Israel Apartheid Week is upon us and in its wake new experts on the Israel-Palestine question are creeping out of the woodwork on a daily basis, unschooled, uninformed and quite ignorant. One such new arrival on the scene is Solly Mapaila. His article: "Israel's ‘South Africa' moment is here" is replete with gross distortions of the truth and blatant lies.
Mapaila has the audacity to suggest that somewhere on the Israeli statute books, reminiscent of Apartheid South Africa, there exist hideous, evil laws like the Group Areas Act, the Mixed Marriages Law, Pass Laws and Bantu Education. But he does not actually list such laws. He cannot. He simply cannot name those that do not exist. It is for this reason that he cites the South African laws.
Laws that he knows will evoke emotions of hatred and repulsion. And it is because these laws do not exist that Arabs and Jews can and do swim on the same beaches, can and do attend the same hospitals, can and do vote in the same elections for the same government (no tri-cameral parliament), can and do, should they so wish, attend the same schools. And, by the way, Mr. Mapaila, there is no law prohibiting a Jew from marrying a non-Jew, any non-Jew - Christian, Moslem, Bahai, black or white, Indian or Chinese. Neither is there a law that dictates to what race or religion one's neighbours may belong.
Mockingly Mapaila continually alludes to Israel's ‘security' and seems to suggest that this is but an excuse, a fabrication of the minds of the Israeli people. I envy your good fortune, Mr. Mapaila, that as a non-Jew, you have never had to consider such security questions. I envy you because there is no country in the world that calls for your annihilation and for that of your fellow-citizens. I envy you that none of your neighbours have as part of their charter your destruction and the destruction of all your people, wherever they may live in the world.
I envy you that your children may ride a bus or eat in a pizzeria without fear of being blown to smithereens. And incidentally, Mr. Mapaila, ethnicity does not determine which roads you use in the West Bank but rather Israeli citizenship. Any Israeli, Jew or Arab, black or white is permitted to drive on certain roads.
These roads are closed only to the Palestinians living on the West Bank, and yes, Mr. Mapaila, it is for security reasons. Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, have in the past been repeatedly shot at by Palestinian terrorists, with the intention of killing as many of them as possible. Hence the Israeli government built new roads, safe roads for her citizens. Is it not a government's duty to protect her citizens?
Among his sweeping, unsubstantiated fabrications, Mapaila says that Israel ‘even executes citizens.' Come now, Mr. Mapaila, have you really not kept abreast of what has taken place in Israel since the start of the latest peace negotiations? Are you not aware that as a gesture of goodwill and to show a desire for peace Israel will soon have released some 104 prisoners, all who have been found guilty of murdering her citizens in the most dastardly and brutal manner?
Do you not realize that if Israel had the death penalty, or as you put it ‘simply executed her citizens' such murderers would long have been dead and not there to be released?
Israel is a vibrant democracy and Jews throughout the world are raised on a diet of debate and discussion. We welcome debate, even debate on the Israel-Palestine question. What we do not welcome, Mr. Mapaila, are lies, nefarious lies that do nothing but feed hatred and ferment violence. Such mendacity will never create peace, but rest assured, nor will it ever elicit the downfall of Israel, so desired by you and your cohorts from the BDS.
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