Hate-a-Palooza – Apartheid Israel Week Begins!

It is an annual event held on university campuses around the world. An anticipated festival featuring clowns and jokers and a whole bunch of magic tricks. The rock stars of hate finely tune their instruments for the tour that covers over 250 cities across the globe and occurs in February and March every year.

The tour will feature its usual playlist – activists spewing venom and vitriol and leveling  accusations of the practice of Apartheid at the Jewish State. If you strip away the “glamour” and look at the motivation behind such an event, it is easy to see that although disguised as concern for human rights abuse, these rock stars of hatred and discrimination single out only one country, Israel, and use words like Apartheid to rally support behind their nefarious cause.

On many occasions I have lamented the tragic hijacking of the word “Apartheid” which in essence meant the legislated and enforced laws of racial segregation that classed the black citizens of South Africa as disenfranchised and second class.  Instead, this definition has become a sexy way to package, market and sell anti-Israel hatred. The word Apartheid is provocative, emotive and evocative and inspires a variety of strong emotions. The rock stars of hatred are well aware of what people’s reactions to the word Apartheid will be. In their haste to demonize Israel, detractors have forgotten to define what Apartheid was! The black people of South Africa suffered tremendously under the Apartheid regime and by comparing Israel, an imperfect but thriving democracy, to the former South Africa makes light of their suffering. It is an odious comparison to say the least.

This campaign of hatred is nothing more than a scurrilous attempt to assault the legitimacy of the State of Israel. One must note that even in the darkest days of Apartheid, NOBODY questioned South Africa’s right to exist as a country, no matter how much the world objected to its racist policies. Calling into question Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State or the rights of Jews to organize themselves along political lines and call it Zionism IS racism. By painting Israel as a pariah state that has little right to exist and ignoring true racist states says more about those pointing fingers than our plucky little country. I grew up in South Africa  and bore witness to the horrors of Apartheid and I live in Israel and while it is not perfect and yes, racism exists, it is a far cry from the daily humiliation and persecution suffered by the people of South Africa. South Africa is perhaps one of the most important centres for this campaign of delegitimisation because it is the country that not only holds the benchmark for defeating Apartheid but exports anti-Apartheid activists to the above mentioned centres to promote their Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel and spew forth their vitriol.

And Gaza is the favoured symbol of oppression. It is astounding that some will say that Israelis practicing policies worse than Apartheid in Gaza(an area that Israel completely disengaged from including the uprooting of the dead) while ignoring true crimes of Apartheid perpetrated by Hamas – the guardians of Gaza. Gender apartheid, religious apartheid, restriction of freedom of the press, persecution of political opposition and the persecution of Homosexuals. Should I go on?

Those advocating BDS assume that by “punishing”Israel with cultural, economic, sporting and other sanctions it will bring us to our knees, and we will abandon the idea of a Two State Solution. They assume that by isolating Israel  it will result in Palestinians and Israelis living  happily ever after in a giant rainbow nation like South Africa and everything will be sunshine, lollipops and roses. Except for one small detail. Palestinians and Jews both have their own national aspirations based on their own ethnic or nationalistic identities.

 By advocating a One State Solution, BDS advocates not only patronize Palestinian national aspirations but Jewish as well. 

During last year’s on-campus hate fest an attempt was made by an Israeli student to engage with a representative of the BDS movement. His hello was met with a call to F… off. Offensive, appalling and it just proves the point that discourse and engagement is not the aim of these movements, but rather isolation and abuse. It is my belief peace will be built from the ground up and cutting off  engagement is contrary to any attempts to broker peace.

It has become trendy to join the anti-Israel frenzy on campus.  It saddens me that in order to become pro-Palestinian the trend is to become as anti-Israel as one can possibly be. Academic institutions are supposed to be hotbeds of free thinking so I am going to send this message to students: start a new trend – become rebellious rock stars and buck the system by becoming pro peace and  being informed of the realities in this part of the Middle East. Rebel by choosing not to harass Israeli speakers, diplomats and IDF representatives who visit your campus. Look for positive ways to build dialogue and change. Don’t be a supporting act by advocating policies of BDS.

Come on students, this is YOUR time to challenge authority….

Disclaimer: Hate-a-Palooza is in no way a slight or criticism of the highly successful rock tour, Lollapalooza.