Lost in the blur of slogans, Ishmael Khaldi, Wednesday, March 4, 2009, San Francisco Chronicle

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/04/EDRP168GMT.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Apartheid in Israel? - Reda Mansour
A few years ago I began an initiative at the Israeli Foreign Ministry aimed at opening a dialogue with Muslim communities in the West. When the first delegations of European and American Muslims started to arrive, they were amazed at the coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel. In Haifa, the Muslim delegations visited a major university with an Arab Muslim vice president and many Arab students. They went to markets and offices and observed Arabs and Jews peacefully going about their daily lives. They met some of the more than 100 Islamic family court judges and talked with the imams who provide religious services; both groups are paid by the Israeli government. In a regular Israeli parliament session, there are an average of 15 Arab members. The facts on the ground show nothing even remotely close to a racist system.
    Before the first Palestinian uprising in 1987 more than 120,000 Palestinians worked in Israel. In every Palestinian household there was at least one person who worked in Israel. The workers entered the country freely and their standard of living was among the highest in the Middle East. Israel, like any other country, is not perfect. But apartheid? You must be joking. Palestinians need to understand that violent action will never yield the results they want and that serving as a useful distraction for the regime in Tehran will never bring prosperity. The writer, an Israeli Druze, is consul general of Israel to the southeastern U.S. (JTA)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, April 10, 2009]

George Shultz secretary of state from 1982 to 1989: "Another tried and true method for damaging the well-being and security of the Jewish people and the State of Israel is a dangerously false analogy. Witness former President Jimmy Carter's book Palestine-Peace Not Apartheid. Here the association on the one hand is between Israel's existentially threatened position and the measures it has taken to protect its population from terrorist attacks, driven by an ideology bent on the complete eradication of the State of Israel, and, on the other, the racist oppression of South Africa's black population by the white Boer regime."

One on One: Debunking dastardly debate, RUTHIE BLUM  Dec 13, 2007.  There have been three stages of anti-Semitism. The first was religious anti-Semitism, initially Christian and now overshadowed by religious Muslim anti-Semitism. The second stage was nationalist-ethnic-racist anti-Semitism. And the third - the latest one - is anti-Israelism, against the collective Jew, the State of Israel.

Each of these has three characteristic phases. The first is demonization; the second is exclusion; and the third is expulsion or destruction. We see elements of all three phases today, directed against the collective Jew. Demonization - whereby Israelis are called the Nazis of today, citizens of an apartheid or colonialist state.

None of this is true, of course. Colonialists pulled money out of countries they came to; the Jews put money into Israel. The Jews were a nationalist movement, not a colonizing movement. Nor do the Israelis practice apartheid against the Palestinians.

Apartheid is a phenomenon specific to South Africa. And the anti-apartheid movement used violence as a last resort, whereas the Palestinian movements use it as a prime one. Furthermore, the Jews offered them a state twice. So, it's all false, but that is why it constitutes demonizing.

Abusing "Apartheid" for the Palestinian Cause - Gerald M. Steinberg, (Jerusalem Post)

• Although the comparison between Israel and the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa is entirely fictitious, demonization efforts that repeat this analogy are the embodiment of the new anti-Semitism that seeks to deny the Jewish people the right of equality and self-determination among the nations.

• Zionism and the revival of national sovereignty in the Jewish homeland are not manifestations of European colonialism, in contrast to the white settlers who created Johannesburg and Pretoria.

• While Black labor was exploited in slavery-like conditions under apartheid, in contrast, Palestinians were dependent on Israeli employment due to their own internal corruption and economic failures.

• While South African apartheid was based on denial of sovereignty for the Black population, Israelis accepted the "two-state solution" from the beginning, including the 1947 UN partition plan.

• Arab citizens of Israel have the same democratic rights as Israelis, including full parliamentary representation and free speech - in sharp contrast to the Blacks under apartheid, or minorities in most Arab countries.

• The racism and denial of legitimacy characteristic of apartheid are actually applicable to Arab and Islamic rejection of Jewish rights. In the Middle East, Jews are a tiny and oppressed minority, struggling to maintain cultural identity and survive in a hostile and violent environment.

   

  The writer directs the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University and is the editor of the NGO Monitor.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, August 25, 2004]

 Haaretz, (September 23, 2003)

Today, within Israel, Jews are a majority, but the Arab minority are full citizens who enjoy equal rights. Arabs are represented in the Knesset, and have served in the Cabinet, high-level foreign ministry posts (e.g., Ambassador to Finland) and on the Supreme Court. Under apartheid, black South Africans could not vote and were not citizens of the country in which they formed the overwhelming majority of the population. Laws dictated where they could live, work and travel. And, in South Africa, the government killed blacks who protested against its policies. By contrast, Israel allows freedom of movement, assembly and speech. Some of the government's harshest critics are Israeli Arabs who are members of the Knesset.

The situation of Palestinians in the territories is different. The security requirements of the nation, and a violent insurrection in the territories, forced Israel to impose restrictions on Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are not necessary inside Israel's pre-1967 borders. The Palestinians in the territories, typically, dispute Israel's right to exist whereas blacks did not seek the destruction of South Africa, only the apartheid regime.

If Israel were to give Palestinians full citizenship, it would mean the territories had been annexed. No Israeli government has been prepared to take that step. Instead, through negotiations, Israel agreed to give the Palestinians increasing authority over their own affairs. It is likely that a final settlement will allow most Palestinians to become citizens of their own state.

