An Arab Muslim woman works as a bus driver in Tel Aviv. She earns around $3K monthly, says she is treated with respect, and that the Israeli company considers her part of the family. Now try to imagine a Jewish woman working as a bus driver in Cairo.
Haifa is on the "front line" in any action in the north but this blog looks at life in the shadow of danger to all of Israel
Thursday, December 4, 2025
Answering the Libels (Part 2)
The Ethnostate Libel
This libel insists that Israel is an "ethnostate," defined by
racial exclusion and supremacist intent — a Jewish version of apartheid South
Africa or Nazi Germany. It ignores that Israel is a civic democracy, home to
over two million Arab citizens, alongside Druze, Circassians, and others, with
full voting rights, legal protections, and representation in parliament, the
courts, and civil society.
Like all nation-states, Israel prioritizes the self-determination of a
particular people — in this case, the Jews — but it does so without negating
the civil equality of others. The libel collapses the distinction between
ethnic self-determination and racial supremacy, and in doing so, it reframes
the very concept of a Jewish state as inherently immoral. Its aim is not
critique — it is the delegitimization of Jewish nationhood.
The Apartheid
Libel
The apartheid libel accuses Israel of operating a racialized system of
segregation akin to white South Africa, with Jews as the ruling caste and
Palestinians as a disenfranchised underclass. This comparison is both false and
inflammatory. It ignores the distinction between Arab citizens of Israel — who
enjoy equal legal rights — and Palestinians in disputed or occupied
territories, whose political status is shaped by a long, complex conflict with
competing national claims.
This libel treats security infrastructure (checkpoints, the security
barrier, restricted zones) — built in response to decades of terrorism — as
evidence of racial hatred rather than defense policy. It inverts causality,
blaming Jewish fear and survival mechanisms as the origin of Palestinian
suffering, and renders Jewish self-defense as aggression. The apartheid libel
is not aimed at reform. It is aimed at erasure.
Learn more:
§ The Apartheid Myth –
HonestReporting
A short but powerful resource breaking down why the term
“apartheid” is false and misleading when applied to Israel.
§ Apartheid and the
Media’s Complicity in a Modern-Day Libel – CAMERA
Examines how major news outlets amplify the apartheid
narrative without context or fact-checking, effectively spreading a modern
blood libel.
The Organ & Skin Theft Libel
This
libel revives perhaps the oldest and most lurid antisemitic myth: that Jews
murder the innocent and profit from their bodies. Modernized for today’s
conflicts, it accuses Israeli forces of harvesting Palestinian organs,
trafficking body parts, or — in its most grotesque version — tanning
Palestinian skin. These claims, while entirely baseless, are circulated with
solemn intensity by academics, activists, and state actors.
These
narratives are not just lies — they are ritualistic reenactments of ancient
fantasies. They reduce Jews to archetypes of demonic cruelty. And they serve
one purpose: to create an emotional environment in which Jewish lives are not
only unworthy of empathy, but deserving of vengeance.
Learn more:
§ The Blood Libel That
Won’t Quit – Tablet Magazine
A deep dive into the history and durability of the organ
theft accusation, tracing its evolution from the 2009 Aftonbladet scandal
to its viral afterlife on social media.
Answering the Libels (Part 1)
The Colonizer Libel
The colonizer libel asserts that Zionism is a form of settler-colonialism
— that Jews are foreign invaders in a land to which they have no organic
connection. This libel erases the continuous, indigenous presence of Jews in
the Land of Israel for millennia, the historic trauma of exile, and the deeply
rooted religious and cultural longing for return that has animated Jewish
thought, prayer, and life for two thousand years.
By recasting Jews as European colonists rather than a dispersed people
reclaiming ancestral land, this libel turns Jewish history inside out. It
treats the Jewish return not as decolonization — which it is — but as
occupation. The goal is not to critique Israeli policy; it is to de-indigenize
Jews, severing their historical legitimacy and recasting their very presence as
a crime.
Learn more:
a) Keep Digging: How
Archaeology Debunks the “Israel as Colonizer” Libel – HonestReporting
b) UN Called Out: Natasha Hausdorff
Exposes Libel Against Israel – YouTube
The Genocide Libel
The genocide libel accuses Israel of systematically attempting to
annihilate the Palestinian people — a charge that is grotesquely false and
historically obscene. It exploits the vocabulary of Jewish trauma to reverse
moral polarity, casting Jews as Nazis and Palestinian violence as resistance.
This libel is not grounded in demography, fact, or law — Palestinian
populations in both Gaza and the West Bank have steadily grown. It is grounded
in the deliberate inversion of Holocaust memory.
By accusing Jews of genocide, the libel does two things: it erases Jewish
victimhood (including ongoing Israeli civilian deaths) and reimagines Jewish
survival as mass murder. It is an emotional and symbolic assault designed to
place Israel — and by extension, Zionism — beyond the bounds of redemption,
diplomacy, or peace.
Learn more:
§ Isn’t There a Genocide of Palestinians? –
Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)
§ Amnesty’s Disgraceful
Genocide Slander Against Israel Disqualifies the Group – JNS