RSS
South Africa Is Wrong: Israel Is Not an Apartheid State
An anti-Israel ‘apartheid wall’ on display at Columbia University during Apartheid Week in 2017. Photo: Facebook.
No pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protest would be complete without a few posters or banners demanding an end to “Israeli apartheid” — after all, many of the protesters attend colleges that host an annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” as part of their Spring festivities.
But the term “Israeli apartheid” is a farcical slur, meant to indict Israel as a racist nation by comparing it to the South African apartheid government.
There are two components to refuting this claim. The first one is easy, involving only a brief comparison between apartheid South Africa and Israel. The second part is more difficult, explaining the origin of the slanderous accusation.
The term “apartheid” is an Afrikaans word meaning “apartness.” Beginning in 1948, South Africa’s government implemented a series of laws that forced Black people to live apart from whites within the same country — an important detail. Those who accuse Israel of apartheid conflate foreign and domestic policy to substantiate their weak claim that Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza and parts of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) are forced to live apart from the citizens of Israel. But these “Palestinians” do not have rights to anything in Israel since they don’t live in Israel. This is not apartheid social policy, but rather common-sense international relations. For instance, US laws don’t apply in Canada, and Canadians can’t vote in American elections, but nobody calls this arrangement “apartheid.”
South Africa’s apartheid laws withheld from Black citizens the rights and privileges that white citizens enjoyed. But there are no such laws in Israel today. Not a single element of apartheid South African law discriminating against non-whites is applied by Israel against its non-Jewish citizens.
Arab citizens of Israel are not forced to live separately from Jewish citizens. Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as Jewish citizens. Arab citizens of Israel can be anything they want in Israel — doctors, lawyers, soldiers, police officers, members of the Supreme Court, and politicians. Many Arab citizens of Israel join the IDF. Nearly 20 percent of students at Israeli universities are Arab citizens, and Israel has devoted considerable efforts to increase that number.
That’s not how apartheid works.
It is important to understand that the “Israel-is-an-apartheid state” lie did not originate from one of the usual suspects — the UN, academia, or a Hamas front group. In fact, it came from post-apartheid South Africa itself.
The link between post-apartheid South Africa and Palestinian terrorists begins with the friendship between Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat. In 1990, Mandela said, “we identify with the PLO because just like ourselves, they are fighting for the right of self-determination.”
From its earliest days as a nation, Israel rejected apartheid. In 1962, Israel voted to condemn South Africa’s apartheid policies at the UN, where then-foreign minister Golda Meir said it was a “shameful iniquity.” But after the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, almost every nation in Africa had severed ties with Israel. South Africa was not one of them, so Israel traded with it and maintained diplomatic ties. Mandela, it seems, never forgave Israel. He explained in 1994 that his African National Congress (ANC) party, then ruling the country, was “extremely unhappy” about Israel’s relations with South Africa’s apartheid government.
Mandela never called Israel an apartheid state, but his wife Winnie did, and so too did his grandson, a convert to Islam. In 2004, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela mourned the death of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, telling a group called the Palestine Solidarity Alliance in Johannesburg that “Apartheid Israel can be defeated, just as apartheid in South Africa was defeated.” In 2017, Mandla Mandela, son of Nelson’s son Makgatho, called Israel “the worst apartheid regime,” and exclaimed that “Palestinians are being subjected to the worst version of apartheid.”
Another famous South African combined his anti-apartheid credibility with his religious authority to make the charge. Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of South Africa, or as Yishai Fleisher calls him, “the reverend father of Israel apartheid,” also called Israel an apartheid state. According Fleisher, “with his credentials in fighting apartheid, Tutu worked to reframe Israel in the same category as South Africa: as white oppressors, interlopers, colonialists, a foreign entity in the Middle East.”
Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt concurs, arguing that “Tutu was probably more responsible for introducing the slanderous accusations about Israel being an Apartheid state into the public discourse than anyone else.”
As Alan Dershowitz points out, Tutu “accused the Jews of Israel of doing ‘things that even Apartheid South Africa had not done.’”
It’s not a coincidence that the UN held its World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 to September 8, 2001. The conference’s declaration targeted Israel by equating Zionism with racism, and identifying Israel as an occupying power. The declaration drafting committee, chaired by Iran, adopted language recognizing a “right” of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel.
After the Durban conference, the once-venerable Human Rights Watch (HRW) took up the apartheid slur. Under Kenneth Roth’s direction, HRW became devoted to anti-Israel activism, culminating with his effort to tar Israel as an apartheid state in a report released on April 27, 2021.
Following the deaths of both Mandela in 2013 and Tutu in 2021, South Africa under the ANC increased its anti-Israel stance, including support for Hamas. After the October 7 pogrom in Israel, Hamas sent two of its top officials to Johannesburg — Bassem Naim and Khaled Qaddoumi, Hamas’ representative in Iran. On December 5, Naim took more Hamas officials to South Africa to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Mandela’s death. They were warmly received in Pretoria.
On November 6, South Africa recalled its ambassadors from Israel. On November 21, South African lawmakers voted to close the Israeli embassy in Pretoria, and in late December, they brought charges against Israel at the UN’s International Court of Justice.
Psychologists might explain South Africa’s hostility towards Israel as a combination of guilt, projection, revenge, and simple antisemitism. Whatever the impetus, the slur that Israel is practicing apartheid against Palestinians is a gross distortion of history that diminishes the horrors of genuine apartheid.
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IP)T Senior Fellow A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Ginsberg-Milstein fellow. A version of this article was originally published at IPT.
The post South Africa Is Wrong: Israel Is Not an Apartheid State first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
The post Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
The post Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
The post Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.