When is it permissible to label a country an “apartheid state” ?

If you guessed, “when that country is NOT Israel,” then you’re right.

See Nicholas Kristof’s latest op-ed in the New York Times.

Kristof,

How dare you insinuate that one of America’s strongest allies in the Middle East is an apartheid state? Where are the responses, the crazies, calling you out for such an anti-Bahraini, anti-Arab, or dare i say, anti-Semitic stance (Jews are not the only Semites, SHOCKER) ? I always thought that is what happens when you describe a country, other than former South Africa, as being an apartheid state. I mean, isn’t that what happens generally, when Israel’s called out as an apartheid state?

Your comparison is quite unbelievable and incorrect. Yes there is a lot wrong in Bahrain but the division, oppression and segregation characteristic of an “apartheid” state is not present there. The comparison is more reasonable in the occupied territories as Palestinians are physically separated from Jews through a wall/fence; the presence of Jewish only roads and settlements are racist, discriminatory and impede Palestinian travel; Palestinians are subject to discriminatory policies, checkpoints, ID checks and severe military brutality; peaceful protests are oppressed using a brutal use of force; the minority Jewish population controls the majority of land and has almost exclusive use of a majority of water/resources; there is a high amount of displacement of Palestinians solely based on their ethnicity and their lands and property are seized on a daily basis; destruction of Palestinian homes is common, and so is the uprooting of olive trees; and Palestinians are confined to small enclaves.

Moreover, respected men as Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who know a thing or two about apartheid have both asserted that Israel’s policies in the occupied territories make it “worse than apartheid,” yet they, among others, have faced so much criticism for these views. Generally, when anyone even makes that comparison they are ostracized. You can get away with calling any country in the world an apartheid state, even ones whose characteristics have not met that threshold, as with Bahrain, but Israel is protected from this scrutiny.

Even if Israel is not an apartheid state, or you are of that view, why shield a country from this comparison or scrutiny? A good professor of mine once noted, about Jimmy Carter’s book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” that the former President “was not saying that Israel is an apartheid state, but rather arguing, that, to the Palestinians, it feels like an apartheid state.” This seems like an accurate assessment of Jimmy Carter’s book.

Nowhere in the book did he spell out the elements of Israel’s reign in the territories and compare them to the South African system of apartheid, but rather, he discussed the history of the failure of the peace process and the cementing of the Israeli occupation, and the impeding of the two state solution caused by the presence of a minority of Jewish settlers in large settlements, and Israeli control over the Palestinians and Palestine’s resources.

Kristof, you are right about one thing. It is bad when our enemies suppress peaceful protesters. It is even worse when our friends do. Well, then I wonder how bad you must think it is, when, our closest friend in the Middle East, has been carrying out segregationist and oppressive policies for decades, and we have rewarded it, annually, with more military aid than we give to any other nation, and have allowed our government and media to shield it from any sort of meaningful and effective scrutiny.

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~ by nollla on March 16, 2011.