Israel has its faults, but apartheid isn't one of them

[Behind the Aegis]

Toward the end of last year, Jimmy Carter apologized for some of his very harsh statements about Israel. In an "open letter to the Jewish community" -- and with a vagueness that ill becomes him -- he airily mentioned criticisms that "stigmatize Israel" but omitted his own contribution: the implication that Israel is, like the racist South Africa of old, an "apartheid" state.

Carter used the term in his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." It could be argued that he meant the label to apply only to the West Bank, but even so the use of the term was incorrect and deliberatively provocative. Carter was waving the bloody shirt of racism, and he knew it.

What can be said about others who apply the term to Israel in general? No apology has come from them -- and the way things are going, none will be forthcoming. The use of the word has become commonplace -- Google "Israel and apartheid" and you will see that the two are linked in cyberspace, as love and marriage are in at least one song. The meaning is clear: Israel is a state where political and civil rights are withheld on the basis of race and race alone. This is not the case.

The Israel of today and the South Africa of yesterday have almost nothing in common. In South Africa, the minority white population harshly ruled the majority black population. Nonwhites were denied civil rights, and in 1958, they were even deprived of citizenship. In contrast, Israeli Arabs, about one-fifth of the country, have the same civil and political rights as do Israeli Jews. Arabs sit in the Knesset and serve in the military, although most are exempt from the draft. Whatever this is -- and it looks suspiciously like a liberal democracy -- it cannot be apartheid.

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[Violet_Crumble]

1. Did anyone notice he was very shy about saying what those faults were?

Add that to the kneejerk and false accusations of racism from him and you've got a really mindless article...

[oberliner]

2. What were the false accusations of racism from him in this article?

Isn't he arguing that other folks make false accusations of racism against Israel?

[Violet_Crumble]

3. 'Carter was waving the bloody shirt of racism, and he knew it. '

Second paragraph. Pretty hard to miss spotting...

[oberliner]

4. He certainly isn't accusing Carter of racism

Did you not read the sentences immediately prior to the one you quoted?

"Carter used the term in his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." It could be argued that he meant the label to apply only to the West Bank, but even so the use of the term was incorrect and deliberatively provocative."

He is arguing that Carter is unfairly (in the author's view) suggesting/implying that Israel is racist through his using the term "Apartheid" in his book.

Indeed, the entire argument of the piece is to suggest that those who apply the term apartheid to Israel are bringing racism into the discussion in a manner that he believes is unfair/inaccurate ("waving the bloody flag of racism").

[Violet_Crumble]

5. He most certainly was....

'Carter used the term in his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." It could be argued that he meant the label to apply only to the West Bank, but even so the use of the term was incorrect and deliberatively provocative. Carter was waving the bloody shirt of racism, and he knew it.

[oberliner]

6. Your claim does not make any sense.

It is evident that the paragraph you've bolded is making the claim that Carter is accusing Israel of racism by deliberately choosing the provocative and race-laden term "apartheid" as the title of his most recent book on the conflict. The fact that the author added "and he knew it" confirms that interpretation. In the opinion of the author Carter chose the word apartheid, which he knew had racial connotations, as a means of tarring Israel with the suggestion of being racist.

The entire article is about that very point. Carter is one of many who the author is claiming uses terminology that brings race into the discussion in a manner which the author feels is not fair. That is the entire thesis of this article. That people "wave the bloody shirt of racism" at Israel unfairly, in his view.

[Violet_Crumble]

7. That's nice, coz nothing you have to say makes any sense either...

The article was a pile of complete irrational crap where accusations of racism and antisemitism were flung around. btw, the term apartheid is only provocative and race-laden to morons who get into a tizzy about the use of a term, while not having anywhere near the same reaction when it comes to Palestinians being killed by Israelis...

[oberliner]

8. You have misunderstood the phrase: "waving the bloody shirt of racism"

The author of this piece does not himself accuse Carter of racism.

He is not accusing President Carter of racism in the quote you cited that uses the phrase "waving the bloody shirt of racism".

If you do a little research into the expression "waving the bloody shirt" and its history in American political discourse, I think this reality should become plain to you.

