FW de Klerk: "It is unfair to call Israel an Apartheid state"

Haifa University conferred its highest distinction on a number of dignitaries this year, including former South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk.

The honorary degree was awarded in recognition of Mr FW de Klerk's leadership which has brought about the end of the policy of racial segregation in South Africa; for his actions to promote constitutionalism and a shared life; and for his promotion of pluralism and equality without prejudice.

The ceremony took place today, Tuesday 27th May, in Haifa.

He was then interviewed on Israel's Channel 2 News by Udi Segal. I have translated the Hebrew in the video for you to understand and have also provided a transcript of the video below:





Newscaster:
John Kerry, threw the word Apartheid into the Middle East debate a few weeks ago, which is what the radical Left in Israel also claims, but the person who knows the word Apartheid very well, the person who ended this racist regime as the President of South Africa, FW De Klerk, he is now the one who said today in a special interview with Udi Segal that this comparison is unnecessary and not fair.

On the other hand he says to learn from his experience to initiate this and to walk in the enemies shoes in order to try solve the conflict. Tonight he is receiving his honorary doctorate from the Haifa University. Here are his words:

Udi Segal:
This man who made history when he brought down the Apartheid regime with Nelson Mandela, former South African president FW De Klerk, rejects the international comparisons and he states, as someone with experience, that Israel is not an Apartheid state, and as opposed to Kerry's comment, Israel is not on the way there.

FW de Klerk:
You have closed borders but America has closed borders, they dont allow every Mexican who wants to come in come in. You have Palestinians living in Israel with full political rights represented in the Knesset. You dont have discriminatory laws against them that they may not swim on certain beaches or anything like that. I think its unfair to call Israel an Apartheid state. If Kerry did so I think he made a mistake.

Udi Segal:
To be fair, Kerry said that Israel can be an Apartheid state if it will not go to the 2-state solution. Do you think it can be an Apartheid state?

FW de Klerk:
The test will be, does everybody living then in such a unitary state, will everybody have full political rights? Will everybody enjoy their full human rights? If they will, it's not an Apartheid state.

Udi Segal:
In other words this is not the situation and Israel might only get to this state in the case where 1 state has 2 Nationalities.
De Klerk claims that the situation is different between the 2 states (IL & SA), that the idea of separation couldn't have worked in South Africa but could be the most moral solution in Israel, however it may disappear.

FW de Klerk:
In the case of South Africa, we became economically totally integrated and it no longer made sense. We became an economic omelette and once you make an omelette out of eggs you can never separate the yellow and the white again. So no, in our case, the concept of separateness failed. Im not saying its the right solution for Israel but there will come in Israel a turning point where if the main obstacles at the moment which exist through a successful 2 state solution are not remove, the 2 state will become impossible. So, as an outsider I would say, believing that a 2 state solution might be the best one, you will have to move fast, see the window of opportunity, jump through it, it might close.

Udi Segal:
This evening De Klerk received the honorary doctorate from the Haifa University.
It's his 6th visit to Israel. He knows and loves Israel and he is careful not to give advice but give hints as to what the way is to get out of this deadlocks of the negotiations. In short, Netanyahu and Abu Mazzen are doing the opposite of this.

Its called trust.

FW de Klerk:
When we had deadlocks, our biggest success was when Mandela put himself in my position and went out of his way to understand my position and I at the same time put myself in Mandela's position and went out of my way to accommodate his core concerns and to break a deadlock you need initiatives. We sat down and said lets draw a list, what do we agree upon? ,and the list was longer than we expected and then slowly but surely we worked first on the easier things, where it was more easy through a give or take process to find each other and we reserved the most difficult ones for later and in the end we forced ourselves, we weren't forced by outside forces, we forced ourselves to say we have made such big progress, we must now resolve these difficult points.

Here is a short version with only his English comments

FW De Klerk: "It is unfair to call Israel an Apartheid state" http://t.co/KugrLhI9ec

— Israel Muse (@israelmuse) May 27, 2014

Arab Apartheid In The Middle East

This is one of the best short documentaries I have seen in a long time about Arab Apartheid against the Palestinians in Lebanon - this information and footage is crucial for our fight against the people who falsely claim Israel as an Apartheid state and ignore the real Apartheid occurring right on our borders... share this and make it viral!

Post it on every "Israeli Apartheid" site you can think of...

(VIDEO) An Arab Israeli Denies Israel Being An Apartheid State

This video features Arab-Israeli StandWithUs volunteer Ranya.

StandWithUs helps students fight against Israel Apartheid week.



(h/t: Israellycool)

(NEWS) Strauss Removes Support For IDF From English Website

"After boycott threats from the BDS movement in the US, Israel's top food, beverage company removes support for Golani's reconnaissance platoon.

