Goldstone says no apartheid in Israel www.jonathanginsburg.info

t may be a Pyrrhic victory, but it is a small victory for Israel nonetheless.

Writing in the New York Times, Judge Richard Goldstone, principal author of the hugely damaging "Goldstone Report" that investigated Israel's conduct during its 2009 war with Hamas, forcefully rejects the claim that Israel is an "apartheid" state.

This is an especially relevant topic for Goldstone, a judge who served in apartheid South Africa.

While anti-Israel groups regularly trot out the canard that Israel is an apartheid state, writes Goldstone, the claim is in fact a libel.

In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s population — vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.

In the West Bank, writes Goldstone, the situation is more complex, but still "there is no intent to maintain 'an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.' "

Arguing like someone who has finally come to his senses, Goldstone further states that the so-called "apartheid wall" that Israel has erected to separate Israel from Palestinian communities in the West Bank is nothing of the sort. Indeed, as Israel and pro-Israel supporters have long argued, the wall's only intent is to prevent Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel and carrying out their murderous attacks.

Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an “apartheid wall” and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While such images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it is disingenuous to use them to distort the reality. The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks; while it has inflicted great hardship in places, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the state in many cases to reroute it to minimize unreasonable hardship. Road restrictions get more intrusive after violent attacks and are ameliorated when the threat is reduced.

The Goldstone report, which found Israel guilt of "war crimes" and was roundly condemned by legal scholars worldwide, was nonetheless a libel against the Jewish state akin to the United Nations' 1975 "Zionism is racism" resolution. Judge Goldstone's comments are of course welcomed, but he will have to do more than write one column defending the Jewish state to rehabilitate his reputation among Israel supporters who rightly viewed his report as a betrayal.