The Warped Mirror: The 'Israeli Apartheid' gospel

Advertised as "The new book by Ben White" on a website dedicated to marketing "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide," everything seems skillfully designed to appeal both to dedicated Israel-bashers and newcomers eager to learn the basics. Those who have never heard of Ben White, a young Cambridge graduate with a BA in English Literature, will certainly be impressed by the long list of prominent people he could get to endorse his first book that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything he studied: Ben White's efforts to spread the idea that Israel should be denounced and opposed as an "apartheid state" are warmly praised by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the historian Ilan Pappe, and a number of well-known academics and writers as well as political and religious personalities.

Reviews that are critical of Ben White's book are, understandably, not featured on this website. One of the most recent reviews that includes links to some noteworthy previous responses to Ben White is available at Z Word. Among the issues that have been repeatedly raised by critics of White's work are questions about his expertise and his apparent unwillingness to acknowledge that the sources he relies on are anything but uncontroversial and have been shown to contain numerous distortions and misrepresentations.

Given Ben White's published record of articles and blog posts that mostly focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is actually little reason to be surprised that he is a passionate ideologue who has little regard for facts that don’t fit his agenda - and his agenda arguably doesn't reflect primarily a concern for the Palestinian plight, but rather a fierce determination to demonize Israel. Not unlike Hamas, Ben White has only disdain for the peace process and efforts to achieve a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; instead, he passionately advocates "steadfastness" and "resistance," albeit non-violent resistance, until "the end goal, decolonization and liberation from occupation and Zionist apartheid" is achieved.

It is all too obvious that the term "apartheid" makes sense only if Israel, Gaza and the West Bank are assumed to be one legal unit, i.e. one state. Indeed, Ben White is an ardent advocate of the so-called "one-state solution" and he enthusiastically relies on writers who claim that this is an "ethical imperative." As Ben White himself puts it: "To say that the 'one-state solution' is impractical or equals the 'destruction' of Israel is poorly concealed code for defending the indefensible and a recipe for continual conflict in a land it is impossible to partition."

That's plain enough: for Ben White, insisting on Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is "defending the indefensible."

It is interesting to note in this context that among Ben White's first published articles there is a piece from 2002 that tackles the question if it is acceptable to "understand" why some people are antisemitic.

White's stance involves some sophistry, because he pretends that there is no ambiguity to "understanding," even though the term can obviously refer to a purely intellectual process that results in a rational explanation, or to an emotional process that results in sympathy.

In any case, White proceeds to list "a number of reasons" for antisemitism - which of course means that racism against other groups, like blacks or Muslims, could also be understood as having "reasons"... So would White accept the notion that the attacks of 9/11 provide a "reason" for anti-Muslim sentiments?

Would White accept the ultimately racist notion that the actions of some members of a group somehow provide “reasons” for prejudice and discrimination against the group as a whole?

What is sure is that when it comes to antisemitism, White thinks that "reason" number one is, unsurprisingly, "the state of Israel, its ideology of racial supremacy and its subsequent crimes committed against the Palestinians. It is because Zionists have always sought to equate their colonial project with Judaism that some misguidedly respond to what they see on their televisions with attacks on Jews or Jewish property."

These few lines illustrate why White has been repeatedly suspected of antisemitism, and they also illustrate why he apparently doesn't quite understand the reason for such accusations. To begin with, White seems to believe that if he says Israel has an "ideology of racial supremacy," he is stating an obvious fact, and this of course implies that he believes that Jews define themselves as a "race"... Indeed, White also relies on this notion in order to justify his claim that Israel is guilty of practicing "apartheid."

If the Cambridge literature graduate had bothered to consult even the most basic information on the question if Jews consider themselves a "race," he would have found out after just reading a few lines on a site like "Judaism 101" that this is a very thorny issue. 

Likewise, it wouldn't take more than a few minutes of research to realize that the claim that "Zionists have always sought to equate their colonial project with Judaism" is rather shaky - has Ben White ever bothered to have a look at the writings of Theodor Herzl?

