END THE APARTHEID LIBEL

To imply that the racist, misogynist, gay-bashing, despotic Palestinian Authority is the ideological or moral descendant of the ANC is a revolting assault on the memory of Nelson Mandela.

“Apartheid” is one of many slanders thrown at Israel – tossed around so repeatedly and cavalierly that most people probably do not even think deeply about why this is such an abominable abuse of history.

The aspersion it casts on Israel is bad. But that’s not the biggest problem here.

First, there is the niggling issue of cultural appropriation. For several decades now, we progressives have been vigilant about respecting the integrity of other cultures. The Palestinian movement takes this to ludicrous extremes, arguing that Israelis have “culturally appropriated” foods like falafel. And yet, when it comes to one of the most egregious examples of cultural appropriation – stealing the memory of the South African people’s long, tragic but ultimately successful battle for racial equality and democracy – any reticence about cultural appropriation, or the appropriateness of manipulating other people’s pasts for cheap political ends, flies right out the window.

I guess when “pro-Palestinians” use a slogan like “By any means necessary,” this justifies any intellectual and moral transgressions that advance the cause, and allows decency, respect and intercultural deference to be sublimated, along with everything else, to the sacred cause of Palestinianism.

I will not add to this disrespect by making specific comparisons. I would just ask you to consider any other historical (or contemporary) atrocity that people who call themselves progressives debase and exploit the way they do this South African experience.

Back to Israel and Palestine …

Anyone who has any degree of knowledge about the complexities and realities in those places knows that the use of the apartheid libel is a ham-fisted approach. It is part of a larger strategy of throwing the kitchen sink at Israel and seeing what sticks.

Anything can be compared with anything, of course. The term “apartheid,” meaning a very specific form of racial inequality (put mildly), could be clumsily applied to any country on earth, since no country has a perfect human rights record. So, sure, someone with a facility for rhetoric could compare Israel – or Canada, Sweden, Myanmar, Egypt, Vatican City, wherever – with apartheid.

But just as we would always do well to avoid carelessly tossing around historical comparisons with Nazism, reasonable people might tread a little more gently in throwing around terms like “apartheid.” Of course, the term “reasonable people” does not apply to those who use this word against Israel, so the idea that they would demonstrate any such graciousness is a wasted wish.

Also, a little understanding of the history of the term is in order. The apartheid libel against Israel emerged from one of the most atrocious moments of antisemitism in the modern era.

In 2001, the United Nations sponsored the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. The conference, but especially the nongovernmental parallel events, turned into a circus of medieval Jew-hatred.

Copies of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other base antisemitic propaganda were distributed. Jewish delegates were shouted down and ruled out of order. Images of Israelis as blood-sucking vampires and other historically antisemitic imagery were dusted off from decades past. Attendees carried banners reading “Hitler was right.” Erstwhile legitimate international human rights organizations stood on the sidelines while antisemitism took centre stage. At a conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

That is the hateful ferment from which the apartheid libel sprang. And it is a symptom of a deep sickness at the heart of the so-called “pro-Palestinian” movement.

That’s the origin story. Today, people who employ this term walk a deceitful line. While “moderate” Israel-bashers routinely inoculate themselves with the defence that they are merely “criticizing” Israel and not calling for its destruction, the apartheid libel is a handy tool for telescoping precisely the opposite message.

One cannot, on the one hand, declare that Israel is an apartheid state and, on the other hand, plausibly contend that it has a right to exist. So the apartheid libel is a duplicitous and convenient dog whistle for the hate-Israel movement.

The simplicity of the apartheid metaphor is its great attribute. One doesn’t have to think much, or at all, to take sides, which is typical of the best recruitment tools the movement employs. The apartheid libel is an intellectual overstrike key that allows ostensibly good people to sublimate any reservations they might have about their position on the Middle East.

Only through the perverted lens of the apartheid libel could we imagine the Palestinian movement as the progressive movement’s ally in the region, while condemning Israel, a state that was literally founded on and still best exemplifies the ideals of human rights, racial equality and the range of issues the anti-apartheid movement championed.

Understandably, Israelis, who have created what is probably the least racist society in its region, find this slander offensive. But we have already seen that many people – including people who self-define as “anti-racist” – don’t really care what Israelis or Jews think.

What gets me is that South Africans are not more up in arms about this abuse of their history. Some South Africans even endorse and employ the apartheid libel, apparently no more aware of what is going on in Israel than the North American and European useful idiots who employ the term.

The African National Congress, for whatever tactics it may have employed, was, at its heart, a movement for democracy, racial equality and freedom.

The Palestinian movement abhors democracy and freedom. Whether the “moderate” Fatah in the West Bank or the “extreme” Hamas is Gaza, the Palestinian governments are among the least democratic in the world and their societies are among the least free.

In addition to this, the “moderate” Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has promised that an independent Palestine would be completely eradicated of Jews. The Palestinian movement spits on the racial equality that was the beating heart of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

To imply, through the application of the apartheid libel, that the racist, misogynist, gay-bashing, despotic Palestinian Authority (or goddess forbid, Hamas) is the ideological or moral descendant of the African National Congress is a revolting assault on the memory of Nelson Mandela and everyone who struggled with him.

Above all, the ANC was fighting a racist system that gave every indication, until the 1990s, that it would never budge. Unlike the Palestinian leadership, the ANC was not confronting an opponent across a negotiating table. The ANC never walked away from peaceful negotiations, as the Palestinian leadership did in 2000, to return to armed struggle (in the Palestinian case, a futile, tragic terrorist orgy that has needlessly led to the deaths of tens of thousands, and still counting).

Palestinians and their apologists insist that their tactics, in the end, will be judged as necessary for the “national liberation struggle.” Yet for more than 50 years there has been no hint that the Palestinian “liberation” movement would create anything but another Arab dictatorship.

“Liberation” of the land of Palestine may be their goal, but the Palestinian people would be anything but liberated under the “free Palestine” envisioned by either “extremist” Hamas or “moderate” Fatah (as we have already seen in their respective despotic regimes).

While South Africa is now a racially equal, democratic country, a “free” Palestine would be nothing of the sort.

The apartheid libel, of course, insults Israelis. Israel, it should not need to be pointed out, is the only country in the Middle East that has legislation like Canada’s and South Africa’s to protect racial, religious and sexual minorities. Every other state in the region is far closer, on an imaginary spectrum of proximity to apartheid, than Israel.

The apartheid libel also insults the intelligence of any thinking person who carries any respect for avoiding cultural appropriation or decency in intellectual discourse.

Above all, though, attempting to bestow the mantle of Nelson Mandela and one of the 20^th century’s greatest achievements for racial equality and democracy upon the racist Palestinian terror regimes is truly one of the greatest imaginable insults against history and decency.

No one who respects the legacy of Mandela, who venerates the achievements of the ANC’s fight for racial equality, or who believes that history deserves reverence should ever employ this despicable, inappropriate abuse of memory.

Stop it.