Back from a long hiatus, been busy with other blogging projects and, well, Real Life (TM). This caught my eye and I thought I would post it here.
Independent: Israel is new South Africa as boycott calls increase
Many people have accused the BDS campaign of being a cover for Jew-hatred. For some anti-semites, I suppose it is. It's hard to campaign against Israeli government policy and not have a few anti-semite hangers-on hitch their wagons to the much larger movement. As I've written many, many, many, many, many, times before, however, Israel's treatment of Arabs has been analogous to apartheid South Africa's treatment of blacks in its essential characteristics - a settler population enjoys rights and privileges which come at the expense of the native population, who are subject to controls on their freedom of movement, their ability to seek employment, and are deprived of civil rights as a matter of law. Oh, and they get jailed and shot too.
It's a government policy that maintains a standing army of American, Canadian, and European public relations professionals to defend it (something that Israel's Arab neighbours, though hardly bastions of human rights, don't have).
So long as there is a large coterie of powerful people who believe that the apartheid practiced by the Israeli government is morally defensible, whatever the reason, BDS will deserve the support of all people who believe in equality regardless of ethnicity. If you'd like to get involved, I highly recommend checking out Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
