“Denying Antisemitism as a Human Rights Issue of our Time” [1]
From August 31 to September 8, 2001, more than 1,500 Non-governmental agencies (NGOs) met at the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. There they embraced a strategy for the total isolation of Israel through [BDS] boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, “cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel.” They also asked for the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes and promoting Israel as “an apartheid regime,” based on the South African model, according to NGO Monitor founder and president and Bar-Ilan University Professor Emeritus Gerald M. Steinberg. [2]
Israel was accused of committing “crimes against humanity,” “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “genocide” against the Palestinian Arabs. “Durban became the most potent symbol of organized hate against Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” Steinberg said. In their view, “Israel… is a modern extension of Western colonialism of the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s not just the issue of ‘occupied territories.’ The NGO community targets Israel per se as a Western implant in the Middle East. The Palestinians are not guilty of human rights violations because they’re victims by definition. That’s built-in to the NGO creed.” [3]
Tom Lantos, US Congressman from California, who served as US Delegate at the World Conference on Racism, said the strategy of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) was to “turn Israel into an international pariah, not unlike the way apartheid South Africa became the center of past UN world conferences. The first two global gatherings on racism in 1978 and 1983…focused on defeating apartheid in South Africa. If the OIC delegates could turn Israel into the new apartheid South Africa—the world’s sole racist regime—the broad agenda of the third WCAR [The World Conference Against Racism] could be overthrown in favor of bringing the world together to shun, isolate, and embargo the country. This came at a time when the world was riveted by almost daily images of both Palestinian suicide-bombing attacks on Israeli citizens and by retaliatory strikes by the Israeli military against the terrorists….Such a caricature of Israel as a racist state only helps to legitimize terrorist violence against innocent Israeli citizens.” [4]
At the NGO forum outside the conference center, organized to provide a venue for civil society groups, Palestinian Arabs took over the proceedings. Every day, they held anti-Israel and antisemitic rallies around the meetings, attracting thousands. “One flyer,” Lantos said, “…showed a photograph of Hitler and the question “What if I had won?” The answer: “There would be NO Israel…” At a press conference held by Jewish NGOs…an accredited NGO, the Arab Lawyers Union, distributed a booklet filled with anti-Semitic caricatures.” [5]
When former Irish President Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who served as secretary-general of the conference, was asked “to reject the twisted notion that the wrong done to the Jews in the Holocaust was equivalent to the pain suffered by the Palestinians in the Middle East,” she refused. Instead, she discussed “the historical wounds of anti-Semitism and of the Holocaust on the one hand, and…the accumulated wounds of displacement and military occupation on the other. Thus, instead of condemning the attempt to usurp the conference, she legitimized it,” Lantos said.[6]
Anti-Racism and Terror
The Durban Conference, “which ended only three days before September 11, revealed the intimate connections between anti-racism politics and a key platform in the terrorist agenda, namely, the delegitimation of Israel and the legitimation of terrorism against its citizens” observed Anne F. Bayefsky, director of the Touro College Institute on Human Rights. “The Durban phenomenon was repeated in the aftermath of September 11 as allegations of racism and displays of antisemitism abounded from terrorists, apologists of terrorism in the media, and at the 2001 UN General Assembly deliberations on terrorism. The linkage between racial hatred and terrorism is a phenomenon which democracies ignore at their peril. Durban uncovered racism as a real root cause of terrorism, a motivation which the terrorist seeks to camouflage by the accusation of racism itself.” [7]
Perhaps the long-term damage the conference has done Bayefsky explained is “to deny antisemitism as a human rights issue of our time.” [8]
Durban and BDS
Anthony Julius, a prominent British litigation lawyer specializing in media law and defamation, describes how this could affect Israelis and Jews. “What happens when people are boycotted?” he asks. “The ordinary courtesies of life are no longer extended to them. They are not acknowledged in the street; their goods are not bought; their services are not employed; invitations they hitherto could rely upon dry up; they find themselves isolated in company. The boycott is an act of violence, although of a paradoxical kind—one of recoil and exclusion rather than assault. The boycotted person is pushed away by the ‘general horror and common hate.’ It is a denial amongst other things, of the boycotted person’s freedom of expression …. To limit or deny self-expression is thus an attack at the root of what it is to be human …. Boycotting is thus an activity especially susceptible to hypocrisy. It implies moral judgments both on the boycotter and boycotted.” [9]
