Is Israel An Apartheid State?
Apartheid was a horrific and brutal system of racism and segregation in South Africa, which created two separate distinct societies: one of the free white minority, and the other being the oppressed majority. For example, Black South Africans were barred from many jobs, and had to walk on different sides of the same streets.
In Israel, all citizens are treated equally under the law. There are no laws that prevent non-Jews from attending universities or serving in public or private sectors. Arab-Israeli politicians, judges, bank managers, and high-ranking military officers are common in Israeli society.
Israeli civil law only applies to Israeli citizens. Palestinians, who are not citizens of Israel, and who do not live in Israel, are governed by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, or Hamas in Gaza. Palestinians can and do travel to Israel from the Palestinian Authority for work, school, or religious services. Since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2006, they have refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and to cooperate with the Israeli government. As a result, sea and border crossings remain closed to civilian traffic.
The Apartheid Canard & Media Complicity:
What is the truth about the most common anti-Israel accusation?
NGO
MONITOR
A report from NGO Monitor issued a much- needed, rigorous critique of one of the most dangerous libels against Israel: the claim that it is an “apartheid” state.
The authors, Joshua Kern of 9 Bedford Row and Anne Herzberg of NGO Monitor, expertly demonstrate how fundamental academic and legal analysis is absent from this accusation.
Groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) try to argue we shouldn’t look to the South African experience as illustrative of what the crime of apartheid involves, presumably since such a comparison would inevitably expose how it is used to superficially libel Israel.
But, the South African experience is legally relevant, considering the Apartheid Convention expressly refers to it.
Photo Credit: Paul Weinberg, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
According to legal expert Eugene Kontorovich, when it comes to HRW’s “apartheid” libel, “there is no baseline for its accusations.” Instead, these groups distort the facts on the ground and shape the law to fit them.
Herzberg and Kern instead perform legal analysis as it is meant to be done, providing a “measurable standard for what practices amount to apartheid.” They analyze the meaning of the law based on fundamental legal principles and only then apply it to the facts.
#APARTHEIDWEEKEXPOSED
Screenshot of a tweet by Ken Roth, HRW Executive Director, labeling a senior member of the terrorist organization, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), as simply a “legislator.”
CNN gave HRW Executive Director Ken Roth a full ten minutes to spread this libel without challenge. Roth and HRW have a long history of belittling Judaism and victim-blaming Jews, butchering basic concepts of international law to libel Israel, and whitewashing and even giving jobs to members of Palestinian terrorist organizations.
Responsible journalism should allow for Roth to present his case, but also require bringing on someone with a dissenting view, or better yet, an actual legal expert, to point out HRW’s errors.
But this is where the media has failed most spectacularly on Israel’s “apartheid” slander. It has replaced actual investigative work with true expert analysis, with the amplification of accusations that fuel outrage.
#APARTHEIDWEEKEXPOSED
There is a decades-old effort to associate Jews with the modern idea of bigotry and evil. Make no mistake: this is part of a deliberate effort to do what Arab armies repeatedly could not: destroy the Jewish State.
Media outlets like CNN, at best, are the latest dupes spreading another iteration of the antisemitic “Zionism as a form of racism” libel. As the NGO Monitor report recounts, slander about “Israeli apartheid” has evolved from this sentiment. It has manifested as the labeling of Jews as fascists in the UN, copying the strategy of the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion by accusing Zionists of seeking “hegemonism” (i.e., world domination).
#APARTHEIDWEEKEXPOSED
Read more on camera.org:
“Apartheid” and the Media’s Complicity in a Modern-Day Libel
Everyone should read and internalize Herzberg and Kern’s report and use it to demand a more reasoned, objective, and accurate conversation on these issues.
C CAMERA/dlitman
#APARTHEIDWEEKEXPOSED
Deconstructing “Israeli Apartheid”