[Violet_Crumble]

9. No, I fucking well haven't. And don't try to deny he accused people of antisemitism...

The article was a pile of complete irrational crap where accusations of racism and antisemitism were flung around. btw, the term apartheid is only provocative and race-laden to morons who get into a tizzy about the use of a term, while not having anywhere near the same reaction when it comes to Palestinians being killed by Israelis...

[oberliner]

10. Alrighty then

I guess people can read the article and determine for themselves what the author is saying when he accuses Carter of "waving the bloody shirt of racism".

I am also quite taken aback by your other bizarre claim that the term "apartheid" is not "race-laden". There are few terms that are more "race-laden" to the general public than the term "apartheid".

If you asked 100 people on the street what they think of when they hear the term "apartheid" the vast majority (if not all) of the people who are familiar with the term would associate it immediately with the racist policies of South Africa.

[Violet_Crumble]

11. That's right. I can determine it for myself. Sorry it took you that long to work it out...

I just went back to check what I'd actually said, and you seem to have conveniently ommitted most of it.

'btw, the term apartheid is only provocative and race-laden to morons who get into a tizzy about the use of a term, while not having anywhere near the same reaction when it comes to Palestinians being killed by Israelis...'

And that was well worth repeating :)

[oberliner]

14. Thought maybe with some additional information you might re-think your interpretation

of that sentence you highlighted, but I see you are sticking to your guns!

I also do not believe that acknowledging that the term "apartheid" is "race-laden" is restricted to "morons".

I daresay that pretending that the term "apartheid" is NOT "race-laden" seems the less intelligent conclusion.

[Violet_Crumble]

20. You thought wrong. So much for you allowing people to make up their own minds...

I daresay that continually omitting part of what was said and ignoring totally what was said seems the less intelligent conclusion...

[shira]

12. from the rest of the article...

The West Bank, more or less under Israeli military rule, is a different matter. But it is not part of Israel proper, and under every conceivable peace plan -- including those proposed by Israeli governments -- almost all of it will revert to the Palestinian Authority and become the heartland of a Palestinian state.

Yet Israel's critics continue to hurl the apartheid epithet at the state when they have to know, or they ought to know, that it is a calumny. Interestingly, they do not use it for Saudi Arabia, which maintains as perfect a system of gender apartheid as can be imagined -- women can't even drive, never mind vote -- or elsewhere in the Arab world, where Palestinians sometimes have fewer rights than they do in Israel.

A recent op-ed on Israel in the Financial Times employs the word apartheid several times. Some of the time it seems to be applied to the West Bank, but other times it is applied to Israel proper. Either way, this shoe doesn't fit. (Security concerns are not rooted in racism.) The author of the piece is Henry Siegman, a harsh critic of Israeli policies and a former executive director of the American Jewish Congress, so anti-Semitism is not the issue here -- just sound judgment. Sometimes impatience can lead to imprudence.

But anti-Semitism is not so easily dismissed with others. This is "Israeli Apartheid Week" on campuses across the world, and it is clear that what furiously animates many of the protesters are not legitimate grievances but imaginary ones. Israel is not above criticism and the Palestinians have their case, but when that case is constructed out of lies about the Jewish state, it not only represents a wholly unoriginal cover of some old anti-Semitic ditties but also denigrates the Palestinian cause. It does not need lies.

As for Israel, its critics do it no good when they couch their criticism in insults. Years of this sort of stuff have made Israel tone-deaf to legitimate criticism and exasperated with any attempt to find fault. That's why Israel refused to cooperate with the South African jurist Richard Goldstone when, on behalf of the United Nations, he looked into alleged war crimes. The United Nations had once equated Zionism with racism. After that, it was hard to care what the United Nations thought.

To Carter's credit, he must have understood that a hunk of his audience had stopped listening. He was right to apologize, wrong not to have been more specific and a bit late in appreciating the damage he's done. Israel has its faults, (don't get me started), but it is not motivated by racism. That's more than can be said for many of its critics.

