Israel's Critics Apartheidize Themselves

In response to Richard Goldstone's defense of Israel against the calumny of "apartheid", there were two letters-to-the-editor published as well as a column by Gal Beckerman.

In the NYTimes, John Dugard claims he knows

"the West Bank better than Mr. Goldstone, as from 2001 to 2008, I was special rapporteur to the Human Rights Council, a United Nations body, on human rights in the Palestinian territories and visited there regularly". 

He is sure that

"there are distinctive similarities between apartheid in South Africa and Israel’s practices in the West Bank. Israel discriminates against Palestinians in favor of settlers. Its restrictions on freedom of movement resemble the pass laws of apartheid South Africa...there are more political prisoners in Israeli jails than there were in South Africa under apartheid...There are sufficient similarities between the two systems to justify an investigation into whether or not Israel commits the crime of apartheid in the Palestinian territories.

Many things can be "similar" but that is not being the "same", the exact same.  The only thing the amount of prisoners (why "political"?  either the killed, tried to, stole, threw stones or otherwise engaged in murderous or riotous behavior) can mean is that there are a lot more Arabs engaged in terror and security offenses thatn there were in South Africa.  How stupid does Dugrad think we are (alright, that was a bad question because I really don't know what he thinks about us).  But we do know what he thinks about Israel and it is bad and evil, if only because he is a South African and does know better.  His ideology twists his faculties.

And one David Markowitz of Pound Ridge, N.Y., pounds away;

Richard J. Goldstone’s article splits hairs to rob us of language that accurately describes the Palestinians’ repression...the most appalling insult to logic is the claim that there can be no apartheid because Israel has no “intention of maintaining” its regime of “domination by one racial group.”  It’s a fact on the ground, but we can’t call it by its name because Israel means well?

But it isn't a "fact on the ground".  Plain and simple.
 
In Beckerman's Another Goldstone Inaccuracy in the backward Forward, while he agrees that "apartheid...should not be thrown around as lightly as it has been", nevertheless, decides to use another inaccurate definition of the term:

preferential treatment of a minority at the expense of a majority (in other words, apartheid)

He is upset that in his piece, Goldstone

does not account for the settlers and their settlements...Goldstone does not mention...the word “settlement,”...nowhere in his piece.

And he continues,

Goldstone...ignores completely the settlement archipelago and the preferential Jewish roads that connect them; he ignores the daily experience of occupation that Palestinians encounter at checkpoints while Jewish cars zoom past; he ignores the fact that in the West Bank there is water reserved exclusively for Jewish settlers...

There is so much wrong with Gal's thinking and portrayal.

Has he asked himself how many (alive) Jews reside in Arab villages, on both sides of the Green Line? Abbas and PLO diplomat Maen Rashid Areikat have stated that "absolutely" no Jews could remain in a future Palestinian state. That is apartheid. Gal's political ideology blinds him and perverts his ability to perceive the reality as it is and not as he would wish and all that makes his thesis inaccurate.

He writes of "water reserved exclusively for Jewish settlers".

???

If it weren't for Israel's technology, Arabs would have been dying of thirst long ago. And if they would stop stealing water from both their own pipes and the water supply infrastructure that Israel inserted (and would fix their leaky pipes), there would be no problem at all. Israel created the drip-drop irriagation system and hothouse-in-the-field agriculture that Arabs use, somewhat succesfully, and still Gal is upset that Jews are living in their national homeland.

Is he upset that Jews are living in pre-67 Israel? I would guess not. Is he upset that Arabs are living in pre-67 Israel? Same. Is he upset that Arabs are living in Judea and Samaria? I think not. So why has he set his sights on the Jews there? Is that an apartheid approach to politics, perhaps? Jews cannot live in "Palestine"?

Or if we are not 'repressive' (actually, we are not), we can? Is our 'repression' the result of some insane and fanatic desire to hurt Arabs or is the situation one that developed out of Arab wishes and actions of ethnic cleansing of Jews from anywhere in "their Palestine" (which they called Southern Syria until the Jews and British came to rule them) plus a great deal of terror 99.9% directed at civilians?

Who sabotaged peace? Who walked away from the negotiating table - ask Condi Rice, she knows (from the WashPost: “It’s one of the best deals I think you’re going to see,” Rice said of the deal on the table during the waning months of the Bush administration. The deal died when the Palestinians rejected it weeks before Bush left office, she wrote...). Of course, security can't be the panacea for all the reality we face, but Gal, how many Arabs live in kibbutzim, those castles of socialist liberal progressivism?

Gal, so innacurate.

Three critics who have apartheidize themselves.


_____

Is apartheidize a word?

^