Terry Hansen

Grafton

In response to the accusation of Israeli apartheid, Governor Josh Shapiro recently asserted: “We’ve got to be acknowledging that language matters here. That words matter and that we’ve got to use words that are actually rooted in reality and are able to bring the temperature down.”

Notably, in 2021, two former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa, Ilan Baruch and Alon Liel, co-authored an op-ed concluding that Israel has indeed become an apartheid state.

They cited the two-tiered legal system in the West Bank, illegal settlements, the demolition of homes and the forcing of Palestinians to live on smaller and smaller tracts of land.

For these former ambassadors, this forced displacement is reminiscent of the bantustan project in apartheid South Africa, in which Black South Africans were forcibly relocated onto enclaves called homelands.

They conclude: “Just as the world joined the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, it is time for the world to take decisive diplomatic action in our case as well and work towards building a future of equality, dignity and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

Baruch and Liel have modeled the precise, reality-based language Shapiro advocated. Why, then, is it so rarely used in mainstream American media or the halls of Congress? Can we truly expect to lower the temperature in a context in which the vast majority of Palestinians do not have basic civil rights?