These NGOs continue to disseminate specious charges against Israel through their reports, press releases, and political lobbying campaign, which have formidable influence in the UN, the media, and the academy Steinberg opines. [10] Attempting to bring Israel before the International Criminal Court (ICC) is another example of this strategy as are Israel apartheid weeks on university campuses, and provoking confrontations on Jewish students and institutions. The danger these “systematic and systemic” assaults pose to the Jewish people’s right to self-determination under the guise of promoting peace, human rights, justice, international law and other “progressive values,” makes this an urgent national security issue for Israel argued the Reut Institute, an Israel think tank. [11]
The International Criminal Court (ICC)
Henry A. Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, was among the first to voice concern about the “unprecedented movement” that had “emerged to submit international politics to judicial procedures,” and knew this would affect Israel. Known as the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, this gave the International Criminal Court (ICC) “prosecutorial discretion without accountability.” There were a number of problems this precipitated. Definitions of the offenses were imprecise and very “susceptible to politicized application.” Any participating state could to initiate an investigation. And defendants were not permitted the same due process they would have been entitled to in the US. In “pushing the effort to extremes” he feared, you risked replacing “the tyranny of judges for that of governments; historically, the dictatorship of the virtuous has often led to inquisitions and even witch-hunts.”[12]
Kissinger correctly predicted this policy would enable the Palestinian Arabs and Israelis to bring their battles to the court. As long as national prosecutors had the discretion to determine what crimes are subject to universal jurisdiction and whom to prosecute, the possibility of arbitrariness is considerable. Yet supporters contend that states are responsible for starting wars and therefore cannot be trusted to administer justice. Kissinger questioned whether “an excessive reliance on universal jurisdiction may undermine the political will to sustain the humane norms of international behavior so necessary to temper the violent times in which we live.” [13]
What is Apartheid?
Apartheid is a legal system of segregation based on color, with a white majority in control of the government. Under apartheid, people of color could not vote, hold office, or travel freely in their own country explained the Rev. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe, a member of the South African Parliament, founder of the African Christian Democratic Party and chairman of the South African Israel Allies Caucus. Meshoe was shocked “that the free, diverse, democratic state of Israel practices apartheid.”
Having lived in South Africa during the years of apartheid, Meshoe, who is now 69, said: “Those who know what real apartheid is, as I do, know that there is nothing in Israel that looks like apartheid. Calling it such is an empty political statement that does not hold any truth. In Israel, you see people of different colors, backgrounds and religions interacting with each other every day. The BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] movement is a real pain. It is not a democratic movement but a movement of intimidation.” [14].
The danger, he added, is that such a “ridiculous accusation trivializes the word apartheid, minimizing and belittling the magnitude of the racism and suffering endured by South Africans of color.” This misuse mocks the “grievous injustice and threatens to undermine the true meaning of the term.” He views Israel as “a model of democracy, inclusion and pluralism that can be emulated by many nations, particularly in the Middle East.” [15]
His daughter Olga Meshoe Washington, executive director of the pro-Israel South African non-governmental organization DEISI (Defend, Embrace, Invest in, Support Israel), said, “The suffering of blacks in South Africa under its apartheid regime has become an antisemitic tool by which to delegitimize Israel.” The BDS movement in South Africa is a group of “bullies who are taking South Africa back to apartheid-era days. There’s no dialogue with them. They restrict freedom of movement, association, belief, and opinion. They use young people – especially young black people – as pawns for their own gain. They aren’t bettering Palestinian lives.” [16]
Richard J. Goldstone, a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court, who led the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2008-9, added that attacking Israel “is an unfair and inaccurate slander … calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations… In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute.” [17]
He remembered “all too well the cruelty of South Africa’s abhorrent apartheid system …where blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death if there was no black’ ambulance to rush them to a black hospital. ‘White’ hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives.” [18]
The late Bayard Rustin, a veteran African American civil rights leader extremely critical of South Africa feared that “the condemnation of Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, would obscure mankind’s rejection of racism and apartheid.” As director of Black Americans To Support Israel Committee (BASIC), formed by Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph in response to UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, “Zionism is Racism” passed November 10, 1975, Rustin said the organization supported the right of the Palestinian Arabs to “genuine self-determination, but not at the expense of the rights of Jews to independence and statehood.” He presciently observed that by proclaiming Israel’s illegitimacy and condemning Zionism, this will only make the “problem of the Palestinians more intractable and diminish the likelihood of a lasting and just peace.” [19]
