Responding to the "Israel apartheid state lie"

All these progressive thinkers, intellectuals and peacemakers cannot be wrong

March 2017 Update: See the pathetic Union of Jewish Students response to 'Apartheid Week"

A number of my friends' children have just experienced their first 'Israel Apartheid' week on campus (more on this below) and this has raised the question of how best to respond. The response should be the same as if a man who has never met your grandmother tells you that she is an Alien bounty hunter from the Planet Zog and demands to know if you are therefore prepared to help him kill her.  You should expose the person who says that as the liar and insane psychopath that they are.

The Nazi propaganda chief Goebbels said: if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it and the bigger the lie the more they will believe it.  The Nazis’ used this observation to devastating effect. Their lie about the Jews being ‘dangerous subhuman specimens’ was propagated over a relatively short period of time (6 years) but was sufficient to enable otherwise cultured, civilised, rational people to gleefully participate in the mass murder of 6 million Jews, including one and a half million children slaughtered like the animals the Nazis said they were.  The long-term objective of the ‘Israel is an apartheid state’ lie is similarly nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish state and its 6 million Jewish inhabitants. Just look at the people who are behind the lie.

Any rational person who has ever spent any time in Israel knows, of course, that the Apartheid lie is every bit as ludicrous and offensive as the Nazi lie. To enter into a discussion defending against the Apartheid lie only gives undeserved credibility to the liars. Nevertheless there is a wealth of unimpeachable, easily accessible material that exposes every single facet of the Israel Apartheid lie (see, e.g. here, here, here, here and here). But just as the only rational way of dealing with the Nazi lie should have been to expose the Nazis, the only rational (and honourable) way to deal with the Apartheid lie is to expose those who promote the lie. I am not talking about the thousands of naive, easily influenced (and sometimes well-meaning) university students who have fallen for the lie (just as hundreds of thousands of well-meaning Germans fell for the Nazi lie). I am talking about those who started the lie and those who actively promote it.

For the historical record the apartheid lie was actually invented by the KGB in communist Russia as part of the Cold War – after the total defeat of the Arab armies with their Soviet equipment  in 1967.  The KGB produced all the propaganda material in the late 1960s and 1970s that was then used by radical leftists throughout the Western world. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the apartheid lie has been driven by a hard core of anti-Semites, leftist revolutionaries and Islamists - the latter of whom  come from Arab countries which practice real apartheid (those same Arab countries provide much of the funding now for the propaganda which is still based on the Soviet material). The liars’ agenda is the destruction of the State of Israel. Despite belonging to organisations with names like the ‘Palestine Solidarity Campaign’ or 'Students for Justice for Palestinians' they have no interest in the welfare of the Palestinians; this is proven by their total lack of concern for the genuinely appalling plight of Palestinians in Syria (where they are being starved and murdered) and Lebanon (where for over 65 years they have been denied rights of citizenship and are banned from most professions).  Read here about the kind of Western student organisations who promote Israel Apartheid week. 

The Arabs who promote the Apartheid lie are simply projecting the Apartheid that is rampant in their in their own countries and minds.  The Apartheid states are all Arab and Muslim: not a single practicing Jew lives in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority areas (where Jews cannot even travel without facing likely murder),  Jordan and Saudi Arabia (where in both countries it is illegal to be a citizen if you are a Jew). There are just 2 remaining Jews in Iraq (where there were 300,000 as recently as 1952), 3 in Syria, 40 in Lebanon and 30 in Egypt, and less than 3000 Jews live in all of the other Arab countries combined. Yet, less than 60 years ago those Arab countries had thriving communities of Jews totally over 1,000,000.  They have all been driven out. But while every University student knows about the ‘plight of the Palestinians’ none know about the plight of Jews forcibly driven from Arab lands.

The most curiously misunderstood thing about the 'Israel Apartheid' lie is that the only people in Israel who are actually subject to legal restrictions because of their religion are the Jews. For example:

• while Muslims are free to pray at any of their holy sites anywhere in Israel, Jews are banned from stepping foot on their holiest site (Temple Mount) and can only enter others (such as Rachel's tomb) at great risk under army escort. Israeli police are not even allowed to intervene when Arabs stone Jews from the Temple Mount.
• only Jews (and Druze) are legally forced to give up 3 years of their life (and then one month per year until retirement) to go in the army. Muslims have no obligation at all for any type of national service despite having full (and indeed disproportionately large) access to all national benefits. 
• because all terrorism in Israel is committed by Arabs against Jews, only Jewish-owned buildings and businesses are forced to maintain costly security guards, barriers, and checks on each person entering. 

