BACKGROUND

Recent years have seen a global rise in antisemitism, including campaigns questioning Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish democratic state. One such campaign appropriates the term “apartheid” from its historical South African context with the goal of defaming and isolating Israel by portraying it as a racist entity.

In the past year alone, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International released reports accusing Israel of “apartheid,” and the UN Human Rights Council has established a “Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and in Israel” for the same purpose. Many prominent world leaders from across the ideological spectrum have vocally condemned these efforts, recognizing their politicized and malicious singling out of Israel for unfair opprobrium. Also, the campaign has fueled antisemitism worldwide, with events such as “Israeli Apartheid Week” inciting hatred against Jewish college students from Cape Town to Los Angeles.

Furthermore, the attempts to link South Africa’s past system of institutionalized racial segregation to the nuanced complexities of contemporary Israeli-Palestinian relations debase history and trivialize the unique suffering true South African “apartheid” victims endured.

Join us on Thursday, June 30th starting at 9:00 am EST for an online forum discussing what must be done to restore the “apartheid” term to its proper context and delegitimize its use in discourse about a conflict to which it has no relevance.