“Apartheid is Not Just a Label”
Apartheid” is not just a label Eugene Kontorovich, an expert in constitutional law, international law, and law and economics, notes. It is a legal term South Africa designated to describe its system of de jure segregation between blacks and whites to guarantee white minority rule. This led to International denunciation of the regime and the enactment of several treaties—the Convention Against Apartheid and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—which established and delineated a “crime of apartheid.” The crime is defined as “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.” Among other offenses, this includes “widespread” murder and enslavement. [20]
When directed to Israel within the 1949 Armistice lines and in Judea and Samaria, the charge is false Kontorovich asserts, since the Israeli Arab minority enjoys full civil and political rights in Israel. Mansour Abbas is an Israeli politician, who is also the leader of the United Arab List and represents the party in the Knesset. He was appointed as the chair of Special Committee on Arab Society Affairs in the Knesset on April 27, 2021. [21]
The claim that Palestinians Arab are not permitted to vote in Israeli elections wrongly assumes that Israel governs and enacts laws for them. They were able to abandon the peace process, join 15 international organizations open only to sovereign states and form a national unity government between Fatah and Hamas precisely because of the Oslo Accords. Simply put, they have their own government or governments, and are not living under Israeli rule. More than 95 percent of Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza live under the legislative control of the Palestinian Authority.[22]
“Looked at objectively,” Kontorovich said, “there is nothing sinister in Palestinians not voting for Israeli Knesset members, any more than there is in Israeli settlers not voting in Palestinian elections. Each group votes for its own government—and the Palestinian government’s decisions dictate the vast majority of what happens in their daily lives” [23]
If Israel Ruled the Palestinian Arabs
If Israel actually ruled the Palestinians Arabs, they would not allow them to promote antisemitism in their schools, media and mosques, fund pensions for terrorists and the families of suicide bombers, and legislate laws outlawing real estate transactions with Jews on penalty of death. The PA controls its own security forces, central bank, Internet domain name, tax policy, and foreign relations. [24]
Attempts to equate the PA with the “Bantustans,” the “pseudo-autonomous puppet governments” created by South Africa for its black inhabitants, is equally absurd Kontorovich contends. As already described, the PA consistently opposes Israel. Furthermore, the international community declined to recognize the Bantustans to deny them legitimacy, while the PA is recognized as a sovereign government. [25]
Kontorovich pointed out that even “President” Mahmoud Abbas had rejected the apartheid canard by seeking international recognition, which is an overt admission that there is no apartheid in Judea and Samaria. Under international law, a territory must be self-governing. At the UN, Abbas announced the “successful culmination of our state-building program,” which means the PA can either be a new country or it is governed by Israel–it cannot be both at the same time. [26]
Finally Kontorovich explains that apartheid is imposed on a population against their wishes, by a regime “with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Israel has offered the Palestinian Arabs complete sovereignty no less than three times during the past 15 years, and they have refused every time. Whatever the excuse for their refusal—the question of borders and the “right of return”—there is no connection to apartheid. [27]
Saving Ethiopian Jews By any standard, including the one established by the International Committee of the Red Cross, [28] Israel is not even remotely an apartheid state. But even when Israel rescued black Ethiopian Jews, questions were raised about her motives. As historians David and Richard Landes observed, “The rights of Israel’s Jewish citizens are among the most protected on the planet. To some, this may seem racist, like the German news commentator who felt the rescue of the Falashas from Ethiopia was racist: Why did the Israelis take only Jews out? Actually, the irony was there to savor. This was the first group of Africans since the Exodus brought out of Africa for freedom rather than slavery.” [29]
Promoting Israel as an “apartheid state,” has consequences. Bassam Tawil, an Arab writer, wrote that “there is not a single Israeli Arab citizen willing to give up his Israeli ID card — a choice that embarrassingly contradicts this Palestinian Arab assertion. Israel’s former right-wing Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, offered the residents of the Israeli Arab city Umm al-Fahm the option of moving the city border to within the Palestinian Authority. They would retain their houses, lands, and property, and relinquish only their Israeli citizenship. They refused outright. [30]
“We cannot lie to ourselves,” Tawil said. “There is not one single Israeli Arab willing to give up Israel’s ‘apartheid’ in exchange for the rule of the Palestinian Authority. Its amateurish propaganda only serves to destroy its credibility. As a result, even Palestinian claims that are actually just are disregarded as false and absurd.” [31] .
