The Real Jerusalem Streets blog has effectively rebutted the accusations of Israeli Apartheid in a 24,000 word blog post, i.e., 24 pictures (each worth 1000 words) showing Arabs freely moving about and doing their business on the Jerusalem streets. Bravo.
Yes, of course, this is not a deep investigation into the charges of apartheid. No such process needs to be undertaken since there is no apartheid in Israel today and there never was and never will be. Such baseless charges undermine the credibility of the Arab world and the true supporters of the Palestinian people. If ever there will be progress for the latter, it will have to be after they abandon their false and self-defeating worldview of victimhood and stop the nonsense of such activities as Israeli Apartheid Week.
I've been following your blog with interest but no longer will after this post which I feel uses pretty a racist framework to suggest that charges of Israeli apartheid is solely from Arabs--a denial of Israeli apartheid (or "Hafradah", if you'd like) could made been made without this implicit racism.
ReplyDeleteYour suggestion that there is "no apartheid in Israel today and there never was and never will be" is contradicted not only by Arabs, but by prominent Pro-Israel journalists Thomas Friedman and Jefferey Goldberg, Israeli officials including Former PM Ehud Olmert, Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leading Israeli military historian Martin van Crevald, and many Israeli human rights organizations such as B'tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Even as Ilan Barach, who resigned from the Netanyahu government, claimed that Israel isn't an apartheid state, he still admitted that the "South African experience needs to be studied."
Thanks for the interesting posts up till today. I enjoyed them, and wish you luck in the future.
Shalom.
There are a myriad of problems there and no shortage of people who study them and try to fix them.
ReplyDeleteTo Yakov W. No one is suggesting that Israelis (rightfully) are worried of Arab racist attacks targeting [any] Jews. No one is suggesting that there's no Arab official Apartheid and racism in Palestinian Authority against Christians and Jews. But to adopt the apartheid slur invenbted by the Mufti's aide, Ahmed Shukairy in 1961) to compare Arab Palestinians to S. A. apartheid is wrong and it stem from anti-Jewish bigotry (before or after Jimmy Carter was paid by the Arab lobby to write his hate book). It's roots is in Arab Nazism as Shukairy praised Nazi groups in 1962 at the UN.
ReplyDeleteLet's look at the definition of "apartheid."
ReplyDeleteCrimes against humanity "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."
That's true since the inception of Israel and it's true today. The Arabs were kicked off their land to make way for diaspora Jews, and today there are national ID cards and a giant wall, all of this done based on a difference in race, disguised as necessities for protection.
Palestinians rely on Israeli-issued “permits” to travel through a system of more than 600 checkpoints in the occupied territories.
Palestinians in the occupied territories are not citizens of any state, and Palestinian citizens of Israel have different citizenship documents and rights than Israeli Jews.
East Jerusalem and the West Bank are splintered by a series of roads leading to illegal Israeli settlements; these roads can only be used by Israelis, while Palestinians must use older, often unpaved roads.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3WbadNRXGs
It's stunning, but less and less so these days, that a Rabbi would make a statement as blatantly one sided as this one.