The United Church of Canada (which seems to be more interested in social justice than in God) is engaged in one of its periodic wrangles over Israel. Is Israel really, really bad, or just sort of bad? Should the church call for a boycott of Israeli universities or just stop buying Jaffa oranges? These questions are consuming a large portion of its general council meeting this week in Kelowna. To their credit, delegates have backed off from the most offensive stuff. They've decided not to refer to Israel as an "apartheid state."
The United Church is just one of many institutions obsessed with tiny Israel. There's also the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the Church of England, Britain's National Union of Journalists, Ireland's largest public-sector union, various British academic groups, and our own beloved CUPE, all of which have passed anti-Israel resolutions. Israel Apartheid Week is a tiresome staple of campus life. In Paris, activists invaded the retail chain Sephora to protest against the sale of Israeli face cream. In Wales, they rampaged through supermarkets and sprinkled Israeli melons with fake blood. In Montreal, gay and lesbian activists promise that this weekend's Pride Parade will include a protest against Israel's "racist apartheid" policies. (Israel is the only country in the Middle East that believes in civil rights for homosexuals, an irony that seems to have eluded them.)
How did Israel become the new South Africa?
After the old South African regime collapsed, social justice seekers in the West needed a new cause - preferably one that extended the narrative of Western racism, occupation and colonialist oppression. After the Middle East peace talks broke down in 2000 (because of Palestinian rejectionism), the "apartheid" label picked up steam. Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner, gave the term his blessing in a series of articles he wrote condemning the Israeli occupation of the territories. Jimmy Carter wrote a book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which he argued that some Israeli policies were even worse than South Africa's. The barrier built to stop the deadly flow of suicide bombers into Israel from the West Bank was nicknamed the Apartheid Wall.
But the analogy with South Africa is badly flawed. Under apartheid, non-white South Africans were denied the right to vote, to organize, to live where they wanted or to marry across racial lines. A small white minority ruled a large black underclass. They settled in South Africa not to escape persecution but to get rich.
In Israel, Israeli Arabs make up 20 per cent of the population, and are full citizens. The conflict is not racial. It is a national-religious struggle for land, not unlike many others around the world. There's another difference, too. As pundit Michael Kinsley put it, "If Israel is white South Africa and the Palestinians are supposed to be the blacks, where is their Mandela?"
All of the pundits, politicians, and elite academics always fail to apply this template to the Israeli-Arab conflict, thus never comprehending why peace is in their way of thinking "elusive" ..
IT
IS
A
RELIGIOUS
WAR
ON
THE
ARAB
SIDE
IN
WHICH
GOD
COMMANDS
THEM
TO
DISALLOW
ANY
NON-MUSLIM
CONTROL
OF
LAND
WHERE
MUSLIMS
HAVE
RULED
Until that changes, talking is waste of time, except for short truces to TAKE AWAY THE BODIES and UPGRADE WEAPONS
DUH
Has there ever been anything else underlying this?
So Mr. Judt, Mr. Foner, Ms Klein, Mr.Obama, apply that back thru time and see if this theory explains the behavior of the peoples.