But is the Premise Valid?
With the large number of Jimmy Carter’s blatently false assertions exposed, a few anti-Israel activists are now arguing that it doesn’t really matter if Carter systematically misstated and distorted facts. Let’s not worry if Carter’s book is riddled with errors, they say. Nobody can argue against Carter’s premise—that Israel practices apartheid.
In fact, many informed commentators have debunked Carter’s apartheid analogy. One extremely compelling rebuttal was made even before the publication of Carter’s Palestine: Peace not Apartheid by a man more familiar than most with the horrors of apartheid. Benjamin Pogrund‘s reporting for South Africa’s Rand Daily Mail, a newspaper described as “the journalistic conscience of apartheid South Africa,” was instrumental in raising awareness of the conditions faced by black South Africans.
It is worth recalling, then, what Pogrund wrote in late 2005 about the apartheid analogy:
Apartheid is dead in South Africa but the word is alive in the world, especially as an epithet of abuse for Israel. Israel is accused by some of being ‘the new apartheid’ state. If true, it would be a grave charge, justifying international condemnation and sanctions. But it isn’t true. Anyone who knows what apartheid was, and who knows Israel today, is aware of that. Use of the apartheid label is at best ignorant and naïve and at worst cynical and manipulative. …
“Apartheid” is used in this case and elsewhere because it comes easily to hand: it is a lazy label for the complexities of the Middle East conflict. It is also used because, if it can be made to stick, then Israel can be made to appear to be as vile as was apartheid South Africa and seeking its destruction can be presented to the world as an equally moral cause. (from the December 2005 issue of Focus, published by The Helen Suzman Foundation)
For more of Pogrund’s commentary, see here.
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