Yesterday, Michael Rubin posted this at Commentary.com:
According to this report in USA Today, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s representative in Washington has declared there will be no place in any future Palestinian state for Jews. There are several ironies.
Turkey and perhaps European countries as well are maybe on the verge of recognizing the first state since Nazi Germany to propose a judenrein policy. There are several ironies: First, Israel, whose Arab Christian and Muslim minorities—perhaps 20 percent of the population—have full rights, but is lambasted by the cocktail set as racist. Second, when the Netanyahu government proposed recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, many diplomats—including those in the State Department—balked. But to propose a Jew-free state? That’s okay.Back on August 30, Dennis Prager (at National Review Online) rejected the apartheid comparisons:
One and a half million Arabs live in Israel, constituting about 20 percent of the country’s population. They have the same rights as all other Israeli citizens. They can vote, and they do. They can serve in the Israeli parliament, and they do. They can own property, businesses, and work in professions alongside other Israelis, and they do. They can be judges, and they are. Here’s one telling example: It was an Arab judge on Israel’s supreme court who sentenced the former president of Israel, a Jew, to jail on a rape charge...
Arabs in Israel live freer lives than Arabs living anywhere in the Arab world. No Arab in any Arab country has the civil rights and personal liberty that Arabs in Israel have...
So, then, why is Israel called an apartheid state?Because by comparing the freest, most equitable country in the Middle East to the former South Africa, those who seek Israel’s demise hope they can persuade uninformed people that Israel doesn’t deserve to exist just as apartheid South Africa didn’t deserve to exist.
