In response to Rabbi Eliyahu Stern's blog post criticizing former President Jimmy Carter's new book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," "God's Politics" guest blogger Jeff Halper, an Israeli peace activist, defended Carter's perspective on Israeli policies toward Palestinians and his use of the term "apartheid."
Read Virtual Talmud blogger Rabbi Joshua Waxman's reply to Halper:
Calling Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians "apartheid,"as both Jimmy Carter and Jeff Halper do, is both ludicrous and inflammatory–a calculated attempt to turn people against Israel by an insidious comparison with South Africa’s racist policies.
As Michael Kinsley and others point out, the comparison is absurd–South Africa was built on the racist premise that whites were superior to blacks and black citizens were required to live in specific areas with few if any rights–that’s apartheid. The Israeli citizenry, on the other hand, includes 1.4 million Arabs who are free to vote, live where they want, and enjoy equal protection under the law.
The critical questions arise around the West Bank and Gaza–areas that are not parts of Israel and whose Palestinian occupants are not Israeli citizens. Israel took possession of these territories after fending off four hostile armies in the 1967 Six-Day War. With the exception of East Jerusalem, Israel did not annex this territory, instead trying to exchange it for peace–as it did successfully with Egypt, returning the Sinai in the 1978 Camp David Accords (memo to President Carter: you earn Nobel Peace Prizes by reaching out to others and building bridges, not by writing error-ridden, one-sided screeds). Jordan and Syria refused to make peace in exchange for the West Bank and Golan Heights respectively, and so for the past 40 years these territories have remained under Israel’s control.
Now, I’m no fan of Israel’s settlement policies or the way that Israel treats Palestinians in the territories. Nevertheless, we must realize that policies toward a hostile group of people who are not your citizens (i.e., Palestinians in the territories) are going to differ from treatment of minority citizens of your country (i.e., Arabs and Druze living in Israel)–and indeed they do.
Hafrada, the Hebrew term that Halper tries to argue means "apartheid," in fact refers to the policy of separating the territories from Israel proper for security reasons, and not a separation of or discrimination between Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens as he implies. Halper himself can’t recognize this difference because he refuses to make a distinction between Israel and the territories, arguing instead for a one-state solution that effectively wipes Israel off the map.
Except for some extremists on the left like Halper and the Islamist Palestinian party Hamas, and those on the right like Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Minister for Strategic Affairs and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party (which advocates expelling Israel's Arab population), most people on both sides of the issue today realize that a two-state solution–an independent Israel and Palestine–is the only way forward.
Twisting the Truth
Thursday December 21, 2006
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Brad Hirschfield currently blogs on Windows and Doors.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. Listed as one of the nation’s 50 most influential rabbis in Newsweek, and a regular commentator on Court TV, he is the creator of the popular series, Building Bridges, airing on Bridges TV, and the co-host of the weekly radio show, Hirschfield and Kula.
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http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/nyt-report.html Are we to imagine it is Israel who only wants peace? You say it's only the extremists who want constant war and then associate the complete population of Palestine with violence. The Israeli government must also feel it is every Palestinian that is a threat to peace considering they've walled them all off, cut electricity and other utilities to entire cities; it is Israel that has placed dyptheria and other diseases in Palestinian drinking water. It is IDF that bulldozes entire cities. As Carter said, this is a two way struggle, and both sides are at the throats of the other. It is a bit unbalanced in favor of Israel because they hold so much more technology in warfare, power in politics, and economy, and the Palestinians are desperate people. Doesn't the Torah say to treat the alien in the land as a citizen?
The secular Zionist leadership of Israel today are overloading the entire system in an effort to immigrate Jewish persons, principly from poorer areas of the world. This immigration is overloading an economy already in serious trouble, despite reports of blossoming economy, most see only the cost increases. Educated people because of resultant unemployement also leaving to find jobs elsewhere. The situation in Israel reminds me strikingly of America, where leaders of our Corp/Gov outsource American factories and operations, as a result harvesting large profit's from these 3rd World operations. In the mean time the common population suffer in defending these same 'strategic' overseas operations, noticing the angry crowd of 3rd-World people's forming against us.
In my opinion, both Waxman and Halper have good arguments. The truth is probably a mixture of what both of them have to say. Although I am a Christian and revere the Bible, I don't think the modern nation of Israel has anything to do with biblical prophecy, the End, etc. I support a nation of Israel in the same way that I would support an independent Kurdistan or Assyria, and I am revolted by many actions of the Israeli government. NEVERTHELESS, we have to look at who started the fire. It wasn't the Jews in Palestine. It was the Arabs who attacked them both before and after the declaration of the state of Israel. Israel has demonstrated a willingness to trade land for peace, and it would probably do a LOT more over time if the belligerant, sadistic dictatorships of the Middle East would make peace. Jimmy Carter means well, and he is a nice icon for Habitat for Humanity. But, as president, he was a naive fool. I voted for Reagan in 1980 (for one reason) because I was terrified that Carter's ignorance was going to embolden the Soviets even further and back us into a nuclear war. Israel has to live in reality; it can't afford Carter's nonsense. Thank God we only had to endure this man's presidency for four LONG years! And thank God he isn't the PM of Israel. If he were, the countdown for its extinction would be on.
Israel took possession of these territories after fending off four hostile armies in the 1967 Six-Day War. ...and have subsequently built illegal settlements in violation of international law. I won't fault the Palestinians for fighting on their own land to repel an occupying force, no more than I would fault any population for attempting to rid itself of its oppressors.
I think that President Carter is extremely courageous in pointing out the racial injustices practiced by Israel toward the Arabs (and other minorities who live in the region that they claim for themselves.) The land grab that Israel has made is wrong. However the Arabs need to grow up and find a better way of defending themselves than the violent methods they now use (where, like African Americans in the ghettos, in their rage they end up primarily killing each other.) If they would quiet down and become silent within themselves the Truth would immediately reveal itself to them and they would be successful in gaining that which belongs to them by Divine Right. The entire Israeli political situation needs to be discussed openly, but for some reason, ANY questions or criticisms are immediately labeled anti-semitic, thus removed from any intelligent debate and changed into religious charges. This is the only country that we give such tremendous financial aid to yet we cannot question anything that they do. If we continue to support them unquestioningly, then we are supporting apartheid. Also, I do not subscribe to the idea that ANY group of people has been singled out by God to be his favorites or his CHOSEN people, putting them above all others. I cannot believe in a God who loves some of His creations more than He loves others. What kind of cruel God would THAT be? I speak with God on a daily basis and HE/SHE has assured me that this is NOT SO and that NO OTHER PERSON ON THIS PLANET IS ANY GREATER IN HIS EYESIGHT THAN I. And I rest assured in the knowledge that God loves ME! I think that the Bible is a beautiful book of stories and I learn a lot about love reading it. But I also remember that those stories were compiled from ancient myths or composed and written by scholars who would of course make themselves better than anyone else. Do I believe in Jesus? Of course I do! But I also remember that He said, "These things I do, so shall ye do and even greater things." I think President Carter is the best President America has had since LBJ forced through the Civil Rights Act.