(IsraelNN.com) South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein has strongly defended Israel against charges that it practices Apartheid, which was the official policy of the separation of the black majority by the former white government in the country.
Writing in the Times of South Africa, he stated that the only analogy between Israel and South Africa is that both countries were forced into an armed struggle because there was no partner for peace.
He wrote that the accusations against Israel of Apartheid “defame the Jewish state and also diminish the victims of the real apartheid — the men, women and children of our beloved South Africa — who suffered for centuries under arrogant, heartless colonialism, and then for decades under the brutal apartheid policies of racial superiority, oppression and separation inflicted by the National Party. If everything is apartheid, then nothing is apartheid.”
Former American President Jimmy Carter last year published a controversial book entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in which he accused Israel of practicing the policy of Apartheid by building the security barrier against suicide bombers.
“All citizens vote on the same voters’ roll in regular, multiparty elections, and there are Arab parties and Arab members of other parties in Israel’s parliament,” the rabbi told his readers.
