Mondli Makhanya, in “The never-ending face-off” (July 27), is wrong when he describes Israeli policies towards Palestinian Arabs as a form of apartheid.
...If everything is apartheid, then nothing is apartheid.
In Israel, all citizens — Jew and Arab alike — are equal before the law. Israel has none of the apartheid legislative machinery devised to discriminate against and separate people. It has no Population Registration Act, no Group Areas Act, no Mixed Marriages and Immorality Act, no Separate Representation of Voters Act, no Separate Amenities Act, no pass laws or any of the other myriad apartheid laws.
...All citizens vote on the same voters’ roll in regular, multiparty elections, and there are Arab parties and Arab members of other parties in Israel’s parliament...Arab Israelis, like all their compatriots, can express themselves and act freely as members of a transparent and open democratic society where criticism of the government in a free press is the norm.
...It is incorrect legally, factually and even morally to speak of an occupation that implies there was once a Palestinian entity in these territories, and that this is now occupied by Israeli forces.
Before 1967, the West Bank was part of Jordan, and Gaza part of Egypt. It is more accurate to speak of disputed territories. There has never been a Palestinian state in all of history.
...Israel erected a security fence to shield it from the attacks launched from the disputed territories across its internationally recognised borders.
...None of this has anything to do with apartheid and everything to do with an ongoing war about the disputed territories, and even the very existence of Israel...If there is an analogy to the South African situation, it is that Israel is like the ANC, which was forced into the armed struggle because it had no partner for peace. As soon as the National Party came around to wanting to genuinely negotiate, the situation was resolved...
Sunday, August 03, 2008
On Apartheid That Doesn't Exist in Israel
Warren Goldstein is chief rabbi of South Africa and knows something about apartheid and has written an op-ed in the Times of South Africa:-
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2 comments:
Um - do you think someone should tell Jimmuh?
His alleged credentials as an expert in apartheid notwithstanding, this guy is:
a) hardly a non-partisan sort to issue a rebuttal that balanced people would like to hear
b) clearly on purpose raises the smoke-screen of the situation of the Israeli Arabs when the charges of apartheid mainly reference the situation in the territories.
(now, even ignoring the de-facto second class citizens status of the Israeli Arabs, even here he gets things wrong in principle saying that there is "no Mixed Marriages and Immorality Act": Israel just extended the Citizenship Law which is a discriminatory law worthy of an "apartheid" state, as Amos Schocken convincingly argues here)
The situation in the territories is indeed not like the apartheid in details. The Magnes Zionist conveniently puts two good articles covering the recent ANC delegation visit to the WB here. For example:
"Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for the people here," said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the West Bank. "There are areas in which people would live their whole lifetime without visiting because it's impossible."
And regarding comparisons of the SA conflict with IP conflict, the Realistic Dove runs good columns here and here.
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