[e-mail]

[oberliner]

13. For people who may be confused by the phrase "waving the bloody shirt of racism"

wave the bloody shirt: foment political strife by keeping controversies alive

This expression first appeared during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Republicans, the "party of Lincoln," frequently used incendiary rhetoric to remind voters that pro-Southern Democrats were responsible for the war. Keeping alive bitter feelings against the South was known as waving the bloody shirt. The expression arose out of an actual incident. A former Ohioan named A. P. Huggins, serving as a Mississippi school superintendent, was roused from his bed one night by the Ku Klux Klan, ordered to clear out of the state and, to underline the message, given a beating with a leather strap. Huggins reported this attack to the military authorities. Afterward, one of the army officers took Huggins's bloodstained nightshirt to Washington, D. C. and gave it to Rep. Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts. According to the story, Butler brandished the shirt while making a fiery speech to demand stronger actions against the Klan. There is some question about whether Butler actually displayed the shirt or only figuratively "waved" it. Either way, the phrase caught on.

Showing a victim's bloodstained clothing is an old tradition. Some word historians have suggested that the expression was inspired by Corsican blood feuds, when a murdered man was laid out on a bier surrounded by his weapons, and with his bloody shirt hanging above his head. The widow or another female mourner would eventually begin wildly waving the shirt around her head as an expression of her sorrow and to spur the other mourners into taking revenge. Another possibility is that the phrase alludes to the 1603 Scottish battle of Glenfruin. The widows of this battle rode on palfreys in front of James VI, displaying their husbands' bloody shirts in an effort to gain his support.

The expression's meaning later broadened to cover any sort of political rabble rousing. It's still popular with political commentators, especially when the topic is a current war or other violent event.

http://www.vintage-vocabulary.com/bloodyshirt.html

[FarrenH]

15. The hairsplitting is just painful

Its like watching neocons arguing the definition of "torture". It isn't "South African Apartheid", but its near enough to use the term. Call it "Israeli Apartheid". The phrase "Gender Apartheid" rarely, if ever, elicits similar hairsplitting in liberal and left circles.

Its understood that what is implied is not some exact copy of SA apartheid, but a situation similar enough in the aspects that cause moral outrage to warrant using the same label. In Israel's case, it simply cannot be denied that the state is structured around the interests of a single ethnic group. The Arab population of Israel would be far larger if Arabs driven out by conflict over the last several decades and their children were allowed to return as citizens. Of course they aren't. In contrast, anyone with Jewish ethnicity from anywhere in the world may become an Israeli citizen. So official state policy favors a single ethnic group in a manner found in no other liberal democracy, even before bureaucratic discrimination against Israeli Arabs (factually discriminatory allocation of public funds, building permits, et al) is factored in. Israel is structured around ensuring its Arab population not only remains a permanent minority, but are discriminated against be the civil service - and that Arab minority makes Israeli Apartheid different from South African Apartheid in degree only. South Africa also had groups of non-whites accorded "honorary white" status for various reasons.

And the claim that the occupied territories should be treated as a separate issue simply ignores parallels with SA Apartheid. Under South African Apartheid laws, black South Africans were not considered citizens of South Africa. But they were at the mercy of the Apartheid govt. Legally they were considered citizens of various nominally independent "homelands" (bantustans) carved out of SA territory, with their own governments - just as Palestinians are not considered Israelis but are entirely constrained by the state of Israel. Several characteristics of these bantustans ensured they were non-viable states. Among them: Being tiny, being completely surrounded by the country that enforced this arrangement, consisting of non-contiguous land areas and having vital sources of resources, such as water, under the control of the enforcing country. In the decades over which SA Apartheid was implemented, land was progressively appropriated from one ethnic group predominantly for the benefit of another.

Which makes the situation in the West Bank EXACTLY the same as Apartheid.

Of course, the reason we're seeing more and more arguments that its not Apartheid is that more and more people are calling it what it is, and that number will only grow, because there simply aren't enough Hasbaras in the world to finesse and obfuscate what is in plain sight out of existence.

[shira]

16. what's painful is the hyperbole and OTT exaggerations - why the need for that?

Jimmy Carter just recently stated that what's happening in the territories is NOT apartheid, but rather that it's only on its way to becoming that if the 2-state solution fails.

So why is it you and Carter disagree?

