Comments on: The Meaning of Apartheid http://janip.net/the-meaning-of-apartheid/ Jewish Academic Network for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:21:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: Noga http://janip.net/the-meaning-of-apartheid/#comment-16 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 23:55:58 +0000 http://janip.net/the-meaning-of-apartheid/#comment-16 "The use of the term apartheid, therefore, effectively negates the two-state-solution in favor of a favorite of the extreme left’s notion of a single-state-solution, which in reality, neither Palestinians living in the territories nor Israelis see as a viable alternative for peace (Hamas and other Islamist groups, of course, do advocate a single-state solution, but not as a bi-national state but as a single Palestinian state with no Israel in sight)." Indeed. I realized this "clever" sleight of hand some time ago as an attempt to create a perception of one country with two sets of citizens differently treated under the law in order to push the one state solution through the backdoor, so to speak. Jimmy Carter explains in his book that he does not mean his theories to extend to Israel but only to "Palestine". However, when he says "Palestine" he is playing into the hands of the maximalists, the very Palestinians and their advocates who wish to erase the Green Line, and replace Israel with a Palestine, indeed. There is definitely a cognitive dissonance in his choice of terminology: on the one hand, the very people who rush to defend his book have the same mindset and intentions as the people who rejected Clinton's proposals. Those proposals are actually what Carter purports to advocate (even though he misjudges their accuracy, having failed to attendi to Dennis Ross's testimony on the matter).. I have wondered why. Being, as you say, a "person as smart as Jimmy Carter", should he not have been aware of what he is actually promoting? Or did he think us readers wouldn't notice the contradiction? Or perhaps, he is not as clever as he wants to believe and was getting carried away on a tide of sentimental politics where every analogy is legitimate because it is "poetic"? “The use of the term apartheid, therefore, effectively negates the two-state-solution in favor of a favorite of the extreme left’s notion of a single-state-solution, which in reality, neither Palestinians living in the territories nor Israelis see as a viable alternative for peace (Hamas and other Islamist groups, of course, do advocate a single-state solution, but not as a bi-national state but as a single Palestinian state with no Israel in sight).”

Indeed. I realized this “clever” sleight of hand some time ago as an attempt to create a perception of one country with two sets of citizens differently treated under the law in order to push the one state solution through the backdoor, so to speak.

Jimmy Carter explains in his book that he does not mean his theories to extend to Israel but only to “Palestine”. However, when he says “Palestine” he is playing into the hands of the maximalists, the very Palestinians and their advocates who wish to erase the Green Line, and replace Israel with a Palestine, indeed. There is definitely a cognitive dissonance in his choice of terminology: on the one hand, the very people who rush to defend his book have the same mindset and intentions as the people who rejected Clinton’s proposals. Those proposals are actually what Carter purports to advocate (even though he misjudges their accuracy, having failed to attendi to Dennis Ross’s testimony on the matter)..

I have wondered why. Being, as you say, a “person as smart as Jimmy Carter”, should he not have been aware of what he is actually promoting? Or did he think us readers wouldn’t notice the contradiction? Or perhaps, he is not as clever as he wants to believe and was getting carried away on a tide of sentimental politics where every analogy is legitimate because it is “poetic”?

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