Daily Alert Archives

Dear Mr. President of South Africa, There's No Apartheid in Israel

(Sunday Times-South Africa) Chief Rabbi of South Africa Warren Goldstein - South African President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote on May 17 about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The writer, who has a PhD in human rights and constitutional law, responds: Mr. President, you have dedicated your life to achieving peace, and sacrificed much for this noble cause. There can be no peace without truth. The truth is that there is no apartheid in Israel. All its citizens are equal before the law, have the right to vote, and serve at every level of government. At this very moment it is the Arab-led parties in parliament that hold the balance of power and will determine who will form the next government. The truth is that this conflict also has nothing to do with the situation at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians, Jews and Muslims can safely practice their faiths, and have free access to all the holy sites. The status quo at Al-Aqsa has remained unchanged in decades. And though the mosque sits atop the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, the Israeli government has given custody over the site to a Muslim trust and bans prayer by Jewish visitors to the site. The truth is that the ongoing conflict has nothing to do with "the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and the denial of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination," as you put it. There have been many opportunities to establish a Palestinian state. Over the past two decades alone, there were two formal offers made by successive Israeli prime ministers to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital. Both were rejected. Hamas is open about the fact that it is Israel's very existence that cannot be tolerated. Their unambiguous goal is the eradication of the Jewish state, as they make clear by firing thousands of rockets into densely populated civilian areas. Unsurprisingly, Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by most democracies in the world. Finally, consider that since the times of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob there has been an unbroken Jewish presence in Israel for almost 4,000 years, and that the Jewish people are indigenous inhabitants of the land and not colonialists.
2021-06-03 00:00:00
Full Article