Was Carter persuaded by the evil lobby to clarify what he meant by an apartheid situation in the territories?

[FarrenH]

21. Frankly,

I think Carter is responding to the pressures that can be bought to bear on a very public figure who doesn't want to alienate certain sectors if he is to remain an effective advocate for peace. A similar dynamic was common in post 1990 negotations towards establishing a new dispensation in South Africa. Its called diplomacy.

But my opinion isn't predicated on whether Carter agrees with me or not, so that's really just a side matter. For the perfectly obvious reasons I've stated, the situation is well within the scope of what could reasonably be labeled a form of Apartheid. And those of us who have no connection to potential negotiations or possibility of being referees in this unceasing conflict can be more effective advocates by using honest terms that sufficiently communicate the moral equivalents of what is transpiring, with all that implies.

The humorous aspect of the debate around the term "Apartheid" is that, in the dying days of "Apartheid" a common refrain among its defenders here in SA was "the only mistake that was made was calling it 'Apartheid'", rather than addressing the morality of the situation. This symptomatic cognitive dissonance extended out from a well-oiled government propaganda machine to the generally right-wing white community. In fact from the late 70s onwards the government used the term "Seperate Development" and claimed the "Apartheid" label was an innacurate portrayal of what was occurring. They also claimed Apartheid laws were not racist in intent, they merely recognised the vast gulf between different cultures in the region and created a legal framework for each culture to develop seperately without interference or conflict, while the destabilising wars being fought in neighbouring territory, along with the internal militarisation of society around troublesome black townships was portrayed as a response to security concerns.

In fact South Africa's claim that it was primarily concerned with holding back the red tide in Africa was enough for Reagan, under whom the CIA actually cooperated with SA in Angola. He also held back efforts to impose sanctions as long as he could.

So there are a string of startling parallels that are immediately obvious to anyone who lived in SA in the dying days of Apartheid. Honestly, shira, sometimes you and one or two other poster's here sound like you're channelling a right-wing white South African circa 1985, or a right-wing American defending Apartheid SA during the same era. Almost word for word.

UPDATE:
Via Glenn Greenwald, both Olmert and Barak have recently alluded to Apartheid as a useful parallel for Israel's relationship to the West Bank, albeit via deferring the comparison to some imminent future. The only finessing they appear to be doing here is the claim that current structures must become permanent arrangements for it to be Apartheid. Are Barak and Olmert "waving the bloody shirt of racism"? Plus, he points to recent Haaretz articles discussing the clear parallels, and points out that Israeli discourse around the issue seems considerably less constrained than American discourse. Flat out denial that there is any justification for the term is an unmistakebly hard-right Israeli position, and in positioning yourself in this space you position yourself not simply with Israel, but with its hard right.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/02/israel/

[shira]

23. You know very well the argument against Israel practicing Apartheid is not a rightwing phenomenon

Activists like Ben Pogrund and Rhoda Kadalie make some of the most persuasive arguments proving the situation is not apartheid at all. If you're trying to score points or stifle debate by labeling my position rightwing, you're failing miserably.

I thought you'd be too embarassed to ever argue the apartheid analogy again after our discussion about that 300-page propaganda piece you touted that masquerades as serious scholarship. I still remember that paper referring to "Jewish only" roads (they're actually Israeli as Israeli Arabs can drive on them just as much as any Israeli Jew). If anything, bogus, bigoted, and idiotic accusations like that based on ignorance or hatred are prime examples of far rightwing ideology and ironically it's you who supports crap like that.

[Jefferson23]

17. As Matt Duss asks,

quoting Cohen's column of today: "Does Richard Cohen think Olmert & Barak were also 'waving the bloody shirt of racism' when they warned of apartheid?"


http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/02/israel/

[shira]

18. is it apartheid now or on its way to apartheid if 2 states fail?

[Jefferson23]

19. Read the OP, I'm sure you can figure it out.

[PaxR]

22. Pax

Looks like everyone could benefit from some rules for engagement when discussing this topic: Join the Pax evolution. Check out www.twitter.com/pax_101, http://middleeasttutorial.blogspot.com/, or at Pax101 on Facebook.
Peace.