When someone mentions Israel and apartheid in the same sentence, it says more about the person than the Jewish state of Israel.
The ‘apartheid’ label has been one of the more insidious memes ever thrown at the democratic and highly diverse Jewish state, only the despicably dishonest and grossly ignorant spread this mantra in their utterances on Israel. Tomorrow in Helsinki one such group will be selling this tripe to those gathered to hear the BDS movement’s, Shir Hever, speak about the economics of the Israeli state and how best to “bring it down” through boycotting.
It’s evil to say that Israel practices apartheid, and to highlight every negative aspect of its society as proof that it’s existence is a mistake. It’s the same anti-semitism of old, attributing every known negative quality to mankind, as the sole property of the Jews. The BDS’s ”Israel is an apartheid state” meme is just rehashing old anti-semitism in a newer form.
Arafat speaks from hell.
That’s why I concocted the apartheid smear, to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. Thanks to all you leftists for picking up where I left off!
Exploiting apartheid for political warfare
As Judge Goldstone wrote, “the charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one.”
In September 2001, the participants in the NGO Forum of the UN Conference on Racism and Discrimination in Durban, South Africa, welcomed Yasser Arafat, distributed anti-Semitic literature and adopted a declaration branding Israel as “a racist, apartheid state” practicing “a crime against humanity.” This form of political warfare was led by the Palestinian leadership and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the text was written at the Tehran preparatory conference, from which Israelis and Jews were excluded.
The Durban NGO Forum marked the launch of another major round of political warfare against Israel, seeking to delegitimize Jewish national self-determination. The use of the “apartheid” libel as the primary vehicle for delegitimization is not directed against specific Israeli policies. The rhetoric and the campaigns on university campuses and in events such as “Israel Apartheid Week” explicitly target the existence of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. The political warfare accompanied by BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaigns, is a direct continuation of the Arab rejection of the November 1947 UN Partition plan (UNGA 181). This strategy was also embodied in the infamous 1975 UN “Zionism is racism” resolution (UNGA 3379, repealed in 1991).
In the words of Prof. Irwin Cotler, former Canadian attorney-general, “Let there be no mistake about it: to indict Israel as an Apartheid State is prologue and justification for the dismantling of the Jewish State, for the criminalization of its supporters, and for the consequential silencing of their speech.”
