Apartheid died in 1994 with the coming of democracy to South Africa. But the word is still with us: Israel is increasingly accused of being the new apartheid. Together with this, Israel's founding ideology, Zionism, is attacked as racism. But how true are these accusations? Mere repetition, however frequent, widespread and fervent, do not in themselves give them validity.
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In Israel there was little emotional identification with Afrikaners even though some did support their minority white rule. Israel voted against apartheid in international forums until pressure from South Africa's Jewish community caused it to abstain. The dominant influence in Israel was self-interest stemming from the shared international status as pariahs and a sense of threat. Strong ties were created, especially in the military and security fields.
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The past lives on in concepts and words - between the old South Africa and the current Israel - in the apartheid and racist charges. The description of Israel as an "emerging apartheid" began to build perhaps around 2000. It gathered force in the run-up to the UN Anti-racism conference in Durban in August/September 2001 and was given full and aggressive expression at the conference there of NGOs. However, after much pressure by democratic countries, the subsequent official conference of governments belatedly expunged virtually every attack on Israel. South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad later spoke of the 'disgraceful events' surrounding the NGO conference and said: "I wish to make it unequivocally clear that the South African Government recognises that part of that component was hijacked and used by some with an anti-Israeli agenda to turn it into an anti-Semitic event." And putting the NGO conference into perspective, he added: "Recognition of this, however, was precisely the reason for the refusal of the world's governments to accept the final statement of NGO proceedings into the final document of the Conference.
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Nor does Zionism is racism stand up to scrutiny. This charge is not new but is an attempt to resuscitate a discredited and rescinded 1975 UN General Assembly resolution (it was thrown out in 1991) which said that 'Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.' Much earlier, on 29 November 1947, the General Assembly voted for partition of the then Palestine with the aim of creating a state for the Jewish people and a state for the native Arabs. For Jews it was Zionism come true – the return of Jews to their ancestral home and the creation of a place of refuge. They accepted partition but Arabs did not. How we can dream of what might have been had Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding countries accepted the UN decision! Israel now has a Jewish majority and they have the right to decide how to order the society, including defining citizenship. If the majority wish to restrict immigration and citizenship to Jews that might be undesirable in any universalist outlook but it is the right of the majority. Just as it is the right of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states not to allow Christians as citizens, or the right of Ghana and other African states to reject or restrict whites as citizens, or the right of South Africa to have a nonracial citizenship policy. It's the norm for countries to have citizenship laws and immigration practices which are non-universalist but which are based on their perceptions of colour or religion or economic class or whatever. Europe demonstrates that every day in dealing with would-be economic migrants.
http://www.jewschool.com/israpartheid.htm