A glossary to help lefties launch their verbal attacks on Israel
Are you confused about Israel? Rest assured, you are not alone, so I have compiled this glossary to guide you towards wisdom.
Apartheid: Literally, ‘apartness’, you may think this means a system of segregation on the grounds of race, enforced by the state, as most famously adopted in South Africa. In Israel, it means that citizens of all races and religions are constitutionally guaranteed the same rights, where Arabs who constitute 20 per cent of the population vote and are represented in the legislature, sit as judges, and, comprising 17 per cent of Israel’s doctors, work alongside Jewish doctors to save all Israelis’ lives.
Colonisation: This usually means the act of acquiring political control over another country, subjugating its population, and exploiting it economically. In relation to Israel, it means indigenous people regaining sovereignty over part of their ancestral homeland in a remnant of the Ottoman Empire constituting 0.2 per cent of Arab lands, in accordance with international law (the League of Nations mandate and UN Charter), while offering repeatedly for the local Arab population to have their own state. The most egregious act of colonisation was when 14,300 persecuted Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel within 36 hours in 1991. Such Jews are called settler colonialists.
Criticism of Israeli policies (which is definitely not antisemitic): This includes calling for Israel’s destruction, claiming Zionists control the media, attacking Jews on the streets of New York and London, and defacing synagogues with swastikas.
De facto annexation: Annexation is a term applied when one state unilaterally proclaims its sovereignty over other territory, such as Russia over the Crimea. Last year, it was proposed that Israel annex parts of the West Bank. This did not proceed. De facto annexation means pretending that it has happened anyway so that Israel can still be condemned, as the Irish parliament has just resolved.
Read the article by Juliet Moses in The Spectator.