Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel

by Benjamin Pogrund, Harold Evans (Foreword by)

Overview

Benjamin Pogrund, who spent 26 years as a journalist in South Africa investigating apartheid and who has been living in Israel for the past 15 years, investigates the accusation that Israel is practicing apartheid and the motives of those who make it. His study is founded on a belief in Israel, combined with frank criticism, to provide a balanced view of Israel’s strengths and problems.

To understand Israel today, one must first look at the past and so the book first outlines key foundational events to explain current attitudes. It then explores the contradictions found in the region, including discrimination against Israeli Arabs and among Jews, before concluding that it is wrong to affix the apartheid label to Israel inside the Green Line of 1948/1967. It also deconstructs the criticisms of Israel and the boycott movement before arguing for two states, Israeli and Palestinian, as the only way forward for Jews and Arabs.

This detailed and balanced study offers a unique comparison between South Africa and Israel and explains complex political and social situations in language accessible to all readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442226838
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	07/10/2014
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Pogrund lives in Israel where he reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was thedeputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail, South Africa's leading anti-apartheid newspaper during the Apartheid era (which brought about the closure of the paper), then was with the Independent in London and The WorldPaper in Boston before moving to Jerusalem to foster dialogue. He has written for the Guardian (London), Haaretz (Tel Aviv), Facta (Tokyo) and others. In May 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Media Council in London on behalf of the Next Century Foundation, for encouraging understanding of the Middle East and war-torn areas of the world.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Map
Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1: The Beginning
Chapter 2: Freedom and War
Chapter 3: Inside the Green Line
Chapter 4: The Occupation
Chapter 5: What was Apartheid?
Chapter 6: Are They the Same?
Chapter 7: Comparing Israel and Apartheid South Africa
Chapter 8: The Critics (1)
Chapter 9: The Critics (2)
Chapter 10: Boycotts
Chapter 11: The Big Issues
Chapter 12: The Way Forward
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Benjamin Pogrund, a foremost journalist in the struggle against apartheid and in more recent years an ardent worker for peace and social concern in Israel, brings to this study peerless qualifications for comparing the controversial historical experience of South Africa and Israel. With a combination of compassion, analytical insight, and judicious balance he unravels the welter of crass ignorance and malevolence that bedevils the contemporary polemic.

Prof. Gideon Shimoni

What lends credence to Pogrund’s book are his impeccable anti-apartheid credentials…. From the late 1950s through the mid-1980s, a period covering the heyday of apartheid, he emerged as one of the most persistent and courageous journalists to expose the iniquities of that system, including the brutal suppression of political dissent by those it targeted…. Although drawing parallels between apartheid-era South Africa and modern-day Israel is damaging and misleading, Pogrund is among those who believe that Israelis and Palestinians can still learn from how South Africans successfully negotiated an end to apartheid and made a peaceful transition to non-racial democracy.

Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

A serious, thoughtful, engaging and timely intervention amidst a flood of ahistorical and tendentious nonsense. Benjamin Pogrund, a renowned journalist, knows both Israel and Apartheid South Africa well. Brutally honest, he exposes crude and simplistic analogies while not shying away from the harshness of Israeli rule in the occupied territories. A must for those with an interest in comparative analysis.

Prof. Milton Shain

At its best this book succeeds in providing valuable empirical resources that will enable its readers to question the totalising and distorted representations of the Israel-Palestine conflict that the apartheid analogy requires.. . .Drawing Fire is. .. most illuminating when it provides its readers with the information and argument that helps us understand the current conflict and the injustices to ordinary people that accompany it.. . .[In] spite of the author’s own best intentions, he is clearly worried that the occupation and settlement of Palestine is leading toward a situation in which the apartheid analogy looks more persuasive. The growth of a militant and loud anti-Arab racism within both the Israeli polity and society is a product of occupation that does not justify the apartheid analogy but may feed it if we are not careful. There is plenty to chew on in this worthy book.

Fathom

On several lecture tours to South Africa with Benjamin Pogrund I have listened to him say there is no comparison between apartheid and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Although telling the truth can draw fire, he tells the truth. This book is about truth.

Bassem Eid

[Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel]. .. will be valuable to anyone who genuinely seeks an understanding of the real situation on the ground, behind the political rhetoric.

South African Jewish Report

This enquiry harshly condemns Israel’s settlement policy and oppressive practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories yet places them outside the context of apartheid, showing how apartheid allegations have often been cynically used to delegitimize Israel’s very right to exist. Benjamin Pogrund, with skillful balance and painful honesty, demonstrates the complexity of the issues of war, occupation, terrorism, settlements, discrimination and the human tragedy of two peoples woven into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Prof. Frances Raday

If you want an informed opinion about whether Israel is an apartheid state.. . .Benjamin Pogrund is worth reading.

The Citizen

This is an essential read for everyone who wants to persuasively confront the BDS movement.

Jewish Book Council

While many label Israel ‘an apartheid state’, Benjamin Pogrund actually experienced apartheid, from Sharpeville to Mandela’s liberation. He is therefore well placed to dissect the easy analogy between Zionist Israel and apartheid South Africa. This critical and detailed account of the complexity of Israel’s situation will not please some, but it will be an eye-opener for many who have hitherto accepted the conventional wisdom. For those who do not think in monochrome, this is an important book.

Colin Shindler

Challenging. Provocative. Well argued. Takes no prisoners. Only the invincibly ignorant will continue to equate Israel and apartheid South Africa after reading this book. Benjamin Pogrund is uniquely placed to make the comparison. This is no whitewash and Israel is depicted fully, warts and all. But so is South Africa in the brutal decades of apartheid - to its disadvantage in every respect.

Robin Knight

[T]he book succeeds in his primary goal of showing that although there are some broad similarities between apartheid and Israeli reality, including the OPT, the term apartheid is simply not applicable to the latter.. . .Pogrund’s book is an eloquent statement of what some call 'liberal Zionism,' a humanistically based philosophy that advocates a sovereign state for Palestinians and equal rights for those with Israeli citizenship.. . .[T]he book is valuable as a statement of both hope and reality: that Israel retains the basis of a humanistically inclined country, that it is not an 'apartheid state,' and as an explication of what both Zionism and Israeli reality are and are not.

Palestine-Israel Journal

At its best this book succeeds in providing valuable empirical resources that will enable its readers to question the totalising and distorted representations of the Israel-Palestine conflict that the apartheid analogy requires. . . .Drawing Fire is . . . most illuminating when it provides its readers with the information and argument that helps us understand the current conflict and the injustices to ordinary people that accompany it. . . .[In] spite of the author’s own best intentions, he is clearly worried that the occupation and settlement of Palestine is leading toward a situation in which the apartheid analogy looks more persuasive. The growth of a militant and loud anti-Arab racism within both the Israeli polity and society is a product of occupation that does not justify the apartheid analogy but may feed it if we are not careful. There is plenty to chew on in this worthy book.

Fathom

While many label Israel ‘an apartheid state’, Benjamin Pogrund actually experienced apartheid, from Sharpeville to Mandela’s liberation. He is therefore well placed to dissect the easy analogy between Zionist Israel and apartheid South Africa. This critical and detailed account of the complexity of Israel’s situation will not please some, but it will be an eye-opener for many who have hitherto accepted the conventional wisdom. For those who do not think in monochrome, this is an important book.

Prof. Colin Shindler