Sorta-leftist websites are touting use-to-be-leftist Uri Avnery’s weekend article in Ma’an called “Tutu’s Prayer.” Where, the founder of Israel’s Gush Shalom (touted as “fairly far left” as opposed to grandfather- clause’d phony) argues against the BDS boycott of Israel and against comparisons to South African apartheid. And where, Avnery shows himself blind to his own Judeo-centrism. Rejecting the term apartheid, Avnery writes: “It seems that the blacks in South Africa are very different from the Israelis–“
Whaaaaat? Israelis see themselves as not the colonists but the natives! Who is it in Israel that has to wear the sunscreen?
Avnery relates his conversation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu as reinforcing why a boycott will not work. Oh, Tutu testifies that the boycott worked against the South African regime. But Avnery points out the uniqueness of the Jews, who suffered the Holocaust. All Jews, he explains, believe the whole world is against them. An international boycott will only reinforce that belief. His conclusion: Israel will resist a boycott forever. Ergo, it won’t work.
Israelis as forever the victims; doesn’t that point to why Israelis cannot begin to see why their actions against their neighbors are likened to war crimes? They see themselves as the black of South Africa. They probably see themselves as the Palestinians in the struggle over Gaza.
You don’t have to explain to the rest of the world, who is oppressing whom in the Middle East. And that’s who has the fuller view of Israeli Apartheid.
Apartheid in Israel is much simpler than between Israeli Jews and the dispossessed Palestinians.
Under Israeli Apartheid, every Jew in the world has the preferential right to the land of the Palestinians. You, if you are a Jew, have a birthright to Israel, to the roads and lands designated for Jews only. You, if you are not a Jew, do not.
That is Israeli Apartheid. To Israel, everyone else, you , me, and the Palestinians are the black.
