Every year, supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement gather in colleges and cities around the world for Israeli Apartheid Week, a time when organizers pass on anti-Israel rhetoric to anyone who will listen.
BDS supporters believe that by forcing Israel into economic submission, the country will dismantle vital security measures without any concessions from the Palestinian people.
This year, Students for a Democratic Society have decided to join the BDS movement by holding various events at the University.
It is ironic that students who supposedly support democracy would cry apartheid against one of the few democracies in the Middle East.
Apartheid was an oppressive system created by a white minority in the South African government to segregate the black majority. Blacks were discriminated against through inferior separate facilities, lack of political power and a racist legal system.
The system was rightly denounced by the world and is in stark contrast to modern-day Israel.
All Israeli citizens, be they Jewish, Arab or otherwise, have equal rights. Israeli Arabs are free to practice their chosen religion, travel unimpeded throughout the country and pursue higher education at the best schools.
Arabs play a vital role in the democratic process by having the right to vote and serve in the Israeli government.
Freedom of speech is evident by the many Jewish and Arab critics of Israel who are allowed to disseminate their opinions without fear of governmental oppression. They are able to hold demonstrations as freely as SDS is this week.
All Israelis are also equally protected by a security barrier, which has been proven to stop suicide bombers from killing innocent civilians, including Arab Israelis. Such measures would not have been necessary had Palestinians accepted an offer for peace and a state of their own.
In 2000, Israel offered the Palestinians 97 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza, a 5 percent land swap, East Jerusalem and compensation for refugees. Palestinian leaders rejected the offer, refused to make a counter-offer and proceeded with the Second Intifada (a period of uprising and violence).
As civilian death tolls mounted, Israel had no choice but to ensure security for all its citizens. To say such defensive measures are in line with a racist policy is an insult to black South Africans who suffered from a true apartheid state.
As with any democratic society, Israel allows and even encourages honest criticism to help make the country a better place.
What happens during Israeli Apartheid Week is dishonest and ultimately hurts Palestinians, who do not need hate attached to their cause. One need only look at the facts to see that Israel does not fit the racist accusations thrown at it.
If SDS’s idea of promoting peace is to demonize a democratic society, perhaps it should rethink its values.
Michael Green is a biology senior and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com
Islamo-fascists in Gaza fired thousands of rockets at Jewish civilians. The whitey-pete slander is a crude attempt to incriminate Israel for protecting its own citizens from Hamas rocket attacks launched from Gaza against Israeli civilians.
Humanity-hater, Goldstone should be prosecuted for his lies and blood libels against Israel. Why should this evil man be allowed to get away with what he has done?
Col. Richard Kemp, a British commander in Bosnia and Afghanistan
stated: “The Israel Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. ” (Guardian-UK)
Goldstone Gaza Report: Col. Richard Kemp Testifies at U.N. Emergency Session
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX6vyT8RzMo&feature=player_embedded
i tried to get through your post and i hung in there until i hit “islamo-fascist” and determined that you were bourgeois garbage who probably likes to memorize things he hears conservative pundits say and repeat them to disinterested friends and family.
sorry bro :(
Hahah. Please show me how Salafism and Deobandism have parallels to either National Socialism or Mussolini. Indeed, Francisco Franco’s Falangists bear more semblance to the Lebanese Christian Falangists of the 1980s who slaughtered so many Palestinian refugees.
“The whitey-pete slander is a crude attempt to incriminate Israel for protecting its own citizens from Hamas rocket attacks launched from Gaza against Israeli civilians.”
States have a right to defend themselves, thus giving Israel the right to attack Hamas in Gaza. Hamas used human shields, which is criminal under international law. Regardless, Israel’s pursuit of Hamas — and the fact Israel is well aware of the human shields, because this is not the first time it has happened — was so brutal that by its own admission it killed more than 300 Palestinian children in a matter of days. That’s literally dozens of times the number of Israelis killed in the previous nine years of Gazan rocket attacks.
Gaza lost 15 of its 27 hospitals and nearly half of its primary care facilities. Virtually all 10,000 family farms were destroyed in an Israeli campaign to destroy agriculture. Eight hundred water wells and more than 180 greenhouses were demolished, and 50,000 were left homeless. It’s a far cry from the crappy Qassams Hamas lobs toward Ashdod.
Feel free to quibble with Christopher Hitchens and Steven Schwartz (among others) who defend the term “Islamo-fascism.” The analogy stands. Those who wish to explore the subject in greater detail should feel free to sponsor “Islamo-fascism Awareness Week” on campus;
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/islamo-fascism-awareness-week/
This obnoxious campaign to slander Israel (by citing the discredited Goldstone report) is transparent Hamas-hugging hate. Try harder to avoid defending the indefensible.
You would get a traffic ticket. Are you joking?