Nazis and Israel
References to the Holocaust and Nazis did not occur by accident. When Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, met Adolph Hitler at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on November 18, 1941, Hitler informed him that Germany was “resolved to urge one European nation after the other, step by step, to contribute to the solution of the Jewish problem, and when the time comes to non-European peoples with a similar appeal.” He would “carry on the fight until the total destruction of the Jewish-Communist European empire,” and in the “not too distant future” his army would reach the southern tip of the Caucasus and into the Middle East after defeating the Russians. [32]
Hitler assured the Mufti, who from 1941 to 1945 lived in Berlin as an honored guest of the Third Reich, Germany had no imperial designs in the Arab world. The country’s only goal was to liberate the Arabs. “The German objective would be solely the destruction of Jews residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.” Although this declaration should be viewed from a pragmatic military perspective, Longerich noted that it demonstrates that Hitler’s vison of extermination of the Jews at this point already went beyond Europe. [33]
In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained how the true purpose of Zionism was to create a Jewish state in Palestine was to establish a base from which they could control the world. He wrote: “For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state…. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.” [34]
A front-page headline proclaimed in the Völkischer Beobachter (People’s Observer), the newspaper of the Nazi Party, a Jewish state in Palestine would represent the “cornerstone of Soviet control of the Mediterranean.” [35]
As a fervent “Axis collaborator,” the Mufti released an unrelenting wave of antisemitic propaganda in speeches, letters and statements throughout Europe, driven by his fierce hatred of the Jews. The Germans established a special office for the Mufti in Berlin, with branches in Germany, Greece, Japan and Italy. Arabic-language broadcasts were transmitted to Turks, Arabs, Persians, and Indians from Zeesen, a village south of Berlin observed German political scientist Matthias Küntzel. The Oriental Service, with a staff of 80, including announcers and translators, had “absolute priority” over all other foreign language service broadcasts. From 1939 to 1945, when most of the Arab world listened to radio broadcasts in cafes and public arenas, the Zeesen service was the most popular. Antisemitic propaganda was cleverly mixed with Arab music and passages from the Koran, all supervised by the Mufti. It unremittingly assailed its audience with alarming stories about the Jews preparing to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque, and from their base in Palestine to initiate the complete annihilation of Islam and the Arabs. [36] The officials at the BBC and others were quite desperate at times, because the German broadcasts “were agitating, mocking and inciting, while the BBC’s broadcasts dull, unbiased, objective.”[37]
In a December 17, 1944 radio address celebrating the Islamic New Year broadcast to the entire Arab world, the Mufti declared, “We will not be satisfied with less than what the free nations have fought for—genuine independence that does not allow entry of foreigners and that leaves no room for Jews, in which the entire Arab fatherland is available to the Arab people alone.”[38] He urged Arabs and Muslims throughout the world, including those living in the US, to become a fifth column and carry out acts of sabotage against the Allies and kill Jews. He claimed helping the Axis powers was imperative for the Arabs, even if it meant martyrdom.[39]
Six years of radio transmissions had a decidedly deleterious influence of the image of the Jews. Promoting “an exclusively anti-Jewish reading of the Qur’an,” popularizing European conspiracy canards, produced “a genocidal rhetoric towards Zionism and Israel” which prepared the Middle East Muslims for the future confrontations that lay ahead. This demonization explains why many Arab leaders came to believe in the myths about Jews and Israel, and is clearly one of the reasons why they were so adamantly opposed to the UN partition plan of November 1947, which proposed separate Jewish and Arab states. [40]
Although radio Zeesen terminated broadcasting in April 1945, “its frequencies of hatred remained virulent.” Thus, the idea of thwarting a Jewish state at any cost lived on and found a new home in Egypt, where, after 1945, the Muslim Brotherhood built the world’s largest antisemitic movement. (Ibid) In Nassar’s Egypt in 1950, the Free Officer’s Junta, openly welcomed former German Nazis, who swarmed into the country. As experts on “Jewish Affairs,” they appeared to be prized assets to promote Arab antisemitic propaganda, which “increasingly bore their trademark after the mid-1950.” Johann von Leers, one of the foremost of the Nazi collaborators, was invited to Cairo by the Grand Mufti. He arranged a position for von Leers as political adviser in the Egyptian Information Department, where according to The Manchester Guardian, he wielded “considerable influence on the nature of the current anti-Jewish measures.” [41]
The Mufti only complained about Nazi policy if he believed it might allow Jews to evade death. He strained his friendly relationship with Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, when in the spring of 1943, he learned that Himmler wanted to allow 5,000 Jewish children to emigrate to Palestine. This was part of a “propaganda stunt,” in return for the release 20,000 German prisoners. According to a German government official, the Grand Mufti “would prefer all of them to be killed,” and fought vigorously to halt the scheme. The Grand Mufti demonstrated particular interest in responding to the governments of Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria for allowing the Jewish children to leave for Palestine escorted by reliable adults. In a letter to the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, he said “It would be “appropriate and more expedient to prevent the Jews from emigrating to your country and send them somewhere where they will be under strict control, for example Poland.” [42]