It is also rather revealing that White argues that there isn't anything antisemitic about comparing Israel with the Nazis. White feels that such comparisons are merely "unwise and unsound, since the Israelis have not (at the time of going to press) exterminated in a systematic fashion an enormous percentage of the Palestinians. Cold-blooded killings, beatings, house demolitions, vandalism, occupation, military assaults, and two historical pushes at ethnic cleansing--yes. Full fledged genocide--no."

In other words: it's just a teeny weeny bit too early to compare the Israeli government with the Nazis - or at least it was a teeny weeny bit too early in mid-June 2002, "at the time of going to press," but at any moment, this comparison can become appropriate.

I'm not quite sure if it is amusing or sad that currently, Ben White has a piece posted on a blog that claims to be "the UK's most popular left-of-centre politics blog," where he holds forth about "Smearing opponents as anti-semitic." If you want to know what "anti-Zionist" martyrdom is, Ben White can tell you all about it (please have your Kleenex ready):

A favourite tactic of die-hard defenders of Israel is to smear critics of the country's policies through guilt by association, lies, and decontextualised quotations. I have come to know this latter strategy quite well. Based on short extracts, or even a single sentence, from two out of the 100 plus articles I've published, I have been accused of 'understanding anti-semitism' and 'defending' Iranian President Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial."

Perhaps Ben White really doesn't understand why people accuse him of antisemitic sentiments, and perhaps he really doesn't understand that it is quite hard to explain how an intelligent young man with an excellent university education would peddle the most simple-minded views about Israel and Zionism and still claim that all he is doing is criticizing Israel's policies. And perhaps he really hasn't noticed that he complains so often about "decontextualisation" when he is criticized or when the Palestinians appear in an unfavorable light, but somehow, when he writes about Israel and Zionism, "decontextualisation" is the name of his game...

Ben White claims that all he wants is "equality for Palestinians," but the kind of "equality" he has in mind means that the Palestinians always had and still have the right to prevent the Jews from claiming a part of their ancient homeland to establish a state of their own. Two states for two people is not the kind of equality Ben White is fighting for - to be sure, White doesn't seem to have a problem with Palestinian nationalism,  but it is plain enough that when it comes to Zionism, he is transfixed by the idea that Zionism must be denounced as apartheid and racism. This is his credo, and everything he encounters and writes about is made to fit his belief system.

It is therefore hardly surprising that Ben White can always be counted on when it comes to downplaying Islamist and Jihadist hatred against Jews.

One of the most fascinating examples of White's modus operandi - and the astonishing confidence with which he substitutes ideology for knowledge when writing about a subject - is an ambitious review of a book on "Global Jihad" authored by Patrick Sookhdeo, who, it should be noted, has a Ph.D in Islamic Studies. It arguably takes quite a bit of chutzpah for somebody with a BA in English Literature to conclude that the book should be criticized due to its "simplification or misrepresentation of Islamic theology." 

In a response to White's review, David Zeidan, who has a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion, reveals masterfully and in great detail how rigidly White refuses to acknowledge any facts or information that don't fit his world view.  

While Ben White's writing may at first seem intellectually sophisticated, his world view and his ideology are ultimately shaped by a simple formula: the actions and views of Palestinians, Muslims, and everybody who opposes Israel must always be carefully analyzed, understood and explained in the relevant context; by contrast, everything that has to do with Israel and Zionism can always be "essentialized" and presented in terms of a limited number of immutable factors like Israel's "ideology of racial supremacy," the Zionists' "colonial project" and the resulting "crimes committed against the Palestinians."

The views espoused by Ben White thus confirm the interesting analysis by Professor Shimoni who emphasized that "apartheid has become one of the world's most potent defamatory code-words. Hence those who a-priori seek fatally to stigmatize Israel grasp it with alacrity as a weapon in the struggle to end its existence as a Jewish state. In a sense, the Israel=apartheid fallacy can serve as a litmus test for distinguishing between those who are hostile to Israel's very existence and those who are conscientious critics of the policies and actions of  Israel’s governments and public."