In a column that's largely devoted to sharing stories of Palestinian suffering, Robert Novak writes:
Jimmy Carter raised hackles by titling his book about the Palestinian question "Peace Not Apartheid." But Palestinians allege this is worse than the former South African racial separation. Nearing the 40th anniversary of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, the territory has been so fragmented that a genuine Palestinian state and a "two-state solution" seem increasingly difficult.
Well, first, let me say that calling Apartheid "racial separation" is just about the cruellest euphemism I can imagine anybody using. But the point I want to raise is different.
The Apartheid comparison is bandied about all the time, and for what it's worth, I don't think it's a very useful one. Plenty distinguishes these crises, including the separation laws and the black-to white and Palestinian-to-Israeli population ratios. And that's just to name two. At the same time, however, there are some noteworthy similarities--mortality rates, poverty rates--though even these are difficult to establish because the real South African numbers will probably never be known. I'll add that people like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela have highlighted the Palestine problem probably because, to their eyes, the situation there is in some ways reminiscent of the conditions they suffered in South Africa.
But when there are in fact plenty of differences, and when so many people--rightly or wrongly--bristle at the analogy on moral grounds, then it probably does little good to insist upon the comparison rather than to point out that Palestinians--yes, like South African blacks, but also like West African blacks and North Koreans and Kurds and Afghans--suffer more than humans should be allowed to suffer. The point of the analogy is, I think, to get the world to confront the problems in the territories in the same way the world confronted the problems in South Africa. It's a worthy goal. But the strategy is--at least in the United States and perhaps elsewhere--possibly counter productive. And it belies the idea that misery so abject is worth doing something about anyhow.
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