So you want to boycott Israel? Be consistent.

Anti-Israel organizations like BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) are becoming more aggressive. The 7th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week was held in 50 cities around the world in March, with most events taking place on college campuses.

Shopping centres were also a target. Leaflets featured graphic images of bleeding Jaffa Orange, Israel spelled as “Israhell” and pictures of Palestinian children covered in blood alongside the slogan “Shopping can kill”.

There are a lot of people who want to boycott Israeli goods or avoid anything that originates with Jews. I wouldn’t mind if such people were consistent but it’s very difficult to consistently avoid everything Jewish because almost everything important in life today was either invented or developed by Israelis or Jews.

The world would be poorer without the Jewish contribution to music, film, television and stage. “Yes”, I can hear you say, “but apart from great classical music, jazz, pop music, drama, comedy, and Hollywood blockbusters, what else have the Jews ever done for us?”

How about the discovery of Digitalis by Adolph von Baeyer who synthesized the drug in 1864.

If you have toothache and have to visit the dentist, remember to insist that he doesn’t use cocaine as an anaesthetic, because that was discovered by a Jewish ophthalmologist Karl Koller.

Do you have Diabetes? Have you been using Insulin? You naughty, inconsistent boycotter, you. Better stop taking it right now because insulin was discovered by Oscar Minkowsky, a Jew.

If your kids have never had diphtheria, be grateful to Selman Waksman.

And let’s not get into cures for Syphilis and Gonorrhea!

So, remember, if you are going to proudly and consistently boycott all things Jewish, you’ll have to avoid all Jewish music, movies, plays, discoveries, inventions and wonder drugs.

And, by the way, you’d better get rid of the PC or mobile phone on which you are reading this because the Pentium chip and other inventions that link you to your friends and fellow boycotters were invented by Jews.

Oh! Don’t go to church either, because there you’ll be worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.

Boycott, Divest and Sanction all you want but at least be consistent. Boycott everything Jewish but know you’ll have to do it without the aid of your laptop and mobile phone, and without the benefit of life saving medication. And when you want to relax, don’t watch a colour TV and don’t go to movies produced by MGM, Warner Brothers, or Twentieth Century Fox. And don’t turn to Jesus as your only hope of forgiveness and salvation; he’s Jewish too.

I wish you the best of luck for your short, boring, spiritually hopeless and barren life. You’re going to need it.

The hypocrisy of Israel Apartheid Week

David Bedein provides a number of facts which those who charge Israel with practising apartheid forget, ignore or cover up.

In 1948, Apartheid laws institutionalized racial discrimination in South Africa and denied human rights to 25 million black citizens of South Africa.

In 1948, the Arab League of Nations applied the Apartheid model to Palestine, and declared that Jews must be denied rights as citizens of Israel, while declaring a total state of war to eradicate the new Jewish entity, a war that continues today.
In 1948, at the directive of the Arab League of Nations, Jordan devastated the vestiges of Jewish life from Judea and Samaria, and burned all synagogues in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.

In 1948, member states of the Arab League of Nations began to strip the human rights of Jews and to expel entire Jewish communities who had resided in their midst for centuries

In the mid 1960's, the Arab League of Nations spawned the PLO to organize local residents to continue the war to deny Jewish rights the right to live as free citizens in the land of Israel – well before Israel took over Judea, Samaria, and the Old City of Jerusalem in the defensive war waged by Israel in 1967.

Since its inception in 1994, the newly constituted Palestinian Authority, created by the PLO, has prepared the rudiments of a Palestinian State, modeled on the rules of Apartheid and institutionalized discrimination:

1. The right of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents to return to Arab villages lost in 1948 will be protected by the new Palestinian state.

2. While 20% of Israel's citizens are Arabs, not one Jew will be allowed to live in a Palestinian State.

3. Anyone who sells land to a Jew will be liable to the death penalty in the Palestinian State.

4. Those who murder Jews are honored on all official Palestinian media outlets.

5. Palestinian Authority maps prepared for the Palestinian State depict all of Palestine under Palestinian rule,

6. Palestinian Authority maps of Jerusalem for the Palestinian State once again delete the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.

7. Recent PA documents claim all of Jerusalem for the future Palestinian State.

8. The right of Jewish access to Jewish holy places is to be denied in the new Palestinian State.

9. The Draft Palestinian State Constitution denies juridical status to any religion except for Islam.

10. No system which protects human rights or civil liberties will exist in a Palestinian State.

If this is not a formula for a totalitarian apartheid state of Palestine, then what is?

