Yona Eshkenazi
Rocky Mountain News
Like Ida Audeh (Opinion Dec. 6th), I attended the Nov. 17th talk at CU Boulder where two guest lecturers, one of whom was a former legal adviser to the PLO, accused Israel of apartheid. The audience was justifiably disturbed by this false claim, but Audeh misrepresented their reaction. No one “embraced” colonialism or apartheid. The only religion “trashed” was Judaism, which one lecturer claimed provided the “theological basis of an Israeli ideology of superiority” — an old anti-Semitic canard.Like many in the current campaign to vilify Israel as an apartheid state, Audeh can do so only by misrepresenting reality and citing unreliable sources. As South African Minister of Home Affairs Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi declared during a visit to Israel in 2003, “The Israeli regime is not apartheid. It is a unique case of democracy.” Apartheid was a legal system that enforced discrimination, segregation and oppression based on skin color. Israel is the opposite. Its legal system enforces equal civil and political rights for all citizens regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.
Israelis are a vibrant multiracial, multi-ethnic mix of people from all over the world, and the 20 percent non-Jewish minority enjoys the same freedoms and protections. Gays, Christians, Congolese and Sudanese fleeing from persecution have received refuge in Israel. It is the only Middle Eastern country where the Christian population is thriving. Israeli-Arabs have a higher standard of living, education, and civil and political liberties than average citizens living in any other Middle Eastern country. Even Jimmy Carter had to admit, “There is nothing in Israel resembling apartheid.” Israel is hardly perfect, but its legal principles and goals are precisely those articulated by the ANC when it fought apartheid.
Similarly, Audeh and the lecturers misrepresent Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. They are not Israeli citizens. They want their own state, not Israeli citizenship. Unfortunately, Palestinian leaders rejected Israel’s compromise offer at Camp David in 2000, refused to continue negotiating, and launched a terrorist war against Israel. Audeh belittles Israel’s security concerns, but all Israelis — Muslim, Christian, Jew and Druze — were horrified by the savagery of suicide bombings targeting children, women and men. Between 2000 and 2003, there were 20,000 terrorist acts. Nine hundred and sixty Israelis were killed; more than 5,000 wounded. Over 80 percent were civilians versus 36 percent civilian Palestinian casualties.
Israelis expected their government to protect them. The government finally began building the security barrier (what Audeh calls a “monstrous wall,” though it is 97 percent chain-link fence) as a passive means of self-defense. No natural or man-made barrier had separated Israelis from terrorists who simply walked the short distance from the West Bank into Israeli communities. Like the separation barriers of other countries, from Britain in Belfast to Spain around its cities in Morocco, to the U.S. on its Mexican border, this barrier is an inconvenience. But it does not separate people by color or ethnicity. It separates terrorists like Hamas, whose charter calls for the “obliteration” of Israel and the murder of Jews, from their targets — Israeli civilians. Since the barrier was built, Israeli casualties have dropped over 90 percent. The barrier would not have been built if there had not been constant terrorism. It can be moved or removed when peaceful relations resume.
In a follow-up comment, Audeh inadvertently reveals that some of the “facts” she cites are taken directly from a September 2008 Al-Jazeera article by another author. Specifically, she uses the words of a man affiliated with a propagandistic anti-Semitic website, the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement. The gleaning of information from one whose beliefs loudly echo the Czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, detracts from Audeh’s credibility and suggests that her desire to impugn Israel may be greater than her interest in pursuing the truth.
The great tragedy is that these false claims against Israel do not help Palestinians get out from under extremist groups like Hamas. They do not bring Israeli-Palestinian peace any closer. And, ironically, while crusading against an apartheid system in Israel that exists only in their imaginations, they have ignored the gender, religious, gender-orientation, and racial apartheid that exist today in the Middle Eastern countries surrounding Israel, from Saudi Arabia to Iran. If these activists directed their fervor to fighting the apartheid that does exist, then we could all look forward to a future where humanitarian values did prevail.
Yona Eshkenazi is director of the Denver chapter of StandWithUs. Roberta P. Seid, PhD, Director of Education/Research for StandWithUs, contributed to this article.
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