Ha’aretz‘s Gideon Levy never tires of labeling Israel an apartheid state. His latest effort is flimsily built on a stack on nonsense, falsehoods and fantasties that are readily deconstructed. So deep is Levy’s need to smear the Jewish state, and so tenuous is his hold on reality, that his beratings verge on the comical.
His April 21 column (“What Israel could be like“), written in the South African capital of Johannesburg, revolves around the comparison between the former apartheid state of South Africa and the current apartheid state, Israel. After gushing over the fact that the incoming vice chancellor of a Johannesburg university is “colored” (and he was “barely admitted” as a student there three decades ago), Levy adds:
. . . look at where Israel is today in terms of morality and justice, and where South Africa is. . . .
The list of lessons is a long one. When [Roelf] Meyer [a white official in the apartheid government] was first elected to the apartheid parliament, he looked around and sensed that something was wrong. “Suddenly I felt I did not represent my nation,” he related. . . How many new Knesset members have ever looked around themselves and felt that something was amiss, that millions of people have no representation?
Thus, according to Levy’s comparison between Israel and South Africa,
1) In South Africa, a black person can head an institute of higher learning.
2) In South Africa, there is no longer discrimination against minorities for admission into institutes for higher education.
3) In South Africa, minorities are adequately represented in Parliament, and there is no more apartheid.
“Teach us, dear South Africans, black, white and colored, how yesterday’s enemy becomes today’s partner,” beseeches Levy. Meanwhile, Levy’s assessments do not exactly corrolate to reality.
1) In South Africa, a black person can head an institute of higher learning, but not in Israel, Levy implies. Just five days before his piece appeared, was the torch-lighting ceremony for Remembrance Day at Mount Herzl, in which the state selects the torch lighters, the greatest honor for citizens