Calling Israel an apartheid state demeans the SA victims of past racial oppression

FALSE facts are being spread widely to promote hatred and propaganda, particularly by certain politicians and lobbyists. It’s the function of the mainstream media to counter them.

An example is the letter “If you live in a glass house…” (Cape Argus, July 26) by Naushad Omar.

First, logically, factually, legally and historically, in no way is Israel an apartheid state. No one who has lived through apartheid in South Africa and has spent any time in Israel could consider the two to be the same. The comparison demeans the conditions under which the majority population here lived during the apartheid regime.

The two-word combination was deliberately spread at the 2001 Durban racism conference in order to delegitimise Israel and has now become common parlance – remember Joseph Goebbels: “if you tell a lie often enough, people will come to believe it”.

Secondly, Israel is not a post-Holocaust project to resettle Jews on top of the rubble of blown-up Palestinian towns.

Omar probably does not know that the rubble was the result of bitterly fought battles between the newly declared State of Israel and the well-armed forces of four Arab countries. Furthermore, there has never been a time in the past 2000 years that there have not been Jews living in Israel, the number being dependent on the degree of persecution and massacres they endured.

As for post-Holocaust guilt, there was little world concern for the post-Holocaust Jews living in camps after the war, and an analysis of the UN votes for Israel’s independence clearly shows that no country voted because of the Holocaust, but for their own strategic interests. For example, the USSR wanted a weak Middle East, France wanted to spite Britain, a third wanted a market for its rubber.

When houses in Cape Town built without approval are slated for demolition, it does not hit the international press.

There are different standards for Israel. The houses that were demolished, which upsets Omar, were put up without permission and an order to halt construction work was issued in 2012.

After a long court battle, the court ordered the demolition to go ahead, but reduced the number of houses to be demolished.

Admittedly, few people would allow facts to get in the way of a good story, particularly when the story advances a cause they believe in, but it is the duty of the press to ensure that the reading public are exposed to the truth.