'Don't compare disengagement to end of apartheid'
By SAM SER

Don't try to compare the disengagement plan with the end of apartheid in South Africa, according to South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein.

"Anyone who lived under apartheid in South Africa would know there is no analogy," he told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview.

Goldstein said although a comparison to apartheid has long been a staple of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian propaganda, it has not stood up to scrutiny.

"If anything, the African National Congress is like Israel, because Israel has tried to negotiate with Arab governments while, by contrast, the National Party was not prepared to negotiate with the ANC," he said.

Goldstein said the analogy has not even taken hold in South Africa, despite the anti-Israel demonstrations at the United Nations-sponsored World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban in 2001.

He said the conference actually "marked a turning point to the opposite, because it was so [extreme] that people started shying away." Anti-Semitism in South Africa, he added, has been "the lowest in the Jewish world."

Regarding the disengagement plan, Goldstein said he "recognized the pain of the episode," adding that he was concerned about the sharpness of the debate in Israel over the plan and the possibility of violence because of that debate.

"Jewish unity and dignity of debate are of supreme importance," he said. "Derech eretz and respect are vital to ensure that disengagement from the land does not become disengagement from one another."

Source: Jerusalem Post, Jul. 13, 2005

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