Despite all their criticism, when asked what governments they admire most, more than 80 percent of Palestinians consistently choose Israel because they can see up close the thriving democracy in Israel, and the rights the Arab citizens enjoy there. By contrast, Palestinians place Arab regimes far down the list, and their own Palestinian Authority at the bottom with only 20 percent saying they admire the corrupt Arafat regime in 2003. (James Bennet, Letter from the Middle East; Arab Showplace? Could It Be the West Bank? New York Times, April 2, 2003)

Courtesy: Myths and Facts

Arabs living under Israeli rule enjoy a far greater freedom of speech and freedom of the press than do Arabs living under the PA, and that the first Middle East country to grant Arab women the right to vote was Israel -- not Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, or any of the 20 other Arab Middle East states. [Furthermore] in much of the Arab world, Jews and other non-Muslims are treated as second-class citizens (the despised Dhimmi).

Courtesy: Honest Reporting

The Brownshirts of Our Time, Phyllis Chesler, FrontPageMagazine.com,  November 19, 2003:  "If you're really asking about apartheid, let me talk about it. Contrary to myth and propaganda, Israel is not an apartheid state. The largest practioner of apartheid in the world is Islam which practices both gender and religious apartheid. In terms of gender apartheid, Palestinian women--and all women who live under Islam--are oppressed by "honor" killings, in which girls and women who are raped are then killed by family members for the sake of restoring the family "honor;" forced veiling, segregation, stonings to death for alleged adultery, seclusion/sequestration, female genital mutilation, polygamy, outright slavery, sexual slavery. Women have few civil, legal, or human rights under Islam."

Anti-Israel ideologues have a well-worn tactic of taking the latest world outrage and foisting it upon Israel, no matter how absurd the comparison or epithet. So in the 1960s Israel was branded a "colonialist power," in the 1970s Israel became an "apartheid state," in the 1990s Israel practiced "ethnic cleansing," and at the Durban conference in 2001 the Jewish state was called "genocidal."

The latest is a throwback to the '70s: Israel is accused of constructing an "apartheid wall" ― a term gaining currency in world media coverage of Israel's security fence. To cite just two recent examples, on Feb. 2 the Hartford Courant granted op-ed space to an academic "calling for an end to U.S. aid to the Israeli apartheid system" as evidenced by Israel's "apartheid walls," and the Feb. 11 edition of The Australian ran the headline: Israel to cut 100km off 'apartheid wall'.

Since the South African apartheid system was dismantled over ten years ago, many today are unaware of what exactly that nation's racist land policies were. The South African government established nine bantustans ― sectors for black segregation ― in the 60s and 70s, in the effort to separate non-white South Africans from whites, and from each other. To demonstrate just how fallacious the comparison to Israel's security fence is, we summarize South African apartheid policy here, alongside the facts of Israel's anti-terror security fence:

Courtesy: Honest Reporting

Integrating Israel into the Middle East - Masri Feki
Some Arab countries recognize the Jewish state, accepting it as an accomplished fact and not as a natural and legitimate regional component. Real lasting peace will come the day Israel's neighbors recognize that the Jewish people are on this land de jure, they are not just there de facto. Pan-Arabism is in ruins because it did not take into account the diversity of the region, the specificities of its various identities and the communitarian preoccupations of its minorities.
    Like pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism is an exclusivist ideology. By rejecting the modern conception of citizenship, it rejects the idea of non-Muslim civilian participation. Absolutist by nature, its discourse excludes non-Muslims, which explains why the flame of pan-Arabism was often borne by Christian Arabs, uneasy about the hegemonic designs of political Islam. Non-Muslim Arabs (Christian Arabs, Druze, etc.), excluded from the pan-Islamic club, still have an honorable place within pan-Arabism. And non-Arab Muslims (Turks, Iranians, Kurds), excluded from the pan-Arab club, can still join pan-Islamism. But the Israelis, being neither Arabs nor Muslims, are doubly a minority.
    The Jewish state is not an intruder in the Middle East. It is the extension and the representative of one of the most ancient civilizations of this part of the world. Everything links Israel to this region: geography, history, culture but also religion and language. The Jewish religion is the primary theological reference and the very foundation of Islam and Eastern Christianity. Hebrew and Arabic are as close to each other as two languages of Latin origin. The author is an Egyptian writer. (Turkish Daily News)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, March 14, 2008]

THE LIE THAT ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE... , There Was Never Apartheid in Israel, By Anthony David Marks

Some allege that the situation of the Arabs in Israel is equal to what the Blacks in South Africa experienced under the former apartheid system of complete separation of the races. What are the facts?

1. Firstly there is no comparison and anyone who alleges that the Arabs in Israel live under an apartheid system is entirely ignorant of basic facts of Israeli society.

Consider the dictionary definition of “apartheid,” then the following points about Israeli society, and after that decide for yourself whether there is “apartheid” in Israel.

Apartheid: In South Africa, the official policy of political, social and economic discrimination and segregation enforced against minorities.

2. The Whites came to South Africa about four hundred years ago. There were no Whites living in South Africa before that time. In contrast, the Jews are descendants of the original Jews that came from the Holy Land and Jewish communities have always existed in Israel. The al-Aqsa Mosque, the only place in Jerusalem that is holy to Muslims, was built on the ruins of the First and Second Temples of the Jews of over 2,000 years ago.

