Defending Israel

A piece in the South African Times defends Israel against charges of apartheid, described in a July 27 article in the paper.

Meanwhile, the History News Network offers an analysis of why Israel is so unpopular in the world:

How could this have happened to a country that is the Middle East’s only thriving democracy and enjoys a remarkably robust economy that has spawned some 1000 startup high tech companies, for example, second only to the U.S.? How, in short, would you go about making the world hate Israel?

This is how you would accomplish that objective if you were an enemy of Israel:

Even after 60 years of its existence, you question the fundamental right of Israel to even exist and regularly, though falsely, condemn it for being created “illegally”—through the “theft” of Palestinian lands and property—and thus decide, because of its original sin, it has no “right to exist.” You accuse the government of a “brutal,” illegal “occupation” of Palestinian lands, especially Gaza and the West Bank (but for many, all of Israel), of being a “colonial settler state,” a Zionist “regime” or “project,” a land-hungry nation, a usurper of property that was lived on and owned by a Palestinian “people” “from time immemorial.”

You describe the very existence of the country as being the “greatest threat to world peace,” the core cause of all Muslim anger toward the West, the root of all of the Palestinians’ suffering and economic plight…

The author, Richard L. Cravatts, is working on a book about “the world-wide assault on Israel taking place on college campuses.”