Yea, but guess what when the threat involves suicide bombing and car bombs, its a different story. The palestinians made it to the point that Israel has no other choice.
white phosphorus on terrorists: Check
white phosporus on civilians: nope
stop spreading lies and supporting your terrorist friends.
huh, i guess all of those women and children fell into a black hole.
good to know that you view all palestinian casualties as “terrorists”. tell me, does your support for israel have more to do with your anti-arab hang-ups or your sympathy for imperialists? j/w
either way, israel isn’t using magical WP that only clings to and burns terrorists. they are conducting a war of extermination and they will only be satisfied when every arab in the gaza strip has been killed, displaced or assimilated.
No. It’s stupid, and few, if any, Holocaust researchers or scholars of fascism would ever use it. See: Walter Laqeuer
Palestinians practice apartheid, not Israelis:
JERUSALEM – This week, college campuses throughout North America have declared “Israel Apartheid Week,” where Israel is berated as an allegedly apartheid entity.
The way to cope with such allegations is to put the shoe on the other foot and to look at which side truly fosters an apartheid entity.
Presently, the newly constituted Palestinian Authority (P.A.) is preparing a state of Palestine based on new Middle East rules of Apartheid and institutionalized discrimination:
1. The P.A. claims the right of every Arab community to return to Arab villages lost in the 1948 war.
2. While 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Arabs, the P.A. will not allow even one Jew to live in its midst.
3. P.A. law mandates that anyone who sells land to a Jew is liable to the death penalty
4. Those who murder Jews are honored on all official media outlets of the P.A.
5. P.A. maps depict all of Palestine under Palestinian rule
6. P.A. maps of Jerusalem once again delete the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem
7. P.A. documents claim all of Jerusalem.
8. The P.A. denies the right of Jewish access to Jewish holy places in their midst.
9. The Palestinian State Constitution denies juridical status to any religion besides Islam.
10. The P.A. will not allow the creation of any system of human rights or civil liberties in a future state.
If that is not the formula for a totalitarian apartheid state of Palestine, then what is?
Let’s put the following together:
Let’s organize an annual “Arab Apartheid Week,” which would highlight the decrepit state of human and political rights throughout the Arab world.
There is a solid case to be made that the Arab states remain the last great outpost of despotism and tyranny on earth, and people need to be reminded as much. Indeed, the Arab world today is a living encyclopedia of outmoded forms of government, from sultanates such as Oman and emirates such as Qatar, to thuggish dictatorships such as Syria and dynastic monarchies along the lines of Jordan. It may be a political scientist’s dream, but it is a nightmare for the hundreds of millions of Arabs chafing under oppression and tyranny.
Basic and fundamental freedoms such as personal autonomy and individual rights are routinely trampled upon, and ethnic and religious minority groups suffer extreme discrimination and
intolerance. Just ask Coptic Christians in Egypt, Baha’is in Iran or Shi’ites in Saudi Arabia for starters.
This was borne out most recently by a report issued by Freedom House, the independent Washington-based group that advocates for freedom worldwide. Its annual survey, “Freedom in the World 2010,” would make for eye-opening reading for all those who cry “apartheid” whenever they see a flag with a Star of David.
Consider the following findings:
Of the 18 countries in the Middle East that Freedom House surveyed, only one is considered to be “free.”
And just who might that be? Yep, you guessed it: Israel.
Not a single Arab country – not one! – did Freedom House consider “free.” Three Arab states – Morocco, Lebanon and Kuwait – were labeled “partly free,” while 13 other Arab states as well as Iran merited the dubious distinction of being branded as “not free.”
In effect, then, this means that of the approximately 370 million human beings currently residing in the Middle East, only 2 percent enjoy true freedom – namely those who live in the Jewish state.
So much for “Israeli apartheid.”
NOT SURPRISINGLY, in a press release announcing the report’s publication, Freedom House concluded that “the Middle East remained the most repressive region in the world.” It is this message that Israel and its supporters need to begin highlighting. By casting a spotlight on the subjugation, oppression and tyranny that typify nearly the entire Arab world, we can open some eyes out there and educate the Western public as to who really shares their democratic values.
As Prof. Bernard Lewis has written, the Arab states are little more than “a string of shabby tyrannies, ranging from traditional autocracies to new-style dictatorships, modern only in their apparatus of repression and indoctrination.”
An annual Arab Apartheid Week, held on campuses and at community centers, could be an effective vehicle for driving home this fundamental truth.
Doing so will reframe the debate. More importantly, it will help Westerners to finally begin recognizing the Arab regimes for what they are: a dangerous mix of despotism and dictatorship.
The wall the Palestinians built. That is without the following there never would have been the need for a fence. in the first place.
http://www.adl.org/Israel/israel_attacks.asp