Correcting The Record: Apartheid

In which I dispel the most pervasive untruths about Israel

Hey, tribe. How has your week been?

Mine has been both uplifting and tough.

Uplifting because I’ve received the most deeply appreciated notes from some of you, telling me this community is something you need. And because of Matisyahu, and the other encounters I’ve mentioned.

Tough because of the ugliness surrounding the show, and the tragedy of a troubled young man setting himself on fire, and most distressing of all, the tsunami of admiration and kudos in response to a 25-year-old’s suicide.  

I’ll never leave the left because I’ll never be on board with the U.S. as an oligarchy, or with white Christian nationalism, xenophobia, voter suppression, persecution of the LGBTQ+ community, forced births, climate collapse, and a host of other non-negotiable issues.

But I also think a lot of the progressive left has lost its mind: so devoted to enforcing a maximalist, purist and utopian ideology that they’re essentially useless when it comes to actually getting anything done, and just as susceptible to propaganda as the MAGA faction.

Something that surprised me when I started to defend Israel while standing well to the left of center was that I’d continually get messages from other progressive Jews who would thank me for saying what they didn’t feel able to say.

And in time, I learned their near-silence was driven by two factors:

1) fear of the internet mob / social ostracism, and

2) unlike many of our detractors, they knew what they didn’t know.

The Israeli / Palestinian topic is so layered and complex that even after being steeped in it all my life, and reading about it daily for more than 10 years, I know so many people who know much more about it than I do.

And yet, I know much more about it than most of the people screaming all over my newsfeed.

People on our side of the aisle feel superior to the Trump masses who have so clearly been indoctrinated by Fox News and lost to propaganda. And yet the terrible truth is that a truly huge contingent of our bedfellows on the left are just as vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.

I mentioned earlier this week that I wanted to highlight progressive non-Jewish allies as a regular feature of Never Alone.

Another thing I want to do regularly is to confront the most pervasive misconceptions about Israel and correct the record.

So again, I know how overwhelming this topic can be, and I know that when we’re bludgeoned with too much information at once, we glaze over and don’t absorb any of it.

So I want to tackle just one lie at a time, likely once a week.

Today I want to look at an accusation we hear hourly: that Israel is an apartheid state.

Is there any truth to this obscene charge?

In a word: no.

So how did it become as widespread a belief as Trump’s claim that he was the true winner of a stolen election?

I think the most indelible (and illegitimate) validation stamp was created by a 2017 United Nations Report that declared Israel guilty of that crime against humanity.

This UN report was authored by a 9/11 conspiracy theorist named Richard Falk, who was accused of anti-Semitism by the UK and by his own UN chief, Ban Ki-Moon. It was commissioned by Syria (which itself had killed thousands of Palestinians during the previous few years), Libya (where the African slave trade is still going on!) and 18 other Arab states.

Obviously, this context matters.

But it opened the door anyway to this fun new territory where the term seemed to be granted credibility by some official neutral humanitarian commission. And of course, others gleefully picked it up and ran with it.

Then there was the shiny PR trick where they got to entirely change the meaning of “apartheid” from the one prototype the entire world has for it: that of South Africa. Human Rights Watch readily admitted that Israel is in no way, shape or form anything like South Africa but said they’d taken the liberty of “broadening” the definition.

And so now, in the public mind, Israel has been branded its ideological and functional equivalent. And therefore, now, people get to say whatever they want about it. After all, it’s an apartheid state, and everyone knows that’s pure Jim Crow-level evil, right?

Do acts of racism and human rights abuses go on in Israel? Absolutely. As they do in every other country on the planet.

But Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jewish Israelis. They can eat in any restaurant, be served in any place of business, work in any profession. They can vote and serve at the highest levels of government. There have been Arab members of the Knesset since the body’s inception in 1949. And ironically, a poll of Arab Israelis in December found that an overwhelming majority support Israel’s war against Hamas, and feel a stronger sense of kinship with their country after the massacre than ever before.

On the other hand, there is not a single Jewish resident of Gaza today. Gaza is 100% Judenrein. This bothers nobody. No one minds, no one ever mentions it.

I wonder why that is?

This is already quite long, so I’ll leave it at that for today. Next week, I’m planning to tackle the ubiquitous assertion that Zionism = racism / ethno-nationalism / Jewish supremacy.

As always, thanks so much for being here. I love the community we’re building. If you know of anyone who would appreciate Never Alone, please pass it on and spread the word.

In the meantime, much love to you all. Mir Veln Zey Iberlebn. Am Yisrael Chai.