I demolished James Zogby's "Israel is Apartheid" arguments on Twitter so thoroughly, he blocked me

James Zogby is the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, Managing Director of Zogby Research Service which provides polling services, a visiting professor at New York University Abu Dhabi, and a former member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee. He is a leading anti-Israel voice in the media and social media.

On Saturday, he tweeted a link to Daniel Levy warning about Israel's reputation, saying, "It may be uncomfortable to some to hear the inescapable truth that Israel is an Apartheid State. The truth is often uncomfortable. And btw, it’s not antiSemitic to call Israel Apartheid - the problem is w/ Israeli behavior."

I responded with a thread:

I've looked at the actual legal definition of apartheid. Those accusing Israel of apartheid are knowingly lying. And I've shown this. No one has found any holes in my arguments.

Falsely accusing Israel of apartheid using made up definitions is indeed antisemitism.

And if you look at the history of the apartheid libel, it is blindingly obvious that the accusation came first, and the fake legal arguments were created after the fact to justify the lie.

B'Tselem's definition was absurd - it could prove that JEWS were victims of apartheid.

So HRW tried, very hard, to combine definitions from the Rome Statute with the ICERD to make it look like Israel was guilty of apartheid. But they ignored the part of ICERD that exonerates Israel. It was a conscious lie, and every legal scholar knows it. 

 

Amnesty copied HRW's argument but tried to strengthen it by adding a 1971 case that they pretended is about apartheid - but it isn't. 

It is clear: they all know they are wrong but they want to accuse Israel so much they MADE UP INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

But even worse, in these NGOs' Jew-hating zeal, they want to make Israel look uniquely guilty. So the cases of real apartheid in the world, like Lebanese treatment of Palestinians, or Chinese of Uyghurs, others - are shunted aside and not given that label. Real victims suffer. 

When you look at all the evidence and history (the Soviets made up the "Israel is apartheid" accusation originally) the desire to paint Israel with the label of apartheid has NOTHING to do with real facts, and everything to do with a desire to demonize the Jewish state. This is antisemitism, plain and simple. 

My response received over 500 "Likes" and Zogby finally felt he could no longer ignore it, so he attempted to prove that, yes, Israel really is guilty of apartheid:

1. It’s apartheid when when Israel has two systems of law - one for Arabs & one for Jews; when they’ve expelled 750,000 from their homes & refuse to let them go back to their properties; when they’ve demolished 500 Palestinian villages, seized their land & businesses;…  

To which I immediately responded:

Israel doesn't have two systems of law for citizens. 

And what happened in 1948 was a war for survival, not apartheid. 

But you know that. And lie anyway.

 And, of course, by your definition every Arab country that expelled nearly all of their Jews are guilty of apartheid.

Not my definition - YOURS.

Trying to shoehorn a new definition of the term to fit Israel only is indeed antisemitic.

He responded:

 It was a deliberate planned expulsion to remove Arabs from the Galilee, the coastal cites and areas around Jerusalem. Ben Gurion’s letters, Moshe Sharret’s diaries, & others have testified to this fact. & what they did afterwards to those whom they expelled made the intent clear

To which I said:

 Then why are there still two million Arabs in Israel? If there was a policy to expel them, what is taking Israel so long?

And how does that relate to the LEGAL DEFINITION OF APARTHEID? I am giving a legal argument, you are throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.

He doubled down:

2…when they have laws that provide that the Arab land they’ve seized & turned over to Jews can never be sold to Arabs; when they continue to seize Palestinian land to build Jewish-only housing & infrastructure, while Palestinians struggle to get permits to build;…

3…when any Jew can immigrate & become a citizen while descendants of those who were expelled cannot; when Israel has multiple laws & policies in place to control what they call the “demographic problem” - that is limiting or controlling the growth of the non-Jewish population…

4. These policies & laws that favor the rights of one group at the expense of Palestinians , constitutes Apartheid. You may not like it, but don’t deny it. Have you no regard for the humanity of Palestinians; no compassion for the discriminatory polices to which they subjected?