3. Under the apartheid system in South Africa, Black and White races were completely separated. Residences, schools, transportation and even most hospitals were separate. In the walled Old City of Jerusalem there are Christian, Armenian, Muslim and Jewish Quarters. Is someone going to suggest that this is a form of apartheid? Thousands of Arabs study at the Hebrew University and other Israeli schools. The staffs of all hospitals include many Arabs and a large percentage of patients at Israeli hospitals are Arabs – not only local Palestinians but Arabs from all over the Middle East. Public transportation was never segregated in Israel, in contrast to South Africa where Blacks had their own buses, or in the southern United States where Blacks were required to sit in the back of the bus.

4. Arab parties have always existed in Israel’s Knesset. About 15% of the Knesset members are in fact Arabs. In contrast, no Black person under the apartheid system of South Africa ever was a member of the South Africa parliament. Arabs have also served in the Israeli Cabinet, Foreign Ministry and in the Justice Department.

5. Many Palestinian Arabs live in large luxurious villas far superior to the accommodations of most Jewish Israelis. One only has to tour many Arab areas to see how affluent is the level of accommodation.

6. Palestinian Arabs can freely visit all Jewish areas, except when Palestinian terrorists have just murdered innocent people and there is a security clampdown. How many innocent Israelis have been hacked to death or shot to death for visiting or accidentally straying into an Arab town or village.

7. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which is the holiest Jewish place in the world, is open to Arabs but barred to Jews.

8. Unlike South Africa, under the former apartheid system, there have never existed laws in Israel that discriminated between Jews and Arabs.

9. The Palestinian Authority was not successful in maintaining law and order in the lawless territories when it had full authority from 1995 – 2000. Israel is doing its best to perform a function the Palestinians were supposed to have performed. This means imposing temporary Draconian measures, which cannot be construed as apartheid policies. The United States and Great Britain are getting a taste of trying to maintain law and order in Iraq, so they should start to appreciate the challenges Israel faces daily.
 

Courtesy: Dafka

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Zionism is Not a "Settler-Colonial Undertaking" - David Hoffman
(Mail & Guardian-South Africa)

Central to the highly critical position the Mail & Guardian takes towards Israel is the following statement by Drew Forrest in the June 10 edition, which seeks to defend the M&G from what he dubs “the anti-Semitism canard”:

“It is simply undeniable that the state of Israel is a settler-colonial undertaking, where Jews have constituted themselves as a majority by immigration, military force and legal device -- including a bar on the return of Palestinian refugees.”

Is that what Israel primarily is about, a “settler-colonial undertaking”, implying that its primary intent is the exploitation of another people and its land, backed up first and foremost by brute force, or is Israel rather Jewry’s great historic opportunity for collective affirmative action in a world where nation states (witness the recent referenda in Europe) still predominate?

To answer that question fairly, one must look at the entire Zionist enterprise from the beginning. Certainly Western and Central European Jewry were very much a part of an imperial Europe and its colonial expansions and culture, and thus it would be pointless to deny a foundation in fact for the perception that Israel is a settler-colonial undertaking. But I do nevertheless deny the supposedly “undeniable” claim that the state of Israel is primarily or essentially a “settler-colonial undertaking”, for the fundamental fact is that the Jews in both Islamic and Christian civilisation were a despised and oppressed umma, or people (the term often designates the entire Muslim community), and the reconstitution of their national sovereignty was and is absolutely necessary for overcoming that legacy of anti-Semitism.

In its essence, Zionism is not a “settler-colonial undertaking” but a national programme of affirmative action. The Jews in today’s Israel are not even primarily of European descent, but like many Palestinian Arabs, they are of African and Asian descent, and arrived in Israel/ Palestine in the 20th century, although there is unbroken Jewish habitation in Israel back to antiquity.

Considering that not all Arabs perceived Zionism to be illegitimate at the outset, that within the Qur’an there is plenty of scope for ascribing legitimacy to the Jewish presence in Palestine and for according respect to the Jews as an ancient umma, one must recognise that the Arabs made choices when it came to their response to the Jews reclaiming their historic right to Palestine. For the Romans did not merely start centuries of “European atrocity” as Forrest wrote, they destroyed Jewish statehood and sovereignty in the land of Israel and imposed exile.

And it was believed, in all the biblically based civilisations, that this signified divine displeasure. That the Jews had been exiled and restored before, and looked forward again to Messianic restoration, meant that these were real hopes, in real time, for real people.

Anti-Semitism in real historic time does create the context in that this conflict is in fact waged. When the Jews began to organise to achieve their historic rights they did so on a positive basis. They paid attention to global political and economic realities, negotiating with imperial powers, purchasing land that became the basis for what they received in the 1947 partition plan. Some even tried to engage the Arabs in peacemaking. But the bad stuff, the violence, the ethnic cleansing of Hebron in 1929, the genocidal threats itbach al Yahud (slaughter the Jews), and the racism were all introduced by Arab nationalist leaders and thus everything subsequent in this conflict, including the bad stuff that Jews are now doing, comes under the rubric of “self-defence”.

The issue of who started the conflict is all-important in determining responsibility. And it is thus altogether important how one understands the Jewish claim to the land of Israel: historic right and affirmative action for an ancient umma or the greed of an arrogant “chosen” people. Because if the Jews are “aggressive” by nature (and of course they are no more aggressive than any other people), then opposition to Zionism is self-defence, but based on anti-Semitic innuendo. However, if the Jews are the only people who are to be denied their right to a nation state, then anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

As to the Palestinian refugees from the War of Independence and their descendants: seeing that the Arabs wished to deny the Jews even a small state, what happened in that war is not systematic criminal expropriation and expulsion of another people, but again, self-defence.