It is also important to note that:

• No Jew can freely walk into any Muslim neighbourhood in Israel without endangering their lives. In contrast any Muslim can enter any Jewish neighbourhood without any fear at all.
• Any plans for new construction in Jewish neighbourhoods result in condemnation by the ‘international community’.  Meanwhile completely illegal construction by Muslims anywhere goes unchallenged both by the ‘international community’ and by Israel lawmakers themselves. 

Finally, back to the friends' children at University. One of many examples was a student concerned about a vicious piece of anti-Israel propaganda (written by a Muslim woman) that appeared in the University's magazine to coincide with 'Israel Apartheid week'. Although it provides certain reasonable sounding caveats, the article contains all of the usual cliched lies. Especially bizarre is the statement that

 " ... the sheer importance of this week remains – especially when only recently the incredibly controversial figure, Ariel Sharon, was painted as a hero in the Western media."

The UK media actually painted Sharon as an evil bloodthirsty murderer. but just why the media's portrayal of Sharon justifies the antisemitic Apartheid week is something I find difficult to get my head around.

I suggested the student should counter the claims in the article as follows:

• The article perpetuates a number of common libels and myths against Israel, and demonstrates that the author knows nothing about Israel (or the Palestinians) other than what she has learnt from propaganda promoted by those who seek the destruction of the Jewish State. 
• The ‘military checkpoints’ that she says (misleadingly) are ‘inflicted on Palestinian children’ are of course inflicted on everybody in Israel and the Palestinian areas to stop the unrelenting attempts by Palestinian terrorists to attack Israeli civilians. Israeli schoolchildren (like every other Israeli) are additionally subjected to ‘checkpoints’ every time they enter a public building for the same reason. Without Palestinian terrorism there would be no need for the checkpoints for anybody and nor would there be any need for the ‘430 mile’ security fence which she is so offended by and which she bizarrely likens to the Berlin wall. The communists erected the Berlin wall wall to keep people in, while the sole purpose of Israel’s security fence is to keep the terrorists out. Perhaps she has forgotten the 1500 Israeli civilians murdered in buses and restaurants between 2000 and 2003 before the fence was built. The fence has kept the flow of suicide bombers to a minimum and saved thousands of lives.
• As for the ‘illegal settlements’ on ‘Palestinian land’, I assume she is referring to territory which, between 1948 and 1967 was illegally occupied by Jordan (not ‘Palestine’) and which Israel captured in 1967 after the Arabs tried to annihilate Israel. Presumably Nadeine feels that Jews should not be allowed to live in these (admittedly disputed) areas. In which case who is the one who believes in Apartheid? In any case Israel has offered many times to give up these areas in exchange for peace only for the Palestinians to refuse. When Israel did give up the whole of Gaza in 2005 it was ‘rewarded’ by a campaign of terrorist rockets that continues to this day (150 launched last Wednesday alone). 
• On the Apartheid lie it is interesting that she says ‘Indeed Mandela himself was an avid supporter of the Palestinian plight’. What she fails to mention is that Mandela was appalled that the apartheid analogy was used against Israel.
• Not only has the author presented a biased anti-Israel narrative, but also completely misses the point about those concerned by the ‘Israel apartheid week’ taking place in a University. The point is that Israel - the only functioning democracy in the Middle East and the only Middle Eastern country where, for example, Muslim women are treated as equals in the law – also just happens to be the only country in the world singled out for such demonization. If, as the author claims, she is just as concerned about ‘other struggles’ perhaps she can explain why there are no ‘apartheid weeks’ demonizing the many Arab and Muslim countries where real apartheid is carried out; for example, as a Muslim woman herself why is she not promoting a Saudi apartheid week where she can highlight the fact that women are not allowed to drive, not allowed to walk in public without a male guardian, and where non-Muslims are not allowed to travel on certain roads or even practice their own religion? The fact is that Israel – and only Israel – is singled out for completely undeserved demonization. That suggests anti-Semitism is the motive and that is why sensible people are concerned.  

The final interesting point is that the Jewish Society at the University was reluctant to respond at all to the article feeling that 'it was not too bad'.  That attitude does not surprise me -  the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has actually joined forces on numerous occasions recently with the Islamic Societies to stop certain 'right wing' speakers from speaking on campus. These include speakers, such as the brilliant Douglas Murray, whose 'crime' was to be too strongly supportive of Israel and even a Muslim speaker because he supported Israel. And of course UJS was active in helping to get Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (two of the bravest and most knowledgeable pro-Israel advocates) banned from the UK.  Most bizarrely last year the UJS actually gave all Jewish societies a supply of  Palestinian flags for their freshers' stalls to show how even-handed they were. The fact is that, like most student organisations, UJS is infested with leftist idiots.

See also Daphne Anson: Canadian Campus Bigots Turn Deaf Ears To Arab Israelis Debunking The "Apartheid" Slur

For an alternative spin on this story see here.

Update 19 March 2014: The Cous Cous Diaries also covers the same student article.