa, so the proximity to the former scene of apartheid is built-in. Corliss points out that the extraterrestrials in the movie are being deprived of their rights similarly to, according to him, the Gazans in Palestine and the blacks under apartheid. But it is outrageous in the extreme to make an analogy such as this, given the implied correlative, that Israel and the former apartheid regime are morally equivalent. They most certainly are not.

 

 

Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace Not Apartheid, has apparently given currency to these tragic beliefs. But Alan Dershowitz, in his book, The Case Against Israel’s Enemies, tears Carter’s book apart, exposing in Carter’s book what Dershowitz sees as sloppiness and disingenuousness. One has to feel that Carter has it coming for the distortions in just the title of the book. Also, Dershowitz shows how Carter works for the so-called Arab lobby, which funds the Carter Center generously. But Dershowitz’ denunciation of Carter is of no avail, sadly, if even a distinguished, senior writer at Time, albeit an organ for liberal policy positions, can so cavalierly take it as settled, established fact that one may imply with impunity an apartheid nature to Israel’s government.

 

 

In the world of truth now, not fiction, Arab leaders have been attacking the Jewish national revival since the 1920’s. For almost 100 years, Middle Eastern despotisms have been lying to their “constituencies” about their motives concerning Israel. But the “catastrophe” that the Arabs suffer from in Gaza, the deprivation of rights they experience, is very much one imposed upon them from within — their own leaders have brought it about. That is, the violence in the Middle East is not because Israel has no right to exist, but indeed does; rather, the violence is inherent in one version of Islamic, Koranic teaching that a present-day totalitarian movement, born from Hitler and Stalin’s ashes, insists upon. That teaching, in conjunction with the disturbed totalitarian ideology of a fictitious world conspiracy that must be stopped, would promulgate the same level of violence even if the Jews had not conceived and realized their fully-justified Zionist project. The violence has nothing to do with the Jews or Israel.

 

 

If the Arabs had accepted Israel’s existence immediately, in 1920 or so, both Israel and Palestine would now be much the better for it: both countries would be rife with economic development, intellectual development, athletic and artistic achievement – anything you can think of that’s good. Accepting Israel’s existence wouldn’t have been very hard (without a totalitarian ideology in the way of doing so), and would have involved no shame to the Arabs or injustice to them. It would have been all to their benefit. It was only ideology that motivated the rejection of Israel. The Arab leaders have always known that Israel would make itself into a Euro-American style democracy, and so they wouldn’t have it.

 

 

To claim the dispute is over a piece of land is as outlandish as saying Israel is the aggressor. Why would Israel wish to be the aggressor? Israel wants to pursue development, whereas most Arab capitals wish to prevent a democratic neighbor from taking root close by. It’s an inversion of truth that accuses Israel of the chief wrongdoing – it’s an overemphasis, to the point and beyond of indefensibility, on the last frame of the story. Israel is desperately attempting to defend itself against the pathological, murderous, and anti-Semitic assaults upon its existence. The willful blindness on campus that denies this obvious fact is arrogant, naïve, clueless, and deeply troubling, at least. It could even be coming from a vague, poseur sympathy with pseudo-Marxist stances.

 

 

It can only be fatuous, vast ignorance (and simple laziness) that unwittingly falls prey to the pernicious new anti-Semitism taking up residence so confidently in Europe and America. This new anti-Semitism trendily and casually posits a criminal nature to Israel in supposedly oppressing the Palestinians. But it is the Arab countries, those superannuated despotisms, those quasi-totalitarian regimes of the Middle East, that spin this fable, and that actually deprive the Palestinians of their right to accept Israel, to work in Israel, to run for office in Israel, to reject medieval autocracy, and to live freely and productively. Israel an apartheid state? Only if you’re bought and paid for, too, like Jimmy Carter.