Alone among refugee populations they were kept in misery to be returned to their homeland, to destroy Israel. On the Indian subcontinent 10-million Muslims from India resettled in Pakistan and 10-million Hindus came from Pakistan to India. The Muslim world had no choice but to make its peace with the secular, democratic Hindu state of India. Israel is not that dissimilar in being basically a secular, democratic Jewish state, but it is a lot smaller and there is a huge history of genocidal attack against the Jewish people, so why should the Muslims give up the struggle against a people that, in the words of Iran’s next president, one bomb can wipe out?

Anti-Semitism unfortunately is not only a canard, nor is it merely a dangerous neurosis; it is a 2000-year-old cultural legacy with such deep roots that its branches extend wherever rejection of Jews and Judaism continues to predominate. The starting point for healing the wounds is thus taking the most aggrieved, that is the Jews who just lost six million in an apathetic and uncaring world, and saying, unequivocally, you are entitled to have a state and security within it.

I am not advocating divine right here, but merely historic right and justice, and I do not deny that the Palestinians have rights, and deserve justice as well. But when one takes what is essentially affirmative action and understands it to be colonial oppression, then one is not far from “gross insensitivity” -- the kind of insensitivity that leads to yet another Holocaust.

Rabbi David Hoffman is a member of the Cape Town Progressive Jewish Congregation.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, July 1, 2005]

Pretoria Calling - Dennis Ross (New York Times)

Yasir Arafat loved to equate the Palestinian struggle for statehood with the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, but his was always a false analogy. In South Africa, less than 15 percent of the population controlled all the power and wealth and subjected the other 85 percent to a degrading, inhuman and segregated existence...

Compare that to the Palestinian movement for self-determination. Arabs today remain a minority in the area that encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. To be sure, given demographic trends, Jews will become a minority in that area within this decade, but even by 2050, Arabs would outnumber Jews by only 60 percent to 40 percent.

The international community supports a two-state solution because it recognizes that there are two national movements with populations in rough equality. That was never the case in South Africa.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, October 20, 2005]

 

 

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'Why depict Israel as a chamber of horrors like no other in the world?'
This week's Guardian report on the parallels between Israel and South African apartheid was muddled and disappointing, argues Benjamin Pogrund
Wednesday February 8, 2006, The Guardian
 

Nearly three years ago I underwent an operation in a Jerusalem hospital. The surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab. The doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. I lay in bed for a month and watched as they gave the same skilled care to other patients - half of whom were Arabs and half of whom were Jewish - all sharing the same wards, operating theatres and bathrooms.

After that experience I have difficulty understanding anyone who equates Israel with apartheid South Africa. What I saw in the Hadassah Mt Scopus hospital was inconceivable in the South Africa where I spent most of my life, growing up and then working as a journalist who specialised in exposing apartheid. It didn't happen and it couldn't happen. Blacks and whites were strictly separated and blacks got the least and the worst. And this is only one slice of life. Buses, post offices, park benches, cinemas, everything, were segregated by law. No equation is possible.

That is what came to my mind as I read the Guardian's two-part report this week about Israel and apartheid. The writer, Chris McGreal, is an outstanding reporter. I admire his dispatches from Israel/Palestine. Day by day he honestly and correctly portrays the conflict. But these articles are disappointing. He has lost his way in thickets of information. He has been unable to untangle the confusion and complexities of group relations here. He is muddled in distinguishing between the situations of Israeli Arabs and West Bank Arabs and Jerusalem Arabs.

It is not that he is wholly wrong. Arabs suffer severe discrimination. Israel is in occupation of the West Bank and is responsible for oppressive and ugly actions. But he fails to explain the why and the wherefore. He had a choice in deciding how to decipher the situation. He could have adopted the approach of Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, well-known Canadian academics specialising in South Africa and the Middle East. In their book, Seeking Mandela, published last year, they say: "Although Israel and apartheid South Africa are often equated as 'colonial settler societies', we argue that the differences outweigh the similarities." They warn that the "simplistic assumption that the South African model readily lends itself to export may actually retard necessary new solutions by clinging to visions or processes of negotiation that may not work in another context". That assessment is surely far more relevant than quoting the debased views about South Africa and Israel of the late Hendrik Verwoerd, a father of apartheid, as McGreal has strangely done.

McGreal had to decide whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. His approach could have been that here is a tiny country which came into being, in the shadow of the Holocaust, less than 58 years ago. It has been under continual attack since the start and is still beset by enemies sworn to its destruction, whether Islamic Jihad and Hamas through suicide bombings, the Arab states through their refusal to recognise its existence, the recent "wipe-out" call by Iran's president, or the actions and declarations of a mixed bag of malevolent forces, anti-semites and semi-Jews. That induces a siege mentality among Israel's Jews. They fight to live and do not always do it pleasantly. They make horrible mistakes and inflict suffering on others. It is not secret. I do not know why Chris McGreal says the Israeli public is unaware of what is happening: newspapers publish the details in profusion, provoking discussion and action.

Yes, racism does exist in Israel - directed against Arabs, and also among Jews. Amir Peretz, new leader of the Labour party, is said to be having problems with western-born Ashkenazi voters because he is Moroccan-born and Sephardic. An explanation offered for the police violence in clearing the Amona outpost last week was the antagonism between the protesting young people, who were mainly religious Ashkenazi, and the police, who were a mixture of Moroccan and Russian immigrant stock, Bedouin and Druze.

Is Israel so different from other countries that struggle to come to terms with their minority groups? Why depict this country as a chamber of horrors like no other in the world?