The Strauss Group, one of the country’s foremost food and beverage companies, has apparently bowed to boycott threats by anti-Israel activists and removed endorsements of the IDF from its English website.

Activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Philadelphia recently initiated a boycott campaign against Sabra and Tribe humous products, purportedly in protest of the company’s public support for the Israeli military."







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(BLOG) Obama’s Jerusalem Apartheid

"By Daniel Greenfield: When Obama attacked Israel for building housing on Jewish owned land in Jerusalem, he was doing more than just pandering to his Muslim hosts with an obligatory dose of Israel bashing. He was diving once again into the ugly pool of bigotry, that first surfaced when he used Joe Biden as a proxy to launch a hate campaign against Israel over the same issue back in March.

And what it comes down to is Apartheid. Plain and simple.



Obama does not object to Arab Muslims living in Jerusalem. He objects only to Jews living in Jerusalem. The issue is not about 'Israelis', as the media likes to present it, because Jerusalem Arabs and Jews are all citizens of Israel. What distinguishes them is race and religion.

The media and the administration only attack the municipal authorities of Jerusalem and the Israeli government for providing housing for its citizens—when those citizens happen to be Jewish. If they are Arab and Muslim, then there’s no problem. If they’re Jewish on the other hand, then the alarm bells go off and the politicians and the press denounce them as enemies of peace. How does one describe that as other than 'Apartheid'? What else is it, other than the belief that one group of people should be segregated by race and religion. Forbidden from living in places that are deemed to be the sole property of their Muslim conquerors.

Mohammed’s last act was to ethnically cleanse Jews and Christians from lands under his control. That is why you will find a shortage of synagogues and churches in Mecca and Medina. Today there are hardly any Jews left in territories under Muslim rule, and the number of Christians is dwindling year by year. In 1948, Jordanian forces invaded and ethnically cleansed all Jews from the parts of Jerusalem under their control. In 1967, Israel reclaimed the entire city, but now Obama and his media backers would like to turn the clock back to 1948.

According to Obama and the media, Muslims have a right to build a mosque near Ground Zero, but Jews don’t have the right to live in apartments in their own city. How do you reconcile the two? Easy. Apartheid. Muslims can do anything they want, anywhere they want. If Muslims are offended by the odor of pork from a nearby restaurant, then the restaurant has to comply. If Muslims want exclusive use of municipal swimming pools, then they get them. If Muslims don’t want a city that they conquered and ethnically cleansed to be filled with 'dirty Jews', then Obama insists that they should get what they want.

And if they don’t, it’s an obstacle to peace. 'Peace' being the condition in which Muslims finally stop blowing people up in the name of Allah. Anything that might serve as a justification for them to keep blowing people up, is an 'obstacle to peace'.

But this is not peace. It’s bloody blackmail. It’s an open invitation for Muslims to impose their hateful and bigoted demands on the rest of the world. And where exactly does it end? When the Jordanian conquered half of Jerusalem is as ethnically cleansed of Jews, as the villages and towns of Hamas ruled Gaza. And where next? Muslim persecution of minorities, including Jews, has gone on for over a thousand years. Surrendering to it will not bring 'peace', only temporary hudnas, truces under which Muslims will agree to temporarily tolerate the Jews, before something makes them fly off the handle in a murderous rage again.

And among people who seriously believe that Israel laces chewing gum with aphrodisiacs, that it releases snakes and 'super-rats' to terrorize them, or trains migrating eagles to spy on them, drops poisoned candies in front of schools or uses strippers in riot control—just about any imaginary thing will set them off. And the victims will be held the blame.

Because there’s no point in pandering to the victims. You always pander to the murderers. They’re the ones with the real power. Even when they’re on the wrong side of a technological and military disparity, their willingness to commit senseless acts of violence puts them in the driver’s seat. The willingness to kill means power. Particularly when employed against those who are unwilling to kill.



In a nutshell, that is what Obama’s trip is really about. Why are we so desperate to improve relations with the Muslim world? For all the nonsense about Islam being a 'Religion of Peace', or rather the 'Religion of Submit and We’ll Stop Killing You'... it all comes down to a plea for mercy. Here, we’ll give you a bunch of scholarships, some trade deals, foreign aid and praise for your insane book consisting of the 7th century homicidal fantasies of a megalomaniac—and in return, maybe you’ll stop killing us. Or at least kill us less.

In 1957, Golda Meir spoke at the National Press Club and opined that, 'Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.' But such a form of love contradicts the expressed will of the Koran, that Muslims put Jihad above their own families. As long as Muslims continue to follow the Koran, there can be no peace. Because the need to subjugate non-Muslims will always be important than their own welfare and prosperity. That is the fullest measure of Islam.

But the lies continue. Newspaper stories now routinely describe Jerusalem as a 'settlement', a thoroughly Orwellian appellation for one of the oldest cities in the world. To describe the Har Homa neighborhood in Jerusalem as a settlement, is akin to calling the Bronx a settlement.

