One-dimensional view

When criticising a country and its policies one should always try to be comparative and contextual, to better understand the issue. To his credit, Dr Firoz Osman has done exactly that. He was comparing apartheid in Israel to that in pre-democratic SA.

He will surely, therefore, indulge and allow a similar technique before I try to debunk his assertion of apartheid in Israel.

Let’s take most of the Arab world and examine the discrimination (read apartheid) in Syria, as well as Lebanon, where the good doctor should know just how the Palestinians are enduring the kind of apartheid that hardly existed here in our country. In Saudi Arabia, there are roads that Christians are prohibited from using, as well as women being prohibited from driving cars.

There are another 16 Muslim countries that bar Israeli Jews from entry.

The Baha’i people from Iran — once the largest such community in the world — have fled that country due to the discrimination, and worse, at the hands of those tolerant mullahs. Israel now hosts the international headquarters of the Baha’i faith in Haifa. Are they experiencing apartheid in their new home?

Given Osman’s one-dimensional view, surely he knows that President Mahmoud Abbas has stated officially that no Jew will be allowed to live in Palestine. The official Hamas charter states “there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad”. Here we have apartheid taken to new heights.

Does Osman believe that “non-Zionists” living in Israel, as well as the occupied territories, would change places and move to Syria, Lebanon or a host of other Arab countries where even their very own Arab brothers shut their doors on refugees fleeing the killing fields of Yemen and Syria?