Israel and the charge of Apartheid

Sorry folks, this has been an incredibly hectic fortnight and I’m just surfacing for air. I wanted to write something on Purim last week and something on “Israel Apartheid Week” but was let hitherto. Here’s something by Malcolm Hedding I would like to have written if I’d had the time…

As a young minister in South Africa in the 1980s, Malcolm Hedding participated in the struggle against Apartheid and was threatened with detention without trial by the infamous Bureau of State Security, so he knows what he’s talking about when he writes about Apartheid.

Israel and the charge of Apartheid

Day by day the anti-Israel alliance, and sadly in collaboration with major church movements mainly from the Protestant world, is seeking to make the Apartheid label stick to Israel. We see this at present in the fortnight of global agitation known as “Israel Apartheid Week.” There is more to this scheming than meets the eye in that the real agenda behind branding Israel an “Apartheid state” is to remove the Jewish State altogether.

The real Apartheid State of South Africa was rightfully dismantled in the late 1980s and early 90s. It was first discredited, then delegitimized and finally dismantled to the elation of the world and the enslaved black majority who had lived under and endured its brutality. However, to describe Israel in these terms is, quite frankly, immoral and wicked. Yet on university campuses across the Western World, this is becoming a very popular cause.

Essentially, Apartheid was a totalitarian system of governance – not unlike many of the regimes in the Arab world today – whereby a minority white population subjugated and enslaved the overwhelmingly black population. It was ideologically driven and was obsessed with racial superiority. The superior whites could not mingle with or even sit on a bench with the inferior black peoples. Even the education system was “dumbed down” for black people because they were deemed mentally inferior and unable to cope with the higher levels of learning that whites could embrace.

The towns and cities were “white by night” as all “blacks” – as they were called – had to be removed to their shanty towns, which served as cheap labour ghettos for the nation. The black people could not vote, own property or even move freely inside their own country.

Various instruments of state were used to ruthlessly apply the system of total and complete segregation and these included the police, the military and the judiciary system. In short, it was Aryanism in a new form!

There is absolutely nothing equivalent to this in the dispute that rages between the Palestinians and Israel today. Within Israel itself, Arabs and Jews share the same shopping malls, benches, hospitals, theatres and, in many cases, suburbs. The educational institutions do not have a deliberately “dumbed down” Arab curriculum and the privilege of voting is given to all. The Israeli Knesset has Arab members of parliament, and Jews, Arabs and Palestinians often work together at construction sites, businesses, hotels and elsewhere. Most important of all is the fact that Israel is a democratic state. Though not a perfect one, it does have democratic institutions and it is definitely not governed by a totalitarian minority!

The state of Israel enjoys a Jewish majority. It is democracy which must answer to its citizens and thus has demonstrated a willingness to make painful concessions in order to secure a future of peace with its neighbours. In all cases, it alone paid the real price by giving up land. It even withdrew from Gaza to demonstrate its sincerity in seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict with the Palestinians. The trauma that this withdrawal brought to the people of Gaza and to Israel was played out for the entire world to see through the international media. Yet it was not good enough! So, the result was the, “same old, same old”. That is, within a short span of time thousands of missiles, fired from the vacated territory, rained down on Israeli civilians in the western Negev. The world said and did very little, except to call Israel an “apartheid state”!

Over the years, and even in response to Israel’s most generous peace overtures during the Oslo era, the Palestinians have opted for violence. This they called an “intifada.” Wave upon wave of suicide bombers attacked Israel from the porous boundaries surrounding the West Bank. Men, women and children were indiscriminately murdered in buses, restaurants, hotels and shopping malls. To protect herself from these murderous infiltrations, Israel built a security barrier, which in some of the more vulnerable built-up areas consisted of a wall. It was not built to segregate people or discriminate against them, but to protect its own citizens from attack. In this connection, the security fence has been highly successful though even Israelis admit it is regrettable. But what would any other self-respecting, democratic state do? Nevertheless, Israel’s detractors love to deride the “Apartheid Wall” to further their accusation.

The Palestinians have suffered and still do but to place the blame entirely at Israel’s door is folly. Their failed and corrupt leadership, missed opportunities, and willingness to support violence and terror are also central causes of their suffering. Israel is no Apartheid state. She is a democratic state living under the constant threat of annihilation and thus seeking to balance her need to find a lasting peace with her neighbours with that of her security. Her regional experience has taught Israel that her security and very existence is the number one issue. After all, in all the so-called peace plans presented for the region, she is expected to do all the giving with only verbal guarantees of security given by her interlocutors. These have never amounted to much!

The truth is the Apartheid accusation is just another smokescreen in the war against Israel! I should know because I grew up in the dark Apartheid era of South Africa and stood against it to my peril.

Read Malcolm’s entire blog.