Unfortunately, Dinesh D’Souza Gets Israel Wrong in Acclaimed Debate with Bill Ayers

After their anticipated debate at Dartmouth College, Dinesh D’Souza and Bill Ayers took questions from the audience.

D’Souza’s answer to an audience member’s question about Israel was unfortunate (see 1:31:31 of the debate).

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The audience member libeled Israel as an apartheid state, accused it of codifying into law discrimination against Arabs, then asked the debaters why the United States supports such a country.

The answer to this question is obvious.

Israel is not an apartheid state.

More than 1 million Arabs live in Israel and have full civil rights. Arabs constitute 10 percent of the Israeli parliament, and one sits on the Israeli Supreme Court. Arabs make up a large portion of the student population at elite Israeli universities where Arabs teach and have full tenure. The only place where Arabs have freedom of speech and association is in Israel.

Hundreds of gay Palestinian Arabs have actually fled to Israel because of fear for their lives due to their sexual orientation.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Abbas states openly that not a single Jew will be allowed in a future Palestinian state. In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive. In Iran gays are hanged. There is plenty of apartheid in the Middle East, but it is not happening in Israel.

But did D’Souza mention any of this? Nope.

Instead, he tacitly agreed that Israel is an apartheid state by not challenging that accusation in his answer, and ranting on about how much different Israel is than the United States. He then spoke about how all countries are flawed, saying, “We also recognize we live in a big world, and in a big world, we make allies with people, some of whom we agree with 100%, and some of whom we agree with 5%. Why? Because foreign policy is based on the principle of the lesser evil. And you sometimes ally even with the bad guy to get rid of the worse guy.” Wow.

The implication clearly being that Israel is a bad guy, but, hey, we allied with Joseph Stalin, too.

He then stated, “We have to recognize that Israel’s fate—certainly over the last 50 years—is bound up with ours, for better or worse, so, ya know, it’s a tough spot. I don’t agree with everything Israel does. I’m not saying we should be giving billions in aid to Israel, or Egypt for that matter,” indicating that Israel is a liability for the United States.

The only defense D’Souza offered for Israel is that it is an ally of the United States and an outpost of western ideals.

It’s a shame, because Israel is currently facing unprecedented pressure. Iran openly declares its intentions to annihilate the Jewish state, while it races towards a nuclear weapon; Israel’s neighbors, Syria and Egypt, are consumed with utter violence and chaos; and Hamas continues to launch rockets against Israel from the southern border, while Hezbollah amasses rockets in the north. Israel’s legitimacy is under constant attack around the world by those who wish to isolate it as a unique menace, undeserving of normal relations.

With a large college audience, and facing an open Israel hater and supporter of the BDS movement in Bill Ayers—who of course agreed with the questioner, and condemned Israel as an apartheid State–D’Souza had a great opportunity to explain why morality compels one to support the state of Israel. D’Souza had a great opportunity to push back against the atrocious lie that Israel is an apartheid state, similar to racist South Africa. He did not do that.

Well, it is true that Israel is a Jewish state, and therefore owned and operated by Jews, with preferences for Jews. A Christian, even a Jewish Christian, has to sit in the back seat. Ditto, the Muslims. There is an awkward tension between the Zionists and a kind of quasi-Sanhedrin, between a secular law, which however, gives pride of place to the Law. Jews are supreme as WASPs were supreme in the USA a hundred years ago.

My objection to Arab complaints is, so what? In the Arab as historically and even today ,in all Muslim states there IS apartheid, where. non-Arabs, and certainly non -Muslims take a back seat if they are allowed to ride the bus at all. Likewise, in Turkey, the Turks are one top. At bottom, Israel is hated not because Arabs, and Muslims don’t have equality, but because their enemies hate the very thought of being ruled by Jews. Much as a hundred years ago, white men might have been revolted by the idea of other white men subject to the rule of an African ruler.

The level of ignorance of the state of the law, of rights, of Arab citizens and of governance in Isreal is appaling in the United States, in the U.S. political class, and apparently among some conservatives and even some who rightly support and defend Israel.

There is an Arab-Israeli jurist-citizen on the Supreme Court of Israel. Where is there anyting even remotely approaching that level of Jewish-Arab comity in any Arab or Middle East country - outside of Israel? No place, that’s where.

Israel is officially a place any Jewish person can consider their “homeland” and is allowed to immigrate to. But no non-Jew in Israel in Israel is subject to Jewish religious law and there is complete freedom of religion in Irael.

In “east Jerusalem” Israel has consistently had a vastly more respectful stance with regard to Muslim religious places than Jews were ever permitted when Jordan controlled Jerusalem.

Isreal has far vastly less problem with Arabs living peacefully within Israel as Israeli citizens, or with peaceful Arabs traveling in and out of Israel for work than does ANY Arab state have with Jews anywhere.

All the Jews did was establish a very small area where they could no longer be dominated and oppressed. It would have remained its original small size and contained very few Arabs if it had been left alone. It would not have even held Jerusalem to itself, leaving it divided between eastern and western sides. Israel’s borders grew and grew in a way that its Arab population grew, because the Arab’s political leaders wanted to drive the Jews into the sea, and they failed, and as they failed Israel’s need for a more secure physical position grew as well. The “west bank” is “occupied” because the Arab leaders in the area and foreign Arabs supporting them forever have wanted to undo all the Arab military defeats by Israel and undo the state of Israel altogther. If they did not really want an Israeli “occupation” of the west bank, they could have left tiny insercure Israel in peace since 1948.

The “apartied” charge against Israel denies the cause of a condition that results from the Arabs own role, mistakes and errors from the beginning, in trying to “drive the Jews into the sea”.

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