It Isn’t Apartheid – It’s Worse
JVL Introduction
Lev Grinberg, president of the Israeli Sociological Association, takes Amnesty International to task for calling Israel an apartheid society.
Not because it is too critical, but because it is unhelpful, for two interlinked reasons:
- It blocks discussion because people are turned off by the word “apartheid” and simply dismiss its use as “antisemitic”.
- It makes bland what are in essence a variety of discriminatory regimes.
In other words, using the term apartheid, for Grinberg, “misses the first political goal: an understanding of the situation, which is the first condition for its repair”.
It misses the “upgraded apartheid” nature of the regime, one in which there is a separation between types of Palestinian, not a simple, uniform discrimination.
In our view, Grinberg is right – and wrong!
Calling Israel an apartheid regime may have led to condemnation of the Amnesty report as antisemitic (witness our very own Board of Deputies of British Jews).
But at least some people noticed it. How many hundreds and hundreds reports in the past, outlining the discriminatory nature of the regime, have simply faded into obscurity without anyone even seeming to be aware of them?
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Thu 24 Feb 2022. Read the original here.
It Isn’t Apartheid – It’s Worse
Loading article text…
Like Lev, I have come across Israeli Jews who have an emotional reaction to the term ‘apartheid’. It sounds German (even though it’s Afrikaans), so there’s an implied accusation of Nazism. When I have used the word ‘hafrada’ (Hebrew for apartheid) instead, their defensiveness becomes muted. As a BDS activist in the US, if it’s necessary to sometimes baby thin-skinned Israeli Jews to help achieve justice for the Palestinians, I’ll do it.
Very well said, thank you. The government of Israel is shaming.
And the Palestinian case for justice was going so well until the AI report branded the Israeli government as operating a system of Apartheid as the occupiers in Palestine. I’d like to know how many angels (precisely) he sees dancing on the head of his particular pin. AI has helped bring the plight of the Palestinians to the attention of MSM and may penetrate the indifference of a lazy, self-obsessed world.
This sounds like the appeals from some not to mention ‘Zionism’ as the root cause of the occupation of Palestine in case it upsets Zionists. The terms Zionism and apartheid must not be swept under the table. On the contrary, they must be placed fairly and squarely at the heart of the condemnation of the current actions of Israel against the Palestinians. Zionism is responsible for apartheid in Israel/Palestine but Zionists will never accept it, no matter how nicely they are addressed, therefore the outside world must bring pressure on them to behave, just as was done in South Africa.
“if it’s necessary to sometimes baby thin-skinned Israeli Jews to help achieve justice for the Palestinians, I’ll do it.”
The problem is that liberal West has been babying thin-skinned Israeli Jews for well over 70 years and the result ? The situation for Palestinians has got worse and worse.
To be honest I’m sick to death of Zionist Jews who are “deeply offended” when they hear the truth. I am rather more concerned about Palestinians who lose their homes, schools, limbs and lives to aggressive white Europeans who have no moral right to live in the Middle East.
This article is terribly confused and does not help our understanding at all.
Israel is an apartheid state. That is the accepted narrative today and to challenge that is to undermine the struggle to demolish the Zionists self-serving narrative.
Lev says that
‘The solution for apartheid in South Africa was simple: equal rights for all the citizens. A similar solution won’t work here’. Really? Why not? Because Israeli Jews won’t accept it? Neither did South African Whites until forced to do so.
I really don’t think this sterile and self-indulgent debate should be entertained if we are serious about supporting the Palestinians.
And incidentally
Lev also doesn’t seem to understand Zionist history. ‘the dream of the founders to build an ethical Jewish society, a “light unto the nations.” was the dream of only a handful of Cultural Zionists. The Labour Zionists had no such pretensions.
Of course no 2 oppressive or apartheid states are the same but as a matter of fact the Apartheid regime tried to do what Israel has done, to exclude the native Africans but their Bantusan policy failed. Also it was difficult to marry with the super exploitation of Black labour.
Lev asks ‘What can we call this regime, which has succeeded in doing what the whites in South Africa were unable to do?’
A settler colonial state. That’s what.
Yes there are different regimes for different Palestinians. That is because Israeli segmentation has become a far more formidable system than the Apartheid system was.
And within Green line Israel there is no petty apartheid or signs ‘Jews only’. But then in the West Bank there are also no signs ‘Jews only’ because Israel relies far more on discriminatory regulations and practices than South Africa.
Of course Apartheid will be attacked as anti-Semitic. So what? Everything is anti-Semitic in the eyes of the Zionists. But it has a powerful resonance which is why it is stupid to even suggest abandoning it. The Palestinian movement has struggled to gain acceptance for this term. Lev Grinberg, if he sincerely supports the Palestinians has no right to challenge this and divert attention into a fruitless and pointless debate that only the Zionists will b enefit from. This is Israeli Jewish privilege. It is not the job of Israeli Jews to undermine the Palestinian struggle whilst claiming to support them.
Lev says that ‘in the West Bank they are demanding an independent state’. No Lev this is no longer true and even when they did it was because the demand for one unitary equal state was seen as unobtainable. Today it is the only game in town
Saying it is not apartheid, it is worse is correct, but there is no legal implications associated with a worsen then apartheid. Apartheid is recognised as a crime by international law unlike a worsen than.
This may be changed when Zionism will be recognised as the worse than by international law (it was almost happen with a latter withdrawen UN resolution) but until then, and in order to avoid confusion, I would stick with the apartheid definition.
Is there something in the water that makes the Israeli population selectively blind to self evident truths or perhaps so secure in the knowledge that they will be protected by ‘Big Brother’ USA becoming the 51st State? Apartheid by any other name!
Grinberg’s criticisms are misconceived, for two reasons. Firstly, South African apartheid did not simply distinguish ‘black’from’white’. There were other categories for Asians and ‘coloureds’ and the Bantustans were designed not only to create physical disjunctions between black people but to set, for example. Zulu against Xhosa. Creating divisions within oppressed groups is an absolutely standard tactic of apartheid regimes.
More important, saying that the Israeli regime is worse than apartheid misses the central point. The report encourages us to set aside the major atrocities such as the bombing of Gaza and focus on ‘normal’ apartheid. Apologists like the Board of Deputies imply that all the problems are due not to the Israeli regime but to Palestinian resistance to it. It is worth asking; suppose the Palestinians ceased to resist and Israel could simply do whatever it wanted; what then? It is to this situation that the word ‘apartheid’ would apply most precisely. If there were no struggle the resulting situation would still be one which any civilised person would find intolerable.
I really don’t think this sort of article is at all helpful. You can play with words as much as you like, but the reason “apartheid ” is used in relation to Israel is that it’s the most appropriate one: there is no doubt at all that Israeli policies fall within the accepted definitition of apartheid.
What other word might be more suitable, or indeed acceptable to Israelis who don’t want to be accused of emulating the white regime in South Africa? Fascist? Racist? Inhuman? Would that sound any better?
Grinberg is asking people to believe that Amnesty would have avoided being accused of antisemitism if its report had said that Israel is not imposing apartheid but a system worse than apartheid. Has he not noticed that virtually any criticism of Israel is labelled antisemitic by its apologists?
Not sure how useful the term ‘aparthied’ is in regards I/P, and am especially sceptical about Amnesty Internationals involvement. As an ngo, aren’t they at times complicit with imperialism ? I say that because they were running some adverts a few years ago thanking nato for apparently liberating women in Afghanistan, or something along those lines.