The glass is indeed half-full. In South Africa, change for the better was simply not possible: the apartheid system had to be eradicated. In contrast, change is possible in Israel. An accusation by a member of the Knesset, Ahmed Tibi, who is Arab, that the central Bank of Israel had a discriminatory employment policy with no Arabs among its 800 staffers, drew the assurance from the bank's then governor that tenders would be advertised in the Arab-language press. He added: "Bank of Israel hires according to criteria of merit, and ignores differences in religion, sex, race or nationality." Tibi also complained that the state monopoly Israel Electric did not employ Arabs; a start has since been made with the hiring of six Arabs. There is continual progress: the evidence is there if you want to see it. The first Arab was appointed to the high court of justice two years ago. Last year, for the first time, an Arab was appointed director-general of a government ministry.

McGreal notes that inside Israel, 93% of the land is reserved for Jews while South Africa's whites kept 87% of the land for themselves. Thus Israel and apartheid South Africa are the same. But the QED is not as straightforward as his citing of these figures would have us believe. In law, land in Israel is open to everyone but, yes, in practice, through legal stratagems, 93% of the land has been only for Jews. This, however, has been breached by the Arab Ka'adan family: in a 10-year legal struggle, they have established their right to buy land and build a home in the "Jewish" community settlement of Katzir in northern Israel. The high court of justice has given a precedent-setting decision that the state cannot discriminate on the basis of religion or nationality when allocating state land to Israeli citizens. The case has dragged on but final success is in sight. Other court actions are underway. Land exemplifies both the negative and positive aspects of the lives of Israel's Arabs: it conveys the discrimination - and the movement towards change; slow, slow, but underway.

On education, McGreal states that separate and unequal education systems were a central part of the apartheid regime's strategy to limit black children to manual and service jobs - something I observed firsthand and fought against in South Africa. But I have to question his reference to what he says is the current belief among Arab parents that their children's schools are deliberately starved of state resources so that Arabs will be doomed to lesser jobs. Every government school, whether Jewish or Arab, gets identical funding; differences, and hence resources, arise through what parents pay and what local authorities pay (most local authorities in Israel are in poor financial shape; Arab local authorities are even worse off with problems in collecting local property taxes). The Jewish schools are Jewish day schools. The Arab schools are Muslim and use Arabic, which is an official language in Israel. There is no bar to Arabs attending Jewish schools, and some do.

I am also puzzled by the health ministry figures that McGreal has chosen to use about state spending on development of health facilities in Arab areas (the clear implication being that Arabs are starved of health care). Contrary to the picture painted, health is a visible indicator of the differences between apartheid South Africa and Israel. In South Africa, the infant mortality rate (IMR) in 1985 was 78 per 1,000 live births. Among colour groups: whites 12, Asians 20, coloureds 60, blacks 94 to 150. In Israel, in the 1950s, the IMR among Muslims was 60.6 and among Jews 38.8. Major improvements occurred in health care during the 1990s and by 2001 the IMR among Arabs was 7.6 (Muslims 8.2, Christians 2.6, Druze 4.7). Among Jews, 4.1. According to the health ministry, the higher Muslim figure was due mainly to genetic defects as a result of marriages between close relatives; poverty is also a factor. Other countries in 2000: Switzerland, 8.2, and 12.3 for Turks living there; United States, whites 8.5, blacks 21.3.

He is also mistaken in saying that Arabs have been singled out for discrimination in getting reduced child allowances. They are the same as Jewish ultra-Orthodox families. These two groups have the largest number of children and have suffered equally from cutbacks in allowances, especially for the fifth child and beyond.

Here in Jerusalem on Monday, I watched the BBC's Auschwitz on television. The episode dealt with French collaboration in delivering Jews to the Nazis for destruction, and how British policemen on Guernsey handed over three Jewish women. It was a reminder, if any be needed, of why Israel exists: to fulfil the centuries-old dream of a homeland for Jews and as a sanctuary for Jews. It's not a perfect society. It struggles to find itself as a Jewish state (with no consensus about what that means), and it struggles to evolve as a democratic society with full rights for minorities. It deserves criticism for its flaws and mistakes. It also merits sympathy and support in facing unfounded attack.

Benjamin Pogrund was born in South Africa and was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. He is the author of books on Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela and the press under apartheid. He has lived in Israel for more than eight years and is founder of Yakar's Centre for Social Concern in Jerusalem, which encourages dialogue across political and ethnic lines.

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Modern Israel is a far cry from old South Africa
It's absurd to apply the term apartheid to one of the most progressive states in the world, maintains Irshad Manji, The Australian, 09feb07

IN the past year, a stream of thinkers across the West - from Australian writer Antony Loewenstein to US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt - has punctured the usual parameters of debate about Israel. I, for one, welcome any effort to prevent ideas from calcifying into ideologies. As a Muslim refusenik, that's what I do by defying the conventional prejudices of my fellow Muslims. Why would I resent refuseniks of a different kind?

It's precisely because I embrace intellectual pluralism that I respectfully challenge Jimmy Carter's recent critique of Israel as an apartheid state. To be sure, I've long admired the former US president. In my book The Trouble with Islam Today I cite him as an example of how religion can be invoked to tap the best of humanity. In no small measure, it was Carter's appreciation of spiritual values that brought together Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, compelling these former foes to clasp hands over a peace deal.

