Israel – even if it differs from South Africa it’s still apartheid

JVL Introduction

In just six minutes, Mehdi Hasan explains clearly why  Israel and its uncritical supporters are wrong to object to the term “apartheid” used in the Amnesty International Report, issued after four years of research.

Amnesty is not the first organisation to use this term; it follows other Human Rights organisations such as  the Israeli Human Rights Organisation, BT’Selem, and Human Rights Watch.

The Guardian included this in its 6th Feb 2022 editorial  “Ehud Barak, Israel’s then defence minister and the country’s most decorated soldier, warned in 2010 that “as long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.” This argument was made again in 2014 by John Kerry as US secretary of state (though he later regretted the language). Three years later, Boris Johnson, when he was UK foreign secretary, said much the same thing. No one seemed in any doubt that were Israel to carry on without making peace with the Palestinians, the country would face credible accusations of apartheid.”

Well the situation has in many ways got worse since then. So why is there such an outcry – along with the inevitable cries of antisemitism” and criticism of Amnesty for “singling out Israel rather than countries such as China and Myanmar”? Of course, Amnesty has recently reported and condemned the human rights abuses in both those and many other countries but why let truth stand in the way of a good attack?

Hasan succinctly addresses the issues, especially the similarities between Israel and South Africa and Israel’s support for that Apartheid regime and also why the fact that there are differences does not invalidate the application of the term “apartheid” to what the Israeli state is doing.

The response of Israel and its uncritical supporters throughout the world, is entirely predictable but these views are losing popularity with many people, including many Jews as evidenced by recent opinion polling such as this 2021 US research shows. Meanwhile we wait for any of the Report’s critics to actually refute any of Amnesty International’s well researched findings.

This article was originally published by MSNBC on Wed 2 Feb 2022. Read the original here.