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Amnesty International Tries to Put Israel on Trial

(Wall Street Journal) Elliot Kaufman - Amnesty asserts that it doesn't seek to argue that any element of Israeli apartheid is "the same or analogous to the system of segregation, oppression and domination as perpetrated in South Africa." Not even analogous? Then why use the word "apartheid" at all? The report leads off by rehashing a long-running dispute over a few properties in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Jordan seized the land from Jewish owners in 1948, when it occupied East Jerusalem and expelled every Jew. Israeli courts have offered a compromise whereby these Palestinians could avoid eviction and stay as tenants, with protected status, while paying a low rent to the Jewish owners. Under pressure from Ramallah, the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah rejected the compromise. Apparently, this is leading evidence of apartheid. If "apartheid" isn't being used to convey its well-known meaning, maybe the purpose is to achieve its well-known effect. Apartheid is one of the capital crimes of the international system. Its practitioner was boycotted, made into a pariah and fought until it dismantled the system. Boycott, marginalization and even violent resistance follow from the apartheid label. By invoking apartheid to single out Israel as an enemy of mankind, Amnesty implicitly rejects Israel's right to exist and authorizes violent resistance to destroy it. In this strange game, the only winning move is not to play. An accusation that isn't the product of disinterested reason won't be refuted by recourse to it, and to defend oneself is to acknowledge the legitimacy of the court. The beauty of Zionism is that Jews can finally have their own court and no longer be made to stand before the biased judges of centuries past, protesting their innocence of imagined crimes when all parties know a guilty verdict is assured in advance.
2022-02-07 00:00:00
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