Which is why Carter's new book disappoints so many of us who champion co-existence. Entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the book argues that Israel's conduct towards Palestinians mimics South Africa's long-time demonisation of blacks. Of course, certain Israeli politicians have spewed venom at Palestinians, as have some Arab leaders towards Jews, but Israel is far more complex - and diverse - than slogans about the occupation would suggest. In a state practising apartheid, would Arab Muslim legislators wield veto power over anything? At only 20per cent of the population, would Arabs even be eligible for election if they squirmed under the thumb of apartheid? Would an apartheid state extend voting rights to women and the poor in local elections, which Israel did for the first time in the history of Palestinian Arabs?

Would the vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens turn out to vote in national elections, as they've usually done? Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? In recent Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. However, Israel's Supreme Court, exercising its independence, overturned both disqualifications. Under any system of apartheid, would the judiciary be free of political interference?

Would an apartheid state award its top literary prize to an Arab? Israel honoured Emile Habibi in 1986, before the intifada might have made such a choice politically shrewd. Would an apartheid state encourage Hebrew-speaking schoolchildren to learn Arabic? Would road signs throughout the land appear in both languages? Even my country, the proudly bilingual Canada, doesn't meet that standard.

Would an apartheid state be home to universities where Arabs and Jews mingle at will, or apartment blocks where they live side by side? Would an apartheid state bestow benefits and legal protections on Palestinians who live outside of Israel but work inside its borders? Would human rights organisations operate openly in an apartheid state? They do in Israel.

For that matter, military officials go public with their criticisms of government policies. In October 2003, the Israel Defence Forces' chief of staff told the press that road closures in the West Bank and Gaza were feeding Palestinian anger. Two weeks later, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service blasted the occupation and called on Ariel Sharon to withdraw troops unilaterally, which later happened in Gaza. Would an apartheid state stomach so much dissent from those mandated to protect the state?

Above all, would media debate the most basic building blocks of the nation? Would a Hebrew newspaper in an apartheid state run an article by an Arab Israeli about why the Zionist adventure has been a total failure? Would it run that article on Israel's independence day? Would an apartheid state ensure conditions for the freest Arabic press in the Middle East, a press so free that it can demonstrably abuse its liberties and keep on rolling? To this day, the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds hasn't retracted an anti-Israel letter supposedly penned by Nelson Mandela but proven to have been written by an Arab living in The Netherlands.

Even the eminence grise of Palestinian nationalism, the late Edward Said, stated flat out that "Israel is not South Africa". How could it be when an Israeli publisher translated Said's seminal work, Orientalism, into Hebrew? I'll cap this point with a question that Said himself asked of Arabs: "Why don't we fight harder for freedom of opinions in our own societies, a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely exists?"

I disagree: some people still need to be told that Arab "freedoms" don't compare to those of Israel. The people who need reminding are those who now push the South Africa analogy a step further by equating Israel with Nazi Germany. To them, Zionists are committing hate crimes under the totalitarian nightmare that they dub "Zio-Nazism" (like neo-Nazism).

When it comes to granting citizenship, Israel discriminates in the same way as an affirmative action policy, giving the edge to a specific minority that has faced genocidal injustice. Does this amount to Nazism? Spare me. As a Muslim, I could become a citizen of Israel without having to convert. After all, Israel was one of the few countries anywhere to grant shelter, then citizenship, to the Vietnamese boatpeople who sought political asylum in the late 1970s. I don't have to wonder how Syria compares on that score.

Now for the ultimate proof of Israel's flimsy credentials as a bunker of Hitlerian hate: It's the only country in the Middle East to which Arab Christians are voluntarily migrating. And they are also thriving there, notching much higher university attendance rates than the Arab Muslim citizens of Israel, and enjoying better overall health than Jews.

The Holy Land is gut-wrenching and complicated. As much as I applaud Israel's efforts to foster pluralism, I condemn its illegal Jewish settlements and less visible crimes such as the diversion of water away from Palestinian towns. These contradictions of the Israeli state should be exposed, discussed, even pilloried. And they are: openly as well as often. So there's little point in deciding whose camp is the paragon of vice or virtue. The better question might be: who's willing to hear what they don't want to hear? That's the test of whether a country is more than black or white.

Irshad Manji is author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith (Random House Australia).

A Religious Problem,  Jimmy Carter's book: An Israeli view
MICHAEL B. OREN, WSJ, December 26, 2006

Several prominent scholars have taken issue with Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," cataloguing its historical inaccuracies and lamenting its lack of balance. The journalist Jeffrey Goldberg also critiqued the book's theological purpose, which, he asserted, was to "convince American Evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel."

Mr. Carter indeed seems to have a religious problem with the Jewish state. His book bewails the fact that Israel is not the reincarnation of ancient Judea but a modern, largely temporal democracy. "I had long taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures," he recalls telling Prime Minister Golda Meir during his first tour through the country. "A common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of the Labor government."

He complains about the fact that the kibbutz synagogue he enters is nearly empty on the Sabbath and that the Bibles presented to Israeli soldiers "was one of the few indications of a religious commitment that I observed during our visit." But he also reproves contemporary Israelis for allegedly mistreating the Samaritans--"the same complaint heard by Jesus almost two thousand years earlier"--and for pilfering water from the Jordan River, "where . . . Jesus had been baptized by John the Baptist."

Disturbed by secular Laborites, he is further unnerved by religiously minded Israelis who seek to fulfill the biblical injunction to settle the entire Land of Israel. There are "two Israels," Mr. Carter concludes, one which embodies the "the ancient culture of the Jewish people, defined by the Hebrew Scriptures," and the other in "the occupied Palestinian territories," which refuses to "respect the basic human rights of the citizens."

