It is not common for the Hasbara machine, disseminating Israeli state propaganda, to be exposed in such a way. As if by coincidence, two expatriate South African Jews, with a bit of a liberal reputation, came out of retirement to produce almost identical pieces for the press, rejecting the analogy between Israel and apartheid. That both have chosen to do that at the same time, using the same arguments and examples, raises an obvious suspicion that they speak from an identical script which looks as if it was produced by officials in the Israeli Ministry against Delegitimisation.

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Having ignored the existence of refugees, Goldstone and Pogrund proceed conveniently to forget other components of the situation. Take settlers. Who? Good question. In their version of reality, the 1967 occupation is a temporary security measure that would end with successful negotiations. That the ‘peace process’ has served to entrench Israeli control over the territories, and has resulted in hundreds of settlements and hundreds of thousands of settlers, products of hundred billion US dollars in investment, is not something of which they seem aware. Goldstone, for example, tells us that the ‘security fence’, AKA the ‘apartheid wall’, aims to prevent terrorist attacks. If so, why is it not built on the Green Line, to separate Israel from the territories? Why is it constructed to include maximum land and settlers but exclude as many of the local as possible? Why does investment in settlements, roads, housing and infrastructure continue, making negotiations (over the ever-shrinking remaining land) increasingly meaningless? How long can this situation be regarded as ‘temporary’, when it has lasted longer than apartheid did, and shows no signs of coming to an end? On the contrary, it continues to expand and shape not only what is happening in the territories but also in Israel ‘proper’, thus making the distinction between the two irrelevant.

Ran Greenstein of JNews Blog.