Acknowledgments
Map
Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1: The Beginning
Chapter 2: Freedom and War
Chapter 3: Inside the Green Line
Chapter 4: The Occupation
Chapter 5: What was Apartheid?
Chapter 6: Are They the Same?
Chapter 7: Comparing Israel and Apartheid South Africa
Chapter 8: The Critics (1)
Chapter 9: The Critics (2)
Chapter 10: Boycotts
Chapter 11: The Big Issues
Chapter 12: The Way Forward
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Benjamin Pogrund lives in Israel where he reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was the deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail, South Africa's leading anti-apartheid newspaper during the Apartheid era (which brought about the closure of the paper), then was with the Independent in London and The WorldPaper in Boston before moving to Jerusalem to foster dialogue. He has written for the Guardian (London), Haaretz (Tel Aviv), Facta (Tokyo) and others. In May 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Media Council in London on behalf of the Next Century Foundation, for encouraging understanding of the Middle East and war-torn areas of the world.
If you want an informed opinion about whether Israel is an
apartheid state. . . .Benjamin Pogrund is worth reading.
*The Citizen*
[Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in
Israel] . . . will be valuable to anyone who genuinely seeks an
understanding of the real situation on the ground, behind the
political rhetoric.
*South African Jewish Report*
At its best this book succeeds in providing valuable empirical
resources that will enable its readers to question the totalising
and distorted representations of the Israel-Palestine conflict that
the apartheid analogy requires. . . .Drawing Fire is . . . most
illuminating when it provides its readers with the information and
argument that helps us understand the current conflict and the
injustices to ordinary people that accompany it. . . .[In] spite of
the author’s own best intentions, he is clearly worried that the
occupation and settlement of Palestine is leading toward a
situation in which the apartheid analogy looks more persuasive. The
growth of a militant and loud anti-Arab racism within both the
Israeli polity and society is a product of occupation that does not
justify the apartheid analogy but may feed it if we are not
careful. There is plenty to chew on in this worthy book.
*Fathom*
[T]he book succeeds in his primary goal of showing that although
there are some broad similarities between apartheid and Israeli
reality, including the OPT, the term apartheid is simply not
applicable to the latter. . . .Pogrund’s book is an eloquent
statement of what some call 'liberal Zionism,' a humanistically
based philosophy that advocates a sovereign state for Palestinians
and equal rights for those with Israeli citizenship. . . .[T]he
book is valuable as a statement of both hope and reality: that
Israel retains the basis of a humanistically inclined country, that
it is not an 'apartheid state,' and as an explication of what both
Zionism and Israeli reality are and are not.
*Palestine-Israel Journal*
This is an essential read for everyone who wants to persuasively
confront the BDS movement.
*Jewish Book Council*
What lends credence to Pogrund’s book are his impeccable
anti-apartheid credentials…. From the late 1950s through the
mid-1980s, a period covering the heyday of apartheid, he emerged as
one of the most persistent and courageous journalists to expose the
iniquities of that system, including the brutal suppression of
political dissent by those it targeted…. Although drawing parallels
between apartheid-era South Africa and modern-day Israel is
damaging and misleading, Pogrund is among those who believe that
Israelis and Palestinians can still learn from how South Africans
successfully negotiated an end to apartheid and made a peaceful
transition to non-racial democracy.
*Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs*
Benjamin Pogrund, a foremost journalist in the struggle against
apartheid and in more recent years an ardent worker for peace and
social concern in Israel, brings to this study peerless
qualifications for comparing the controversial historical
experience of South Africa and Israel. With a combination of
compassion, analytical insight, and judicious balance he unravels
the welter of crass ignorance and malevolence that bedevils the
contemporary polemic.
*Prof. Gideon Shimoni, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem*
A serious, thoughtful, engaging and timely intervention amidst a
flood of ahistorical and tendentious nonsense. Benjamin Pogrund, a
renowned journalist, knows both Israel and Apartheid South Africa
well. Brutally honest, he exposes crude and simplistic analogies
while not shying away from the harshness of Israeli rule in the
occupied territories. A must for those with an interest in
comparative analysis.
*Prof. Milton Shain, University of Cape Town*
On several lecture tours to South Africa with Benjamin Pogrund I
have listened to him say there is no comparison between apartheid
and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Although telling the truth
can draw fire, he tells the truth. This book is about truth.
*Bassem Eid, Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group*
This enquiry harshly condemns Israel’s settlement policy and
oppressive practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories yet
places them outside the context of apartheid, showing how apartheid
allegations have often been cynically used to delegitimize Israel’s
very right to exist. Benjamin Pogrund, with skillful balance and
painful honesty, demonstrates the complexity of the issues of war,
occupation, terrorism, settlements, discrimination and the human
tragedy of two peoples woven into the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
*Prof. Frances Raday, Concord Research Center for Integration of
International Law in Israel*
Challenging. Provocative. Well argued. Takes no prisoners. Only the
invincibly ignorant will continue to equate Israel and apartheid
South Africa after reading this book. Benjamin Pogrund is uniquely
placed to make the comparison. This is no whitewash and Israel is
depicted fully, warts and all. But so is South Africa in the brutal
decades of apartheid - to its disadvantage in every respect.
*Robin Knight, US News & World Report, Time*
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