Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism – Benjamin Pogrund, Israeli journalist, admits that Israel is an Apartheid regime.
He writes, I grew up in South Africa, and vigorously refuted parallels with Israel. But in the Netanyahu era, the charge is becoming fact
In 1948, as a teenager in Cape Town, I followed the results of the 26 May election on a giant board on a newspaper building. The winner-takes-all electoral system produced distorted results: the Afrikaner Nationalist party, with its smaller partner, won 79 parliamentary seats against 74 for the United party and its smaller partner.
He added, in Israel, about 1,200 West Bank Palestinians are reported to be imprisoned without trial. The defence minister signs the orders for security reasons, to deal with terrorism. The army constantly raids West Bank towns, wreaking havoc and detaining more suspects. Tragedies continue.
Under the guise of fighting crime in the Arab community, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, wants a law to give the police the power to jail Israelis without charge or trial – a policy already practiced in the West Bank. He wants an expensive “national guard” under his control.
He continued, in Israel, I am now witnessing the apartheid with which I grew up. Israel is giving a gift to its enemies in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and its allies, especially in South Africa, where denial of Israel’s existence is intense among many black people, in trade unions and communist and Muslim circles. BDS activists will continue to make their claims, out of ignorance and/or malevolence, spreading lies about Israel. They have long distorted what is already bad into grotesqueness, but will now claim vindication. Israel is giving them truth.
Benjamin Pogrund was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, closed down because of its stand against apartheid. He has lived in Jerusalem since 1997 and was founder director of Yakar’s Center for Social Concern
