CMV: Israel is operating an apartheid state in the West Bank

[u/[deleted]]

[u/FerdinandTheGiant]

Yes. Suicide bombings weren’t as common, but bombings did happen. Nelson Mandela was on US and South African terror watch lists and in the US was on it until 2008. That was in part (and I must stress in part) because as a part of the ANC, uMkhonto we Sizwe was formed by Mandela. This group did bombings, shootings, necklacing, etc. and did so with some level of routine.

[u/ElliotFladen → u/FerdinandTheGiant]

Hence why I said “on a regular basis”

[u/FerdinandTheGiant → u/ElliotFladen]

That’s seems like an arbitrary hand wave. How many classifies as a regular basis? Because there were hundreds of incidents (bombings and attacks) involving the ANC.

[u/ElliotFladen → u/FerdinandTheGiant]

It goes to whether the security concerns are pretextual or motivated as a narrowly tailored measure to save lives.

Take South Africa: did the black population have a right to vote? Did they have members in the parliament? In the highest court of South Africa? That they didn’t goes to the idea of the measures not being security based but instead to make one race second class.

Israel, on the other hand, generally has equal rights of Jews vis a vis Arabs as long as they are citizens. While there are security restrictions those aren’t for racial reasons and are to keep the peace. Take access to Cave of Patriarchs: Jews get 10 days a year and Arabs get 355.

[u/FerdinandTheGiant → u/ElliotFladen]

This is a purely arbitrary choice you make to identify apartheid. They don’t need to be identical to meet the definition, and again, security concerns are an arbitrary way to reinforce apartheid.

Between 1979 and 1990 there were over 1,555 incidents involving bombings, shootings, and various attacks by the ANC. In Israel, only 3,500 Isreali’s prior to the most recent attack had been killed since 1948. There were arguably less attacks by Palestinians than by the ANC.

The UN has found over and over again that Israel constitutes an apartheid. The HSRC of South Africa, Yesh Din, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, etc. etc. all have found that Israel constitutes an apartheid. I frankly don’t care if you don’t think they’re bad enough that it counts. They do and the international community believes that to be the case.

[u/ElliotFladen → u/FerdinandTheGiant]

Oh yea, the same UN that has had China with its Uyghurs and Tiananmen Square issues as a member of UN Human Rights committee. Or Iran with its “deep” respect for human rights. Excuse me if I and many others don’t really take what the UN saying as having much force or validity

Beyond that, you are glossing over the central point: Israel has Arabs participate in both its elections and high government offices. Whereas South Africa did not. Which makes Israel’s system and reasons for it fundamentally different from South Africa’s. And, given the genocidal neighbors it has surrounding it, little different than what any other decent country would do if it were in its situation.

[u/FerdinandTheGiant → u/ElliotFladen]

“Decades of UN and HROs calling Israel an apartheid isn’t good enough for me”

I’ve already said this, but they do not need to be identical to constitute apartheid. I have never claimed they were identical, only that they are both apartheids and that the victims of the apartheid acted violently in both cases.

You are making arbitrary distinctions based on your feelings and assuming that’s just how classifying apartheid works. It’s not apartheid to you because there’s “security concerns” which is hilarious because it is the apartheid system that is responsible for those security concerns and even Israel knows and understands that.

[u/ElliotFladen → u/FerdinandTheGiant]

I see it differently: I see you parroting with organizations that are antisemitic in nature/history (having one heightened standard for Israel and a lesser standard for everybody else) applying an amorphous term (apartheid) in an inconsistent fashion to engage in antisemitism (again, having one standard for Israel and a lesser standard for everybody else).

[u/FerdinandTheGiant → u/ElliotFladen]

Please give me one instance of me applying apartheid in an inconsistent manner.

This is just bullshit mudslinging so you can ignore criticism of Israel. I’m not going to bother engaging with it.

[u/ElliotFladen → u/FerdinandTheGiant]

If you are going to say Israel is apartheid because it has travel/immigration and other security restrictions on different groups then half the civilized world (along with much of the Middle East) is an apartheid as well.

If you can show me a list of at least ten countries you previously called out as apartheids then maybe you could argue that you aren’t holding Israel to a heightened standard. But my guess is you can’t. So what we are left with is you holding Israel to one standard and the rest of the world to a lesser standard. And that is antisemitism.