Friday's cartoon

For March-April 2017, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is running its annual Apartheid week around the world. For the week of March 6-12, BDS devotees are holding Apartheid Week activities in Europe, North America and Africa (next week, there'll be activities in 'Palestine'). 

The point of BDS is to demonize Israel as an 'Apartheid' State. But Israel is not Apartheid.

Apartheid is a national state-run policy that discriminates against people according to race. According to the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, race is broadly defined. It includes discrimination against Jews (David Keane, "Elements of the Definition of Apartheid: Racial Groups under International Law", badil, issue no. 47, autumn 2011). In fact, this Convention came to be partly because of an extended episode of anti-Semitic incidents that took place in the winter of 1959-1960 (ibid).  

According to this Convention, racial discrimination includes "distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin" ("the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination", ohchr, January 4, 1969). Exclusion based on religion is also included. One of the most basic elements of Apartheid--and perhaps its first discriminatory law--was the stipulation that non-whites were to be excluded from the voting booth: they weren't allowed to vote. 

The victim group could not hold any seats in the national Parliament. The victim group had no representation in that Parliament.

Israel does not exclude Israeli Arabs from voting. Israeli Arabs not only have the right to vote in Israel's elections, they have their own political parties.

Israeli Arabs are fully 'franchised'. Their political parties control something like 13 percent of Israel's Parliament, the Knesset.

By contrast, Jews in Arab countries which are not already Judenrein (Jew-free) cannot for the most part vote. They cannot for the most part hold any seats in an Arab Parliament.

On the basis of this alone, Arab countries are Apartheid states. But virtually no human rights group accuses any Arab state of Apartheid; yet most accuse Israel of being Apartheid. 

With Apartheid Week spreading its message of Jew-hate, today's cartoon turns to Apartheid. This cartoon takes a look at an Israeli Arab MK, Haneen Zoabi. She is rabidly anti-Israel. She is bitterly anti-Israel. Although she can run for and hold national office (as a member of the Knesset), she still calls Israel names:


  

from; arutzsheva, no date

Haneen Zoabi is lucky she lives in Israel. If she had the right to serve in an Arab Parliament and spewed this kind of hate against her country, she wouldn't live as peacefully as she does in Israel. She takes great pleasure spitting at the Jewish Israel.

This cartoon is not funny. It just makes a point.