Israel: Palestinians Banned from Dead Sea

Blogger Dan Fleshler reports that IDF soldiers have received orders to prevent Palestinians from accessing the Dead Sea. “This is the kind of story that feeds into the increasingly popular tendency to equate Israel with South Africa under apartheid. I don’t buy into this equation…yet. There are a number of good arguments that show the differences,” he argues.

2 comments

  • teddy

    This is an outrageously misleading representation of what Dan Fleshler wrote. He offered what he called “technical arguments” about the differences between Israel and South Africa under apartheid, but then he said those arguments “don’t matter.” He said “the experience” of Palestinians living under occupation might even be worse than South African blacks living under the apartheid. And he wrote that Israel is “drifting slowly, and inexorably” to a situation very much like South Africa during the apartheid years.

    You could take issue with his technical arguments. You could argue that there is NO difference at all between Israel and S. Africa or Zionism and apartheid. But that would be missing a more important point. Dan is an American Jew who is trying to fight against the occupation and calls Israeli behavior comparable to that of white South Africans. Why did you just include one quote that implied he was either accepting or justifying Israeli behavior?

  • Dear Teddy,
    Thank you for your stating your opinion. The point of the Global Links is to provide snippets of the conversations going on in different blogospheres. While I am in no position to quote the complete post, I provide a link, which is clearly marked as well as a quote, which will make the reader dig for more. My aim is not to mislead nor to misrepresent anyone, as that obviously defeats the purpose of all the work I do in my capacity as Global Voices Online Middle East and North Africa Editor.

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