Israel Matzav: Let's get aggressive in answering the 'apartheid' charge

Let's get aggressive in answering the 'apartheid' charge

Two JPost columns suggest that Israel should be more aggressive in answering charges of 'apartheid' that are being made against it overseas. The apartheid charge is an invention of those strange bedfellows - the radical Left and the Islamists. Make no mistake about it, the goal is to cause the disappearance of the Jewish state.

Malcolm Hedding, who grew up in South Africa, explains how the apartheid state operated and why Israel is nothing like it. He suggests that if there are apartheid states in the region today, they are Arab states.

Michael Freund goes a step further and suggests that Israel ought to be answering the apartheid charge by launching Arab Apartheid Week on college campuses.

Well, I say the time has come to stop playing defense and to bring the offense out onto the field. We need to turn the tables and fight back against our opponents by taking the struggle toward their end-zone.

A good place to be start would be to organize an annual “Arab Apartheid Week,” which would highlight the decrepit state of human and political rights throughout the Arab world.

There is a solid case to be made that the Arab states remain the last great outpost of despotism and tyranny on earth, and people need to be reminded as much. Indeed, the Arab world today is a living encyclopedia of outmoded forms of government, from sultanates such as Oman and emirates such as Qatar, to thuggish dictatorships such as Syria and dynastic monarchies along the lines of Jordan. It may be a political scientist’s dream, but it is a nightmare for the hundreds of millions of Arabs chafing under oppression and tyranny.

Basic and fundamental freedoms such as personal autonomy and individual rights are routinely trampled upon, and ethnic and religious minority groups suffer extreme discrimination and intolerance. Just ask Coptic Christians in Egypt, Baha’is in Iran or Shi’ites in Saudi Arabia for starters.

This was borne out most recently by a report issued by Freedom House, the independent Washington-based group that advocates for freedom worldwide. Its annual survey, “Freedom in the World 2010,” would make for eye-opening reading for all those who cry “apartheid” whenever they see a flag with a Star of David.

Consider the following findings:

Of the 18 countries in the Middle East that Freedom House surveyed, only one is considered to be “free.”

And just who might that be? Yep, you guessed it: Israel.

Not a single Arab country – not one! – did Freedom House consider “free.” Three Arab states – Morocco, Lebanon and Kuwait – were labeled “partly free,” while 13 other Arab states as well as Iran merited the dubious distinction of being branded as “not free.”

In effect, then, this means that of the approximately 370 million human beings currently residing in the Middle East, only 2 percent enjoy true freedom – namely those who live in the Jewish state.

So much for “Israeli apartheid.”

Okay, time to start planning for next year. Where do we start?

Israel Matzav: Let's get aggressive in answering the 'apartheid' charge