The Administration predictably cloaks its bigotry in talk of 'creating facts on the ground', but when Arab Muslims occupy and demolish Jewish holy sites, there is no concern about creating facts on the ground. When Western leftists, from groups such as Rabbis for Human Rights, arrive to help Arab Muslims terrorize Jewish farmers in order to drive them off their land, again nothing to be seen here. When the Qatari government, which funds Hamas and Al Qaeda, underwrites an entire new city for Arab Muslims—the same international community which goes into a slavering fit over an Israeli house, applauds the project.

The term 'Settlements' has now become completely meaningless, because it is being applied to housing in one of the oldest cities in the world. There can be no reasonable standard under which housing in Jerusalem is a settlement, and housing in Tel Aviv is not. After all Jerusalem is an ancient city whose very name comes from Hebrew. Tel Aviv is a fairly modern city. But in a twist of Orwellian logic, 'settlement' is now a generic term for any place that Jews aren’t supposed to be living. It has become a more genteel way to say 'ethnic cleansing', to confine Jewish Israelis to a new Pale of Settlement, under a new Czar, in their own land.

What does one call a situation in which one race is permitted to build houses, but another is not? What else but Apartheid. Obama and the EU are not making this distinction based on citizenship. They are making it based on race and religion. While accusing Israel of doing the same.

We exist now in a land beyond history. A state of being adrift from fact and reason, governed not by historical events or realities, but hate and fear. By the Muslim hatred of the Jews. And civilization’s fear of Islam. In the face of that hate and fear, words have lost their meanings and laws have lost their force. There is only the panicked imperative to appease the murderers of one’s own country, with the land and freedom of others. To satiate the crocodile with another’s flesh.

This is not about peace. It is not about fair negotiations. It is not about being an equal partner. It is about the same thing as in the UK or Australia or Canada or India. It is about giving Muslims what they want, at the expense of non-Muslims in the hopes of preventing Muslim violence. It’s about Apartheid." (source)

(NEWS) South African Jews Use Web To Fight Apartheid Comparisons

"For Jews who lived through apartheid, claims that Israel is an apartheid state even more upsetting.

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies has recently gone online with its project www.letstalkisrael.com, a website intended to explicitly debunk claims that Israel is an apartheid state, an allegation frequently made by Israel’s detractors.

At a briefing session on South African Jewry Thursday at the World Jewish Congress’s New York office, South African Jewish Board of Deputies national director Wendy Kahn underscored the importance of the www.letstalkisrael.com project, calling the apartheid-Israel analogy a deeply flawed one, particularly for those who lived through apartheid."

(VIDEO) Is Israel An Apartheid State?

It's a claim that's been made for years, by Israel's critics and enemies. "Israel is an apartheid state". That is, Israel treats Palestinians, the way black South Africans were treated in the days of apartheid. But is the claim true? Are Arabs in Israel really treated as second-class citizens? Is Israel a racist nation? We hope you'll watch this video and judge for yourself.

Read more @ Maoz Israel

(BLOG) Which Arabs?

"By Daniel Lewis: In 'Stop building settlements' (Forum, April 7) Luke Lavin makes a vague reference to laws that prohibit 'any Arab' from building in parts of Israel. Lavin fails to distinguish between Arab citizens of Israel, all of whom have full rights (and indeed more than in any Arab country), versus non-Israeli Arabs (such as Palestinians), who aren’t citizens and have no fewer building rights than any other non-citizen.

It’s quite simple. Yet in his predictable rush to slur Israel, Lavin ignores that Jews are not even permitted to enter Saudi Arabia, nor is there even a single Jew in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing and apartheid, anybody?

If Lavin really wants to discuss 'apartheid' with any credibility, he should start by looking at the Arab-Muslim states that have made it their law and daily practice to the point where there are Muslim-only roads, and Christians, Mormons and especially Jews are treated as lower classes (if they are even permitted to practice their religion freely).

It is sad that Lavin is more worried about Israeli bureaucrats than he is about despotic Arab governments that would imprison or torture someone for being the 'wrong' religion." (source)

(BLOG) Palestinian Arab "Apartheid" Against - Palestinian Arabs

"Depending upon whose estimate you read, there are some twenty or thirty thousand “refugees” in the Balata refugee camp outside of Nablus. Balata is simultaneously the most populous and smallest of the Palestinian refugee camps — its growing population is confined to one square kilometer, making it one of the most densely populated and miserable places on the planet.

Any regime with an ounce of compassion would have shut Balata down and integrated its people into the surrounding community. Balata is a place without hope, a quagmire of despair, where the day-to-day misery of its inhabitants is partially ameliorated by Western charities and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), while inadvertently building a culture of dependence."