Though the children were sent to the gas chambers, the letters had no influence, since none of the governments received them. Furthermore, the Germans thwarted the rescue mission before, and independent of, the Mufti’s attempt to intervene. [43]
In assessing the Mufti’s role, it is important to emphasize he did not influence the German’s decision to murder the Jews of Europe. The Germans did not need anyone to advise or instruct them how to rid the earth of the Jews as Hitler proclaimed, “For Juda is the plague of the world.” [44] The Mufti “did have a profound impact on Nazi Germany’s Arabic language propaganda to the Arab societies during the Holocaust,” notes historian Jeffry Herf. “He left a legacy of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that remains an enduring element of Palestinian and Arab politics. If we are to understand his importance for the history of politics and ideas in the Middle East, we must draw a clear distinction…. The Mufti was an important regional leader and Nazi propagandist. In this capacity he engaged in lethal incitement against the Jews, and this is now recognized under international law as a crime because it is an essential step in the process leading to genocide.”[45]
The Muslim Brotherhood
Herf points out the Mufti “was one of the founding fathers of the ideological tradition known as radical Islam or Islamism. That tradition, which continues in our own time, has Sunni and Shia variations. Its original base was in the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood that inspired subsequent organizations such as Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS, but there also is a Shia variation in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Despite their differences, both share a conviction that, among other things, the message of Islam is inherently anti-Jewish and anti-democratic and that it provides justification for terrorism against Jews, “non-believers” and “infidels” such as Christians, as well as Muslims who take a different view of Islam.” [46]
The importance of the Muslim Brotherhood “to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik Party to communism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas,” according to political scientist Matthias Küntzel. [47]
The Muslim Brothers asserted that the Islamic umma [the entire Arab community], took precedence over all national, geographic or racial differences “to include a community of principles, beliefs and higher realities.” Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, defined the Islamic territory as, “Any span of land in which there is a Muslim proclaiming that there is no God except Allah, or where the banner of God once raised becomes a trust in the hands of all Muslims to be given to God and to his prophet. They should define its freedom with their bodies and should devote their lives and money to maintaining it.” [48]
Palestine was viewed as an integral part of this Islamic territory. “The Palestinian people are but our brothers. So he who holds back and does not support Palestine is deemed to have held back from supporting God and his Messenger and to have deserted the faith of Islam.” Palestine was a key element in the overall structure of the Islamic unit. “Any part that does not feel the pain of Palestine is not part of that body, and any brick which does not shake because of the destabilisation of Palestine is not part of this structure.” [49]
Support for the question of Palestine was the initial stage in realizing Islamic unity, which would result through Arab unity. Salih Ashmawi, a prominent Muslim Brother leader, voiced this belief when he stated, “The blessing of Palestine will not stop merely at achieving Arab unity, it will also achieve Islamic unity.” [50]
Palestine has a more prominent position to the Muslim Brothers than any other Muslim area. This is where by al-Burāq, the heavenly horse, carried the Prophet Muhammad at night from Mecca to Jerusalem. In the Miracle of the Ascension, he prayed in Jerusalem with the Prophets and Messengers with him. From the Qur’anic verse describing this Night Journey, the Muslim Brothers concluded they had to assume custody of the Temple Mount and convert it to a mosque. Muslims must ensure that the Aqsa Mosque be protected so that it will remain “a mosque until the day of resurrection and never becomes a Jewish temple.” [51]
In 1927, a year prior to the establishment of the Muslim Brothers’ Society, al-Banna sent a message to the Mufti in which he voiced his enduring concern for the Islamic brotherhood, and his eagerness to bolster the fraternity by seizing every occasion to maintain communication with Arabic and Islamic groups. [52] For his part, the Mufti said on August 26, 1946, “I believe in the Muslim Brothers as they are the troops of G-d who shall defeat the troops of Satan.” [53]
Wistrich concludes that “Popular myths about the Western betrayal of Palestine and about a sinister Jewish conspiracy to subvert Arabism and Islam will probably continue to flourish…. For at the heart of the Middle East problem for most Arabs is their emotional refusal to accept Israel and the right of the Jews to exercise any sovereignty in a Muslim domain. Neither in Arab nationalism nor in Islam can national independence and equality for Jews be tolerated. For Palestinians…peace” and “justice” seem to mean little more than a demand for the complete Arabization of the Jewish state.” He warned that If this virulent Arab antisemitism continues, it “can only lead the Middle East further down the road to self-destruction.”[54]
Footnotes
[1] Anne Bayefsky, “The UN World Conference against Racism: A Racist Anti-Racism Conference,” American Society of International Law Proceedings Volume 96 (March 13-16, 2002).