But then he moved the goalposts:

5. The problem isn’t our calling Israeli behaviors Apartheid. To try to make that the issue is an effort to deflect. The problem is Israel’s behavior - that’s what must change. And stop resorting to calling antiSemitic anyone who criticizes Israel & defends Palestinian rights.

Zogby's entire argument, repeated at least three times, was "Israel is apartheid!" Yet when challenged, he changed it  to "Don't get hung up on the precise definition of apartheid!"

So I called him on it:

No, I am saying when Amnesty or HRW claims Israel is guilty of apartheid, they are lying because it has a specific definition.  You know that I am right. Which is why you are changing the subject.

By your argument, every Arab state is guilty of apartheid, because they define themselves as Arab and discriminate against non-Arabs for citizenship. 

Tell me, are they guilty of apartheid or not? And why not?

You won't answer because you want to say ONLY Jews are guilty.

Yes, it is antisemitic to say that the Jewish people do not have the right to self-determination. It is antisemitic to apply terms like "apartheid" ONLY to the Jewish state. It is antisemitic to have one standard for the world and another for Israel. 

This thread proves it.

James Zogby, the great intellectual defender of Arabs and highly regarded figure in Democratic Party politics, responded....by blocking me on Twitter.

In the end, even the most articulate critics of Israel and defenders of Palestinian intransigence know that they are using their intellectual gifts not in the service of truth but for lies.  They assume that their ability to use propaganda methods and gaslighting is the same as real arguments. (For their antisemitic fans, it actually is.)  

When their hypocrisy is clearly called out, outside their usual bubble, they try to reframe their arguments to what they think is more solid ground. 

When called on that, they are left with only one recourse: shutting down the discussion. 

When an anonymous blogger can so thoroughly dismantle the arguments of one of America's leading Arab intellectuals in the constrained format of Twitter, it shows that the anti-Israel side has no argument to begin with. 

Their running away from debate proves that they know it, too.

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The silence of Jeremy Ben Ami

J-Street never tires of claiming to be supportive of a two-state solution, a position that it falsely claims is not the position of American Zionist organizations.

On Friday, I posted a video showing that a speaker at the recent J-Street conference, during a panel discussion on the future of liberal Zionism, advocated for the ending of the Jewish state and instead saying that Jews should be a "protected minority" in their homeland.



The speaker, former MK Marcia Freedman, is a member of J-Street's advisory panel.

The moderator of the panel, J Street co-founder Daniel Levy, did not challenge Freedman for advocating what is in complete opposition to what J-Street claims its position is. None of the other panelists showed any anger at the idea of the destruction of Israel that Freedman was pushing.

Since then, over 12,000 people have viewed the video - far more people than attended the conference itself. Despite repeated tweets to J-Street leaders or other panelists like Peter Beinart, not one has distanced themselves from Freedman's statements. (J-Street's synopsis of the panel skips Freedman's participation altogether.)

For every statement made by real Zionists to defend Israel - whether it is from terror or Iran - J-Street has forcefully come out in opposition. But J-Street's media machine does not seem to spend any time defending Israel's existence from attacks by people like Freedman or groups like "Jewish Voice for Peace."

Why not?

Perhaps it is because J-Street's commitment to Israel's existence is far more tenuous than they pretend when they do their fundraising and lobbying. After all, this same Daniel Levy who moderated the panel is on the record as saying that if Arab states refuse to accept Israel, "then Israel really ain't a very good idea." Which sounds a lot like Marcia Freedman.

J-Street complains loudly that it is not being accepted by mainstream Jewish and Zionist organizations. This episode is one good example of why that is. J-Street, despite claiming to be pro-Israel, has yet to defend Israel's position against those that want to see it destroyed - even within its own conference. I have shown that founder Jeremy Ben-Ami's Twitter timeline has not once defended Israel's existence against attacks from its left.

Which means that its "pro-Israel" stance is really a cover for its truly anti-Israel message.

Over the past couple of months, we've heard more praise of Israel from the EU than from J-Street. That ought to tell you something.

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