The following Op-Ed was first published in The Miami Herald by Ofer Bavly, Consul General of Israel to Floria and Puerto Rico.
Israel’s critics have lately sought in a variety of ways to delegitimize Israel through public opinion, after years of terror attacks and suicide bombings failed to achieve their goal of eliminating the country altogether. One such tactic is a deliberate attempt to link democratic Israel and the former, notoriously racist regime in South Africa by using intellectually dishonest arguments that others would call lies and deliberate manipulation.
A good example is a recent opinion column on The Miami Herald’s Other Views page in which the word “apartheid” was used repeatedly, requiring a factual clarification to expose the gross distortion of facts.
Twenty-five percent of Israelis are non-Jews, made up primarily of Muslim and Christian Arabs. They enjoy full democratic rights. Our Parliament comprises 120 members, including nine Arabs, representing three different Arab parties. There are Arabs on Israel’s Supreme Court and District Courts. Arabs serve in Israel’s police, army and Foreign Service. They are CEOs of hospitals, school principals and university professors. There are Arab mayors and Arabs in government. By law, no position may be denied to an Arab citizen of Israel based on his or her faith.
If this is apartheid, then what is democracy?