[2] Alan Rosenbaum, “Learning lessons from the antisemitic Durban conference,” The Jerusalem Post (July 1, 2021); Gerald Steinberg, “Human Rights Watch demonizes Israel via propaganda of apartheid,” The Jerusalem Post, (April 27, 2021); Ben-Dror Yemini, “A most dangerous and mendacious report,” Ynet (April 27, 2021).
[3] Rosenbaum, op.cit; Gerald Steinberg, “Human Rights Watch demonizes Israel via propaganda of apartheid,” op.cit.
[4] Tom Lantos, “The Durban Debacle: An Insider’s View of the UN World Conference Against Racism,” The Fletcher Forum on World Affairs Volume 26, Number 1, (Winter/Spring 2002):37.
[5] Ibid.46.
[6] Ibid. 43.
[7] Anne F. Bayefsky, “Terrorism and Racism: The Aftermath of Durban,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (December 16, 2001).
[8] Anne Bayefsky, “The UN World Conference against Racism: A Racist Anti-Racism Conference,” American Society of International Law Proceedings Volume 96 (March 13-16, 2002).
[9] Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 482–483.
[10] Gerald Steinberg, “The Centrality of NGOs in the Durban Strategy,” NGO Monitor (July 11, 2006).
[11] “The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall,” Reut Institute (February 14, 2010); 1, 14-16, 24-25; “2011: The Year We Punched Back on the Assault of Israel’s legitimacy: London as a Case Study,” The Reut Institute (November 25, 2011): 3.
[12] Henry A. Kissinger, “The Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2001).
[13] Henry A. Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 278-282; Anne Herzberg, “Should Israel Cooperate with the ICC?” Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (March 25, 2021); Dore Gold and Alan Baker, Eds.“ Undermining the International Criminal Court,”(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2020); Eugene Kontorovich, “Palestinians seek to take advantage of ICC’s unique “Israel” provision,” The Washington Post (January 5, 2015); Avi Bell, “The ICC declares war on Israel,” The Times of Israel (July 16, 2015); Soeren Kern, “Ethical Dilemmas in Fighting Terrorism,” Gatestone Institute (June 30, 2010); Anne Herzberg, “Lawfare Against Israel,” The Wall Street Journal (November 5, 2008); Jeremy A. Rabkin, Why Sovereignty Matters (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1998); Jeremy Rabkin, “Lawfare: The International Court of Justice Rules in Favor of Terrorism,” The Wall Street Journal (September 17, 2004).
[14] Sandra Lee Braude, “Is Israel an apartheid state? A narrative’s origins in South Africa,” The Jerusalem Post (December 2, 2022); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcEL-NlxBk0.
[15] Rev. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe, “Pro-Palestinian ads misrepresent apartheid,” San Francisco Examiner (May 15, 2013); Will Reisman, “Mideast conflict spills onto BART walls,” San Francisco Examiner (January 12, 2012); Rev. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe, “Pro-Palestinian ads misrepresent apartheid,” San Francisco Examiner (May 15, 2013); Reisman, “Mideast conflict spills onto BART walls,” San Francisco Examiner (January 12, 2012); Robbie Sabel, “The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel with the False Charge of Apartheid,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, (2009); Gideon Shimoni, “Deconstructing Apartheid Accusations Against Israel,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affair (September 2, 2007).
[16] Tali Feinberg, “Apartheid has become an antisemitic tool, activist tells Swiss body,” The South African Jewish Report (June 23, 2022).
