Not apartheid!

It has become de rigueur in leftist circles to try to foist the analogy of
apartheid South Africa onto the Israel-Palestine dispute, of course equating
Israeli Jews with the right wing Afrikaners. There are no two groups more
dissimilar than the Israeli Jews and the Afrikaners. Israel is a stable
liberal democracy with a 20% MINORITY of Arabs who enjoy all rights
including representation in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament). In the whole
area of Israel plus the Palestine Authority the Jews are a MAJORITY of 6
million versus 4.5 million Arabs. How does this compare with the situation
in S. Africa where whites were 15% of the population dominating 85% of
blacks in one country. Were it not for the murderous campaign
of terrorism against Israeli civilians there would be no need to separate
the two communities, as was done in Gaza. It is the Palestinians who are
the racists insisting on living in a Jew-free (Judenrein) area.
Further, the idea of "road apartheid" because the IDF has stopped
Palestinian cars driving on certain roads is ridiculous. See how quickly your country would stop an enemy driving on its roads if your citizens were being
shot down in cold blood as happened 2 weeks ago at the Etzion Junction.
By the way, the Etzion settlements were bought in the 1930s by the Jewish
National Fund, were captured and destroyed by the Palestinians in 1948, and
only the bravery of a Jordanian Army officer saved the lives of the
surviving Jewish inhabitants from massacre. This is a fascinating story, the
Jewish survivors were interned in Jordan during the course of the war and
then repatriated. When Israel recaptured the area in 1967 the children of
the original settlers returned. They are neither religious nor recent
settlers! Why can't the Palestinians let them live in peace? If you can
answer that question you know why Israel has to separate itself from these
murderous terrorists and their many Palestinian supporters.
The recent speeches, statements and demonstrations in Iran and southern
Lebanon by Hizbollah show the extremism of the Islamic supporters of the
Palestinians. They are more extreme than even the bulk of the Palestinians
themselves, as Saeb Erekat said, "we don't want to wipe Israel off the map,
we want to add 'Palestine' to the map." Although who believes him.
It is tragically ironic that Western liberals who see themselves as
anti-colonialist, and have adopted the erroneous view of the Palestinians as
the poor natives, and the Jews as the white colonial occupiers, find
themselves on the same side of the fence as the Islamofascists. If things
hot up maybe they'll be forced to reconsider the validity of their world
view.
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A letter based on this article was published in the Jerusalem Post today Nov
1, 2005.