A new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released on Tuesday accusing Israel of committing the crime of apartheid, as well as the persecution of Palestinians, is being given extensive media coverage with little to no critical journalism.
Unfortunately, Human Rights Watch has an ill-deserved gravitas that serves to disguise its biased methodology. Consequently, pundits and journalists alike have taken the bait, swarming to cover the report without properly analyzing its contents and challenging its absurd claim – which hinges on subverting the term “apartheid” to have an entirely new meaning.
The 213-page report claims that, as the Israeli government constitutes a “single authority” exercising control “over the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea” and seeks to maintain Jewish “domination” over Palestinians and its own Arab population, the term “apartheid” is an apt description.
But that’s not what apartheid means at all. Put simply, apartheid is a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on the grounds of race. Or as the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it:
racial segregation
specifically: a former policy of segregation and political, social, and economic discrimination against the nonwhite majority in the Republic of South Africa”
Now compare that description to Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in the 1990s, most Palestinians are governed by the Palestinian Authority. This body was set up with international encouragement, and the Palestinians willingly agreed to adopt a system in which they gained partial autonomy while granting Israel overall security control. Given the many wars Israel had faced in the decades previously — and since — this arrangement made eminent sense as a stepping stone along the road to a more permanent solution.
Nevertheless, the HRW report slams Israel — essentially for keeping its citizens safe. “The Israeli government has demonstrated an intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory,” the report charges. “That intent has been coupled with systematic oppression of Palestinians and inhumane acts committed against them. When these three elements occur together, they amount to the crime of apartheid.”
Glaring Omissions of Context Left Unchallenged
The lengthy report makes only passing reference to the ongoing threats faced by Israel, by focusing on Israel’s response to the numerous Gaza-based terror groups which periodically fire hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory. It completely overlooks the threat posed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah, located primarily in Lebanon and Syria.
A quick search of the report for words like “terror” and “rocket” shows that HRW totally fails to describe Palestinian terrorist actions against Israel.
In addition, the report totally fails to take into account the longstanding enmity between Hamas, the terror group which rules the coastal territory, and Fatah, which rules the Palestinian population of the West Bank, and what that means for peace negotiations with the Jewish state.
Instead, the reports casts Israel as solely responsible for the lack of a resolution to the decades-old conflict, and characterizes its desire to keep the lid on violent Arab uprisings as “apartheid” — a stunning inversion of reality. Why, at the very least, are journalists not asking HRW how Israel’s basic security needs can be met?
Shakir’s Personal Anti-Israel Vendetta
It is not the first time that the NGO takes a jab at Israel. The particular researcher who compiled the report, Omar Shakir, was forced to leave Israel in November 2019 after his work visa was not renewed due to his support of the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Nevertheless, the vast majority of news reports have failed to document either of these important facts.
For over a decade, Shakir has fought a campaign denying Israel’s right to exist and smearing the Jewish state with the kind of barbs more typically heard in the cesspit of online discussion. On various occasions, he has stated that Israel has “effectively turned Gaza into an open-air prison.” Moreover, Shakir was involved in compiling a discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel.
In the 200 or so pages of the report, HaMoked is mentioned 62 times, Adalah 77 times, Gisha 92 times and B’Tselem 151 times. But the record goes to Haaretz newspaper, which is cited a massive 190 times. In reality, Shakir did no fact checking or investigations of his own, and the concept of fairness does not even come into it. He pored over anti-Israel publications that pretend to be objectively critical and gathered anything that matched his preestablished hostility. The outcome was decided in advance.”
Deliberate Provocation — and Not For the First Time
This is not the first time in recent memory that Israel has faced such claims. In January this year, Israeli organization B’Tselem made exactly the same case, as it took the dramatic step of publishing an op-ed in The Guardian, and sending press releases to numerous newspapers around the world, accusing Israel of “apartheid.”
Just like today, news organizations worldwide gave prominent coverage to the report claiming that Israel is no longer a democracy but an “apartheid regime” devoted to cementing the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians. By uncritically portraying this group as a leading proponent of human rights, the media effectively facilitated the hijacking of the word “apartheid” by anti-Israeli activists whose goal is to foster doubt about Israel’s right to live in peace within secure borders.
In January, even the usually stridently anti-Israel The Guardian was taken aback, with a subsequent editorial published, admitting “It was a deliberate provocation by B’Tselem… to describe the Palestinians in the Holy Land as living under an apartheid regime.” But a few months later, when exactly the same claim resurfaced, the Guardian, amongst others, just couldn’t resist helping spread the baseless libel.
As ever, the failure of journalists to do their job and ask tough questions of Israel’s detractors means that the truth is the first casualty of HRW’s ongoing war against the Jewish State.
