The piece is trash. It's only purpose is to attempt to limit discourse.
The author is loading his own questions. First, he sets up a straw man argument concerning housing policy. He doesn't do a very good job of it, either. Mr. Israel deflects the criticism of Israel toward policy in Israel proper, where there are problems but not insurmountable ones. He then proceeds to define
Apartheid in such a narrow way that it would only apply only to states whose segregation is based on some sort of master race ideology; he then cites Martin Luther King as a defender of Israel.
Mohamed Kanana notwithstanding, most people who criticize Israel in a way to describe it as an Apartheid or an Apartheid-like state are not criticizing Israel's policies toward housing inside the Green Line but Israel's administration of the Occupied Territories. For example, one might read the
report on the settlements by the Israel human rights organization, B'Tselem. The report concludes:
Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
The authors of this report must certainly be in hot water with Mr. Israel. How dare they use the term
Apartheid when they present nothing to suggest that Israel has an official doctrine of racial superiority?
The problem is that Mr. Israel's definition of
Apartheid is bogus.
Apartheid is defined not by the behavior of the authorities, not by their rationale for the behavior. The
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid defines it as follows:
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term "the crime of apartheid", which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:- (a) Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
- (i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
- (ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
- (iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
- (b) Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
- (c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;;
- (d) Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
- (e) Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
- (f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
We may argue whether or not the practice of displacing Palestinian Arabs in the Occupied Territories in order to make way for Jewish-only housing accessed on segregated roads is Apartheid, or, as B'Tselem says, "reminiscent" of Apartheid. However, at least then we'll be on the right track. We shouldn't let Mr. Israel's red herring about an ideology based on pseudo-scientific eugenics detract us from that path.
In conclusion, Mr. Israel cites Martin Luther King's defense of Israel. Dr. King died less than a year after the Six Day War and did not live to see the settlement activity criticized B'Tselem in the above-cited report. It is awfully presumptuous for Mr. Israel or anyone else to state that Dr. King would not have said something similar to the B'Tselem report about Israel's settlement policies. Dr. King's statement in 1968 may be taken as an endorsement of the Zionist project in its broadest sense. However, in no way should the words of one who has been dead for 36 years be used as a definitive moral pronouncement on specific issues arising from the present state of affairs by partisans of either side of the conflict.
Criticism of Israel is not inherently anti-Semitic. The ability to cite specific cases of anti-Semitic criticism of Israel does not change that. The fact is that Israeli Jews and Jews throughout the world have differing views on the conflict and many criticize Israel in one way or another. Uri Avnery is every bit as much a Jew, an Israeli and -- insofar as he would not support the destruction of Israel itself -- every bit as much a Zionist as is Benny Elon or Jared Israel. If a former member of the Israeli Knesset with Mr. Avnery's credentials can criticize Israel, so can the rest of us. As long as that criticism is directed at behavior at any state and not specifically at a state because it is a Jewish state, then that criticism is not anti-Semitic.
To suggest that it is anti-Semitic is merely an attempt to unjustly smear one's opponents in a debate. Such tactics are contemptible.
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