A Carefully Chosen Word
How Jimmy Carter provided the Hamas-hugging Left with a vile talking point
One of the anti-Zionist, i.e. antisemitic, Left’s favorite characterizations of the Israel is apartheid state—referring, of course, to white-ruled South Africa, and intended to equate the Jewish state with one of the worst racist regimes in modern history.
The English language is prodigal in its adoption of words from other languages, which is a good thing in general but unfortunate in this case. Apartheid comes from Afrikaans, a Dutch dialect spoken by the “white tribe”: South Africans of Dutch descent. (Another Afrikaans word now found in dictionaries of English is trek.) The literal meaning of apartheid is “apartness,” and in old South Africa it referred to something quite specific: that country’s official regime of racial classification, discrimination, and segregation. Its current status in English is essentially that of a slur, usually directed against Israel.
It should not be necessary to point out that the complex relationship between the Jews of Israel and the Palestinian Arabs has nothing to do with apartheid. Some twenty percent of Israelis are in fact Palestinian Arabs, and they are citizens with full civil rights. As for Gaza and the West Bank, it’s true enough that a form of segregation prevails—but that’s the way the Arabs want it. They are, for instance, utterly intolerant of the Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Apartness from the Jews—indeed, a total absence of Jews—is the fundamental principle of Palestinian nationalism.
But it turns out that there’s a benign explanation for the Left’s indictment of Israel as an apartheid state: The charge originated with former president Jimmy Carter, whose 2006 book on the Arab/Israeli conflict used apartheid in its title. And Jimmy Carter, of course, is a man whose virtue, rectitude, and all-around wonderfulness armors him against allegations of antisemitism. So was I rather haughtily informed today by one of the comrades.
In his telling, the word apartheid was carefully, judiciously chosen and calibrated “to avoid specific accusations of racism against the government of Israel.” Good to know! But how all that judicious calibration led Carter to select a word charged with a history of vile racism was not at all made clear, despite a large serving of word salad (see below). True, Carter piously informed Jews that his choice of word was merely descriptive and in no way accusatory. But when one considers the size and scope of the vocabulary of English, it does seem odd that Carter hit upon that particular word.
Or perhaps not so odd. Jimmy Carter is no friend of the Jews, besides being a nasty piece of work in general. He put the full responsibility for “peace” on Israel, and greatly resented the Israeli government’s disinclination to toe the line. So when he came to write his book, it’s plausible to think that sheer malice moved him to title it Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Not too evenhanded, that title—though I’m prepared to believe that yes, the word apartheid was carefully chosen, all right.
In any case, the Hamas-hugging campus activists who now revile Israel as an apartheid state that got what was coming on October 7 can hardly be described as judicious calibrators. They’re retailing the false and vicious lie that the Jewish state is a racist settler-colonial abomination—and they’re taking their cue from one of the worst presidents that America has ever had, though Joe Biden is certainly giving Jimmy Carter a run for his money.