Other Comments On The Apartheid Analogy
Sasha Polakow-Suransky addresses the Israeli apartheid analogy in the epilogue of his book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (2010). Polakow-Suransky argues that some aspects of apartheid in South Africa are "ominously similar" to developments in contemporary Israel but that the analogy is nonetheless an imperfect one. He notes that Israel's labour policies are very different from those of apartheid-era South Africa, that Israel has never enacted miscegenation laws, and that liberation movements in South Africa and Palestine have had different "aspirations and tactics." This notwithstanding, he argues that the apartheid analogy is likely to gain further legitimacy in upcoming years unless Israel moves to dismantle West Bank settlements and create a viable Palestinian state.
Polakow-Suransky also writes that the response of Israel's defenders to the analogy since 2007 has been "knee-jerk" and based on "vitriol and recycled propaganda" rather than an honest assessment of the situation. He notes that public discourse on the subject has been far more "nuanced and thoughtful" in Israel than in America, drawing particular attention to the reviews of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in both countries.
In June 2011, Canadian politician and scholar Irwin Cotler was interviewed by Israeli television on the concept of "new antisemitism." In the course of the interview, he argued that labelling Israel as an apartheid state, while in his view "distasteful," nonetheless falls "within the boundaries of argument" and is not inherently antisemitic. "It's where you say, because it's an apartheid state, it has to be dismantled - then crossed the line into a racist argument, or an anti-Jewish argument," he said.
Read more about this topic: Israel And The Apartheid Analogy
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