Is Israel an Apartheid State? “A Declaration of War Against Israel” By Alex Grobman, PhD |
https://jewishlink.news/features/44956-is-israel-an-apartheid-state
From August 31 to September 8, 2001, more than1,500 nongovernmental agencies (NGOs) met at the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. There they embraced a strategy for the total isolation of Israel through boycotts, divestment and sanctions: “cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel.” They also asked for the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, and efforts to promote Israel as “an apartheid regime,” based on the South African model, according to NGO Monitor founder and president and Bar-Ilan University Professor Emeritus Gerald M. Steinberg.
Israel was accused of committing “crimes against humanity,” “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “genocide” against the Palestinian Arabs. “Durban became the most potent symbol of organized hate against Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” Steinberg said. In the participants’ view, “Israel … is a modern extension of Western colonialism of the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s not just the issue of ‘occupied territories.’ The NGO community targets Israel per se as a Western implant in the Middle East. The Palestinians are not guilty of human rights violations because they’re victims by definition. That’s built into the NGO creed.”
These NGOs continue to disseminate specious charges against Israel through their reports, press releases and political lobbying campaigns, which have formidable influence in the U.N., the media and the academy, Steinberg opines. Attempting to bring Israel before the International Criminal Court (ICC) is another example of this strategy as are Israel apartheid weeks on university campuses and the provoking of confrontations on Jewish students and institutions.
The danger these “systematic and systemic” assaults pose to the Jewish people’s right to self-determination—under their adversaries’ guise of promoting peace, human rights, justice, international law and other “progressive values”—makes this an urgent national security issue for Israel, argued the Reut Group, a nonprofit Israeli strategy and leadership organization.
What Is Apartheid?
Apartheid is a legal system of segregation based on color, with a white majority in control of the government. Under apartheid, people of color could not vote, hold office or travel freely in their own country, explained the Rev. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe, a member of the South African Parliament, founder of the African Christian Democratic Party and chairman of the South African Israel Allies Caucus. Meshoe was shocked “that the free, diverse, democratic state of Israel practices apartheid.” The danger is that such a “ridiculous accusation trivializes the word ‘apartheid,’ minimizing and belittling the magnitude of the racism and suffering endured by South Africans of color.” This misuse mocks the “grievous injustice and threatens to undermine the true meaning of the term.” He views Israel as “a model of democracy, inclusion and pluralism that can be emulated by many nations, particularly in the Middle East.”
The late Bayard Rustin, a veteran African American civil rights leader extremely critical of South Africa, feared that “the condemnation of Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, would obscure mankind’s rejection of racism and apartheid.” As director of Black Americans to Support Israel Committee (BASIC), formed with A. Philip Randolph in response to U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379, “Zionism is Racism” passed November 10, 1975, Rustin said the organization supported the right of the Palestinian Arabs to “genuine self-determination, but not at the expense of the rights of Jews to independence and statehood.” He presciently observed that by proclaiming Israel’s illegitimacy and condemning Zionism, this would only make the “problem of the Palestinians more intractable and diminish the likelihood of a lasting and just peace.”
“Apartheid Is Not Just a Label”
“Apartheid” is not just a label, Eugene Kontorovich, an expert in constitutional law, international law and economics, noted. It is a legal term South Africa designated to describe its system of de jure segregation between blacks and whites to guarantee white minority rule. This led to international denunciation of the regime and the enactment of several treaties—the Convention Against Apartheid and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—which established and delineated a “crime of apartheid.” The crime is defined as “inhumane acts committed in 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.” Among other offenses, this includes “widespread” murder and enslavement.
When directed to Israel within the 1949 Armistice lines and in Judea and Samaria, the charge is false, Kontorovich asserts, since the Israeli Arab minority enjoys full civil and political rights in Israel. Mansour Abbas is an Israeli politician who is also the leader of the United Arab List and represents the party in the Knesset. He was appointed as the chair of the Special Committee on Arab Society Affairs in the Knesset on April 27, 2021.
The claim that Palestinians Arabs are not permitted to vote in Israeli elections wrongly assumes that Israel governs and enacts laws for them. They were able to abandon the peace process, join 15 international organizations open only to sovereign states, and form a national unity government between Fatah and Hamas precisely because of the Oslo Accords. Simply put, they have their own government or governments, and are living under Israeli rule. More than 95% of Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza live under the Palestinian Authority.
If Israel Ruled the Palestinian Arabs
If Israel actually ruled the Palestinians Arabs, they would not allow them to promote antisemitism in their schools, media and mosques, fund pensions for terrorists and the families of suicide bombers, and legislate laws outlawing real estate transactions with Jews on penalty of death. The PA controls its own security forces, central bank, Internet domain name, tax policy and foreign relations.
Attempts to equate the PA with the “Bantustans,” the “pseudo-autonomous puppet governments” created by South Africa for its black inhabitants, is equally absurd, Kontorovich contends. As already described, the PA consistently opposes Israel. Furthermore, the international community declined to recognize the Bantustans to deny them legitimacy, while the PA is recognized as a sovereign government.
Kontorovich pointed out that even Abbas had rejected the apartheid canard by seeking international recognition, which is an overt admission that there is no apartheid in Judea and Samaria. Under international law, a territory must be self-governing. At the U.N., Abbas announced the “successful culmination of our state-building program,” which means the PA can either be a new country or it is governed by Israel—it cannot be both at the same time.
Finally, Kontorovich explains that apartheid is imposed on a population against their wishes, by a regime “with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Israel has offered the Palestinian Arabs complete sovereignty no less than three times during the past 15 years, and they have refused every time. Whatever the excuse for their refusal—the question of borders and the “right of return”—there is no connection to apartheid.
Saving Ethiopian Jews
Even when Israel rescued black Ethiopian Jews, questions were raised about her motives. As historians David and Richard Landes observed: “The rights of Israel’s Jewish citizens are among the most protected on the planet. To some, this may seem racist, like the German news commentator who felt the rescue of the Falashas from Ethiopia was racist: Why did the Israelis take only Jews out? Actually, the irony was there to savor. This was the first group of Africans since the Exodus brought out of Africa for freedom rather than slavery.”
A Final Note
Promoting Israel as an “apartheid state” has consequences. Bassam Tawil, an Arab scholar, wrote that “there is not one single Israeli Arab willing to give up Israel’s ‘apartheid’ and his ID card in exchange for the rule of the Palestinian Authority”—a choice that embarrassingly contradicts the apartheid assertion.
Israel’s former right-wing foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, offered the residents of the Israeli Arab city Umm al-Fahm the option of moving the city border to within the PA. They would retain their houses, lands and property—and relinquish only their Israeli citizenship. They refused outright.
“We cannot lie to ourselves,” Tawil said. “[The PA’s] amateurish propaganda only serves to destroy its credibility. As a result, even Palestinian claims that are actually just are disregarded as false and absurd.”
Alex Grobman is senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
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