(BLOG) Ha'aretz Repeats 'Jewish-Only Apartheid Roads' Canard

"While former Meretz leader Yossi Sarid, now a columnist at Ha'aretz, is perfectly entitled to his opinions, neither his past nor present positions grant him any immunity when it comes to publishing falsehoods. And yet, in his column today, Sarid repeats the 'Jewish-only roads' falsehood propagated several times over the last few years by Ha'aretz. Weighing in on the recent opposition of Israeli theater professionals to performing in a new cultureal center in Ariel, a large settlement over the Green Line, Sarid writes:

The artists can't be dragged to Ariel in blunt contradiction of their political beliefs; they can't be driven on our Jewish-only apartheid roads.

In a certain respect, the former lawmaker is correct. The artists can't be driven on 'Jewish-only apartheid roads' . . . . because none exist. As first explained several years ago to Ha'aretz editors, there are no 'Jewish-only' roads (apartheid or otherwsie) in the West Bank, though there are a few roads prohibited to Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel's Arab citizens and, indeed, Israeli citizens of any religion or ethnicity, have just as much right to travel on those restricted roads as do Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs frequently use the bypass roads for business and to visit relatives."

(BLOG) Israel, Apartheid & The Minister Of Unintelligence

"Mr. Ronnie Kasrils is South Africa’s Intelligence Minister.

He has chosen to make many unintelligent remarks in an op-ed piece written by him for the Mail and Guardian on 18 May titled 'Israel 2007 : Worse Than Apartheid'.

Such remarks require rebuttal, especially as they have been uttered by a person of his prestige and stature.

Let me deal with some of these remarks that mouth so many similarly wild and unsubstantiated claims being uttered with growing frequency in the media by others under the guise of free speech."

(NEWS) Blogger Forced Out Of Anti-Israel Parliament Meeting

"A prominent pro-Israel blogger was forcibly removed from a Westminster meeting at which Israeli Arab Knesset members said the Jewish state 'is much worse than the apartheid regime in South Africa.'

Rich Millett described what happened at the event, chaired by Labour's Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, as 'shameful'. He expressed concern that future anti-Israel meetings 'will be by guest list only', meaning such statements will 'go unreported'.

Mr Millett, who has a Masters in Politics and Society in the Middle East and is a qualified solicitor, arrived at the House of Commons for a meeting organised by supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign."

(NEWS) Anti-Israel Group Recruits Activists In Australia

"An anti-Israel group in Australia is seeking new recruits to serve as foreign activists in supporting the Palestinian Authority's 'resistance' against Israel. 'Resistance' is a Palestinian buzz word for violent acts such as rock throwing.

According to a posting on the Australians for Palestine web site, the International Women's Peace Service is recruiting volunteers to 'support and witness' the alleged non-violent PA 'resistance against Israel's illegal occupation and apartheid practices.'"

(NEWS) Debunk Of Comparison Between Israel, Apartheid South Africa

"‘We wanted to provide the audience with the tools to tackle this false analogy.’

Over 200 concerned Israelis, many of them of South African origin, attended a panel on 'Combating Israel’s Delegitimization: Debunking the Apartheid Myth,' held Sunday evening at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem.

The event was organized by two South African olim, Ari Rudolph and Diane Morrison, as part of their year-long project for the Legacy Heritage Fellowship."



Here are 2 videos, not related to the article but related to the subject of Israel being regarded as an Apartheid state...

Is Israel An Apartheid State?


Dr. Bard: Myths And Facts 15 "Is Israel An Apartheid State?"

(NEWS) Professor Of Women's Studies Slams Islamic Gender Apartheid

"On Thursday July 15th, Dr. Phyllis Chesler who is both an Orthodox Jew and a feminist icon delivered a stirring address at the 2010 Aspen Counterpoint Summer Symposium. Sponsored by Americans for Peace and Tolerance, the all day conference was aptly entitled 'Conflict and Conscious.' Dr. Chesler could not personally attend the conference in Aspen, Colorado but was seen in real time transmission that was recorded in a Manhattan studio.

Phyllis Chesler is currently an express blogger with Pajamas Media and is an Professor Emerita of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York and is the best selling author of 'Women and Madness' (1972), 'The New Anti-Semitism' (2003) and 'The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom' (2005)"

(VIDEO) Dr. Bard: Myths And Facts 15 "Is Israel An Apartheid State?"

Dr. Mitchell Bard, executive director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, discusses Myths and Facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

(VIDEO) Is Israel An Apartheid State?

This short documentary examines the question whether Israel is in fact an Apartheid state as a number of critics have suggested.

My Opinion

You have to be delusional to try and compare Israel's situation to South Africa's former situation, there is no comparison...

I lived in Apartheid South Africa and I now live in Non-Apartheid Israel and I can tell you first hand that this is a pure lie... Come see for yourselves...

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