[17] Richard J. Goldstone, “Israel and the Apartheid Slander,” The New York Times (October 31, 2011).
[18] Ibid; Hirsh Goodman, “I left apartheid South Africa. Applying the term to Israel is disingenuous,” Forward (April 27, 2021).
[19] Bayard Rustin, Letter from Black Americans To Support Israel Committee (BASIC) to unknown. No date. Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem S/10/47).
[20] Eugene Kontorovich, “The Apartheid Libel: A Legal Refutation,” The Tower Magazine (June 2014).
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Apartheid Glossary (May 28, 2005) https://www.icrc.org/casebook/doc/glossary/apartheid-glossary.htm)This term comprises the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining the domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
- denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups or the right to life and liberty of persons (by murder of its members, inflicting upon them serious bodily or mental harm, infringement of their freedom, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or by arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of its members);
- deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
- measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participating in the political, social, economic or cultural life of the country, and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups (by denying to their members basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right of freedom of peaceful assembly and association);
- any measures designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups or the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members there or;
- exploitation of the labour of the members of a group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
- persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedom, because they oppose apartheid.
International criminal responsibility applied, irrespective of the motive involved, to individuals, members of organizations and institutions and representatives of the State who, whatever their country of residence:
- commit, participate in, directly incite or conspire in the commission of the above-mentioned acts;
- abet, directly encourage or cooperate in the commission of the crime of apartheid.
Apartheid committed during an international armed conflict is a war crime.
[29] David Landes and Richard Landes, “The Zionist Anomaly” written for “TNR Symposium on Zionism at 100,” reprinted in Augean Stables (September 9, 2013); Stephen Spector, Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Rich Tenorio, “Before the airlifts, Ethiopian Jews did the heavy lifting to get out of Africa,” The Times of Israel (November 27, 2021).
[30] Bassam Tawil, “Palestinians Damage Their Cause: The Pope’s Visit to the Middle East,” Gatestone Institute (June 12, 2014).
[31] Ibid; Reuters, “Leave or let live? More Arabs move in to Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” The Jerusalem Post (December 8, 2014); Khaled Abu Toameh, “Why Palestinians Prefer To Work In Israel,” Gatestone Institute, (October 13, 2021).
[32] Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 289-290.
[33] Ibid. 290.
[34] Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943), 324-325.
[35] Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II & the Holocaust (Cambridge, Massachusetts :Harvard University Press, 2006), 212.
[36] Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (New York: Telos Press Publishing , 2007),35; Matthias Küntzel, “The Lasting Impact of Nazi Germany’s antisemitic propaganda in the Middle East 1945-1948,” (November 12-15, 2022), http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/the-lasting-impact-of-nazi-germanys-antisemitic-propaganda-in-the-middle-east-1945-1948.
[37] Küntzel, “The Lasting Impact of Nazi Germany’s antisemitic propaganda,” op. cit.
[38] Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine (New York: Enigma Books, 2010), 95,97; Herf, op.cit. 73-76, 244.
[39 Joseph B. Schechtman, Mufti And The Fuehrer (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), 127, 150.
[40 ] Küntzel, “The Lasting Impact of Nazi Germany’s antisemitic propaganda,” op. cit.
[41] Robert Wistrich, Hitler’s Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1985),176; Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 50-76, 123.
[42] Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred, op.cit. 36.); Schechtman, op.c.it. 154-159.
[43] “Hajj Amin al-Husayni: Wartime Propagandist,” United State Holocaust Memorial Museum https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husayni-wartime-propagandist.
[44] Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler’s World View: A Blueprint for Power (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), 57.
[45] Jeffrey Herf, “Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Nazis and the Holocaust: The Origins, Nature and Aftereffects of Collaboration,” Jewish Political Studies Review (January 5, 2016).
[46] Ibid; Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred op.cit; Matthias Küntzel, “The Lasting Impact of Nazi Germany’s antisemitic propaganda,” op.cit; Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, op.cit. 13.
[47] Matthias Küntzel, “Islamist terrorism and antisemitism: The mission against modernity” (March 2008) http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/islamist-terrorism-and-antisemitism-the-mission-against-modernity.
[48] Abd Al-Fattah Muhammad El-Awaisi, The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question 1928-1947 (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1998), 2, 28.
[49] Ibid. 9.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid. 28
[52] Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred, op.cit.28.
[53] El-Awaisi, op.cit. 191.
[54] Robert Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 266- 267.
