A – “Israel is an ‘Apartheid’ State”
The “apartheid” accusation is raised in multiple contexts.
[1] “Israel’s ‘Apartheid’ Wall”
*** The 2/20/04 Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed page featured a pair of op-eds. One called it “Israel’s antiterrorist security fence,” the other, topped by “THE WALL” in block letters, was sub-headlined “It Exists Not For Security But For Apartheid,” and called led off by calling it “the wall Israel is building around Palestinian cities and villages.”
This is a vicious misrepresentation. It is a fence, not a wall, for almost all of its length, and does not “surround” Palestinian Arab communities. The terrorism attacks it was meant to prevent, and did in large measure prevent, were not fanciful but real. Israeli Arabs are citizens of Israel and participate along with Israeli Jews, including in leadership roles, in private and public life.
[2] “Jews as Nazis” Cartoons
*** On July 31, 2003, the Inquirer published an editorial cartoon by its in-house illustrator, Tony Auth. It portrayed huddled groups of Palestinian Arabs compartmentalized within the sections of the six-pointed Star of David, a universally-recognized symbol of the Jewish people that appears on Israel’s flag. This cartoon inaccurately depicting Israel’s linear separation fence as six closed triangles imprisoning groups of Palestinian Arabs evoked memories of Nazi propagandists’ misuse of this Jewish symbol, including similarly to the Inquirer’s 7/31/03 cartoon. The Greater Philadelphia District of the Zionist Organization of America held a formal press conference denouncing the Inquirer’s cartoon, and an appeal was made to the Society of Professional Journalists, which declined to pursue it.
Sinister misuse of the “Mogen David” symbol of the Jewish people in political cartoons falsely depicting Israeli treatment of Arabs as comparable to how Jew-exterminating Nazis had maltreated Europe’s Jews is “widespread.” Examples are included in Tal, Israel in Medialand (rev. ed., 1989, pp. 44-47, 64, 70). One example in Tal’s 1989 book is a Miami News cartoon, labeled “The Palestinians,” showing them tightly packed in the center section of a barbed-wire Mogen David.
[3] Separate Bus Lines as “Apartheid”
Another way the media treats Israel unfairly regarding “apartheid” claims is by omitting explanatory context from reports it carries of Arabs and left-wing Jews accusing Israel of “apartheid” acts.
*** A 5/21/15 Washington Post news article reported that Israel immediately withdrew a plan for separate bus lines for Arabs and Jews in a Judea-Samaria area “after critics likened the program to apartheid.” The article quoted “a lawmaker from the left-wing Meretz party” who “said: ‘Racist segregation has another name: apartheid.’”
But as with Israel’s anti-terrorist security fence, which critics blast as an “apartheid wall,” the driving force for the short-lived separate bus lines plan was not a racist aim to segregate Arabs from Jews. In this specific instance, the reality was stated by a commentator on 5/22 /1