Whether in its secular and/or observant manifestations, Israel clearly discomfits Mr. Carter, a man who, even as president, considered himself in "full-time Christian service." Yet, in revealing his unease with the idea of Jewish statehood, Mr. Carter sets himself apart from many U.S. presidents before and after him, as well as from nearly 400 years of American Christian thought.

Generations of Christians in this country, representing a variety of dominations, laymen and clergy alike, have embraced the concept of renewed Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. The passion was already evident in 1620, when William Bradford alighted on Plymouth Rock and exclaimed, "Come, let us declare the word of God in Zion." Bradford was a leader of the Puritans, dissenting Protestants who, in their search for an unsullied religion and the strength to resist state oppression, turned to the Old Testament. There, they found a God who spoke directly to his people, who promised to deliver them from bondage and return them to their ancestral homeland. Appropriating this narrative, the Puritans fashioned themselves as the New Jews and America as their New Promised Land. They gave their children Hebrew names--David, Benjamin, Sarah, Rebecca--and called over 1,000 of their towns after Biblical places, including Bethlehem, Bethel and, of course, New Canaan.

Identifying with the Jews, a great many colonists endorsed the notion of restoring Palestine to Jewish control. Elias Boudinot, president of the Continental Congress, predicted that the Jews, "however scattered . . . are to be recovered by the mighty power of God, and restored to their beloved . . . Palestine." John Adams imagined "a hundred thousand Israelites" marching triumphantly into Palestine. "I really wish the Jews in Judea an independent nation," he wrote. During the Revolution, the association between America's struggle for independence and the Jews' struggle for repatriation was illustrated by the proposed Great Seal designed by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, showing Moses leading the Children of Israel toward the Holy Land.

Restorationism became a major theme in antebellum religious thought and a mainstay of the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches. In his 1844 bestseller, "The Valley of the Vision," New York University Bible scholar George Bush--a forebear of two presidents of the same name--called on the U.S. to devote its economic and military might toward re-creating a Jewish polity in Palestine. But merely envisioning such a state was insufficient for some Americans, who, in the decades before the Civil War, left home to build colonies in Palestine. Each of these settlements had the same goal: to teach the Jews, long disenfranchised from the land, to farm and so enable them to establish a modern agrarian society. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln said that "restoring the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans," and that the U.S. could work to realize that goal once the Union prevailed.

Nineteenth-century restorationism reached its fullest expression in an 1891 petition submitted by Midwestern magnate William Blackstone to President Benjamin Harrison. The Blackstone Memorial, as it was called, urged the president to convene an international conference to discuss ways of reviving Jewish dominion in Palestine. Among the memorial's 400 signatories were some of America's most preeminent figures, including John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Charles Scribner and William McKinley. By the century's turn, those advocating restored Jewish sovereignty in Palestine had begun calling themselves Zionists, though the vast majority of the movement's members remained Christian rather than Jewish. "It seems to me that it is entirely proper to start a Zionist State around Jerusalem," wrote Teddy Roosevelt, "and [that] the Jews be given control of Palestine."

Such sentiments played a crucial role in gaining international recognition for Zionist claims to Palestine during World War I, when the British government sought American approval for designating that area as the Jewish national home. Though his closest counselors warned him against endorsing the move, Woodrow Wilson, the son and grandson of Presbyterian preachers, rejected their advice. "To think that I the son of the manse [parsonage] should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people," he explained. With Wilson's imprimatur, Britain issued the declaration that became the basis of its League of Nations mandate in Palestine, and as the precursor to the 1947 U.N. Partition Resolution creating the Jewish state.

The question of whether or not to recognize that state fell to Harry S. Truman. Raised in a Baptist household where he learned much of the Bible by heart, Truman had been a member of the pro-Zionist American Christian Palestine Committee and an advocate of the right of Jews--particularly Holocaust survivors--to immigrate to Palestine. He was naturally inclined to acknowledge the nascent state but encountered fervid opposition from the entire foreign policy establishment. If America sided with the Zionists, officials in the State and Defense departments cautioned, the Arabs would cut off oil supplies to the West, undermine America's economy, and expose Europe to Soviet invasion. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops would have to be sent to Palestine to save its Jews from massacre.

Truman listened carefully to these warnings and then, at 6:11 on the evening of May 14, he announced that the U.S. would be the first nation to recognize the newly declared State of Israel. While the decision may have stemmed in part from domestic political considerations, it is difficult to conceive that any politician, much less one of Truman's character, would have risked global catastrophe by recognizing a frail and miniscule country. More likely, the dramatic démarche reflected Truman's religious background and his commitment to the restorationist creed. Introduced a few weeks later to an American Jewish delegation as the president who had helped create Israel, Truman took umbrage and snapped, "What you mean 'helped create'? I am Cyrus"--a reference to the Persian king who returned the Jews from exile--"I am Cyrus!"

Since 1948, some administrations (Eisenhower, Bush Sr.) have been less ardent in their attachment to Israel, and others (Kennedy, Nixon) more so. Throughout the last 60 years, though, the U.S. has never wavered in its concern for Israel's survival and its support for the Jewish people's right to statehood. While U.S.-Israel ties are no doubt strengthened by common bonds of democracy and Western culture, religion remains an integral component in that relationship. We know that Lyndon Johnson's Baptist grandfather told him to "take care of the Jews, God's chosen people," and that Bill Clinton's pastor, on his deathbed, made the future president promise never to abandon the Jewish state. We know how faith has impacted the policies of George W. Bush, who is perhaps the most pro-Israel president in history.

