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I Left Apartheid South Africa. Applying the Term to Israel Is Dishonest

(Forward) Hirsh Goodman - Human Rights Watch's new report is blind to fact and reality. I left South Africa as a teenager in 1965 because of its policy of apartheid. To me, this document is a disgrace to the memory of the millions who suffered under apartheid in South Africa - including many anti-apartheid activists in the Jewish community, some close to me, who lost their freedom. The report reads as especially surprising now, as Mansour Abbas, leader of the United Arab List in the Knesset, may determine who will form the next governing coalition in Israel. Both Netanyahu and his opponents are courting Abbas, hardly a sign of the kind of subjugation associated with apartheid. Justice Richard Goldstone, who was appointed to the Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela, wrote in the New York Times in October 2011, "In Israel there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute....The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony." The writer is a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2021-04-29 00:00:00
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