Israel and apartheid: echoes of South Africa

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The World Today - Thursday, 4 August , 2005 12:26:00
Reporter: Eleanor Hall

ELEANOR HALL: As tensions in Israel remain high in the lead up to the evacuation of Israeli settlers from Gaza under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's controversial withdrawal plan, an Israeli academic says Israel has no choice but to withdraw if it's to retain its status as a democracy.

Hirsh Goodman, who was the founding Editor of the Jerusalem Report and is now an analyst at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, says that despite the division the Gaza withdrawal is generating inside Israel, the disengagement process will not be as traumatic as many expect.

Mr Goodman brings an interesting perspective to Israeli affairs. He was born in South Africa and he's just written a book about what he calls "his journey of conscience from Johannesburg to Jerusalem."

Arriving in Israel in 1965, Hirsh Goodman fought in the 1967 war, but was soon surprised to find similarities between his new homeland and the apartheid country he'd left.

As he told me when he spoke to me in Sydney earlier today, the comments by Israel's first Prime Minster David Ben-Gurian immediately after the 1967 war, that Israel was in danger of becoming an apartheid state, had particular resonance for him.

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1430406.htm