In his apparent attempt to make American Christians rethink their affection for Israel, Jimmy Carter is clearly departing from time-honored practice. This has not been the legacy of evangelicals alone, but of many religious denominations in the U.S., and not solely the conviction of Mr. Bush, but of generations of American leaders. In the controversial title of his book, Mr. Carter implicitly denounces Israel for its separatist policies, but, by doing so, he isolates himself from centuries of American tradition.

Mr. Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is the author of "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East," to be published by Norton in January.

U.S. reaps mutual benefit of aid to Israel

Mark Wagman, December 18, 2006, The News Journal

A recent letter to the editor questions what America gets for helping Israel.

The writer poses this question out of hostility toward Israel or, perhaps, opposition to foreign aid in general.

But even among the majority of Americans who support aid to Israel, many do not appreciate just how close the strategic relationship is between the United States and its democratic ally, and how greatly both countries benefit from that relationship.

The U.S. and Israel cooperate extensively on defense, intelligence and economic matters. By doing so, they advance their common interests of promoting freedom, fighting extremism, and seeking peace and prosperity.

Nearly 90 percent of U.S. aid to Israel is military. Israel's military not only defends its citizens against enemy attacks, but also serves as a powerful presence in the region to deter terrorism and aggression.

Israel's current adversaries are Hamas and Hizballah, terrorist organizations that wish to destroy it.

These groups are funded and armed by Syria and Iran, regimes that are vehemently anti-Western and anti-American. Israel's military strength keeps these extremist forces in check in the eastern Mediterranean, without the need for a single American soldier.

This situation contrasts with the Gulf region, where the U.S. has had to send troops because there is no equivalent to Israel to provide stability.

Much of the money spent on Israel directly benefits the U.S. Seventy-four percent of Israel's military aid is spent buying U.S. goods.

Joint programs with Israel's high-tech military industry have led to advanced weapons systems, including the Arrow ballistic missile defense system.

This system is the only one in operation that has consistently succeeded in shooting down missiles at high altitudes and speeds.

The development cost has been shared equally by the U.S. and Israel. The manufacture is a joint venture of American and Israeli aerospace industries.

U.S. troops use several Israeli technologies, including unmanned aerial vehicles, decoys to confuse enemy radar, and reactive armor on Bradley tanks to repel enemy fire. The U.S. and Israel coordinate strategies for combating terrorism and weapons proliferation. They share highly sensitive, often real-time, intelligence.

Israel is arguably the world's leading expert in collecting intelligence on terrorist groups and in counter-terrorism. It provides intelligence and know-how to the U.S. American satellites provide timely intelligence on missile launches to Israel.

Partly helped by U.S. economic aid, Israel's economy has been growing and is now essentially self-sufficient. Israel initiated a reduction of U.S. economic assistance in 1998 from $1.2 billion to a complete phase-out in 2008.

Over the same 10 years, military aid has gradually increased from $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion, following a 12-year period when there were no increases. This outlay represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the U.S. budget.

Israel has many pressing needs beyond its budget for which it does not seek U.S. aid.

Building of transportation infrastructure, as well as absorption of immigrants, for example, is made possible by private contributions and investment grade bonds.

Following the devastation from 4,000 Hizballah rockets targeting Jewish and Arab civilians this summer, Jewish philanthropies raised $350 million in emergency funding for reconstruction.

Economic cooperation between the U.S. and Israel has increased over the years and now brings important mutual benefits.

In 2005 there was $26 billion in trade between the two countries, including $33 million of exports from Delaware.

The U.S. and many states have cooperative agreements with Israel to promote joint research, industrial partnerships and free trade. Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and Motorola have located major facilities in Israel.

The U.S. also uses economic agreements to promote peace. Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) have been established by trilateral agreements between the U.S., Israel, Egypt and Jordan.

In these zones, products containing both Israeli and Arab content are manufactured and exported tariff-free to the U.S. Another program promotes cooperation between Israeli, Arab and American scientists.

Imagine the benefits to the entire region if the Palestinians and other Arab governments followed the lead of Egypt and Jordan in making peace with Israel.

In addition to the many bilateral benefits, U.S.-Israel cooperation provides incentives for regional peace.

Mark Wagman is chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Delaware

The Poisonous Myth of "Israeli Apartheid" - Alan Baker
Last week, various university campuses hosted events connected to Israeli Apartheid Week. This annual international phenomenon, which began in 2005, serves as an opportunity for those who demonize Israel to spew hatred. A major theme is that Israel is the Middle East equivalent of South Africa's infamous apartheid regime. This comparison betrays an acute ignorance - both of the meaning of the word "apartheid" and of the nature of the State of Israel. Apartheid is the state-sanctioned and -generated degradation of one or more ethnic groups, based on an assumption of racial inferiority. How anyone could seriously equate Israel with such a system defies logic.
    Israel is a liberal democracy, guaranteeing civil, religious and social equality to all its citizens - including Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Baha'is. Israel's Arab citizens have the right to vote, and are represented by three Arab political parties in Israel's parliament. Followers of the Baha'i religion, who are persecuted in Iran, maintain their central religious institutions in Haifa and Acre in Israel.
    Arabic is an official language, together with Hebrew. All legislation, jurisprudence and official documentation appear in Arabic. Road signs are in Hebrew and Arabic. There is an Arab member of the Israeli cabinet and an Arab judge on the Supreme Court. One third of the staff of Israel's Hadassah Hospital are Arab. Arabs have complete and equal access to all Israeli universities and Haifa University, for example, is 20% Arab. Does any of this sound like "apartheid"? The writer is the Israeli ambassador to Canada. (National Post-Canada)
[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, February 15, 2008]