“Wipe the Jewish Zionist Entity off the Map Week”

Welcome!  It is that time of year again, open season for Jew haters and Israel bashers.  Yup, it is Israel Apartheid Week.  Let us “celebrate” it on the best university campuses, from Columbia to Harvard to York.  As the satirist Kirchen observed:

They wanted to call it the “Wipe the Jewish Zionist Entity off the Map Week,” but “Israel Apartheid Week” is more politically correct.

If it was not so sad it might actually be funny.  To call Israel Apartheid is as absurd as saying that there are equal rights to all peoples in any of the countries surrounding Israel.

Georgetown University this week

I grew up in South Africa, the only apartheid regime the world has known.  I waited for my (whites only) school bus to my (whites only) school on a bench that said: “BUS STOP, WHITES ONLY” in both English and Afrikaans.  After school I frequently went to the beach where I passed by this sign:

It was a brutally oppressive regime where State sanctioned racism was enshrined in the law.  The colour of ones skin was the sole factor determining whether one did or did not have rights.  The contrast between Apartheid South Africa and the State of Israel is total.  Israel’s Declaration of Independence enshrines equality for all of her citizens by categorically stating:

The State of Israel… will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions…

If one wants to find Apartheid in the Middle East, one does not need to search far.  Most of the regimes in Israel’s neighbourhood practice Gender Apartheid.  Last year the Gaza marathon was cancelled after the Hamas Mullahs banned the participation of women.  Women, are not allowed outside in Saudi Arabia, an American ally, unless they are covered from head to foot and accompanied my a male relative…never mind driving.

The United Nations (no big friend of Israel) Human Development Report of 2002 (page 22) states that:

Women in Arab League countries suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements.  Often evident in voting rights and legal codes and from inequality of opportunity evident in employment status, wages and gender-based occupational segregation.  Their political and economic participation remains the lowest in the world.

In the Arab world and Iran adultery is a crime for both sexes, though women receive harsher punishment.  Adultery is a capital offense, with execution by stoning.  This is sexual Apartheid!  Were are the campus demonstrations against gender and sexual apartheid?  Where are the college demonstrations against the all too many genuine repressive regimes on the planet with real grave human rights abuses?  The silence, and blatant hypocracy, is deafening and very revealing.

So my friends, the next time someone starts gnawing away at that old bone by falsely claiming that, “Israel is an Apartheid regime just like South Africa was,” realise that it is only because it is not politically correct after the Holocaust to call oneself a vile hate-spewing intolerant and ignorant anti-Semite.  The world can tolerate weak Jews as victims of racism but cannot stand to see strong Jews as beacons of tolerance, understanding and equality.

Does Israel have issues?  Sure it does.  No Democracy is perfect. It is important to acknowledge that with all of Israel’s incredible successes in many fields since its creation, there are issues that Israel is grappling with as it continues to stride into the 21st century.  The problems that the Jewish State faces include topics as far-ranging as: security, religion, society, environment, water, education and how to harmoniously co-exist with a minority population.  Israel is not brushing them under the proverbial carpet, but rather continuing to wrestle and grapple with them in an attempt to create a better society and a better world.

In 1984 and 1991 The State of Israel saved over 14000 Ethiopians of the Mosaic faith in dramatic airlifts reminicent of Dunkirk.  Meskie Shibry Sivan one of them remembered his experience:

Different, but so much alike, city and country people, we clung to each other and came to beautiful and difficult Israel.

Our ancient community had arrived home and started its last, but no less difficult journey – absorption. We are only at the beginning of this journey, but we are very excited to celebrate our new-old homeland’s independence.

On that note, I would like to toast Miss Israel, Ethiopian-born Yityish Titi Aynaw who accepted the crown fourteen years after Rana Raslan, who is a Christian Arab.  Did someone say Apartheid?  Where is the voice of fact, reason, sanity and truth on the American college campuses?