Two items in today’s news on apartheid. In “It’s Time for Some Israel Real Talk,” in The American Prospect, Jaclyn Friedman states that she loves Israel and endorses Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions targeted at the occupation.

I believe that “both sides” have committed atrocities, but that the current balance of power is so lopsided that the word “apartheid” is appropriate. (I didn’t believe that last part until I saw it with my own eyes.)

Alana Goodman reports for the Washington Free Beacon on a 2010 speech by Chuck Hagel at Rutgers:

Kenneth Wagner, who attended the 2010 speech while a Rutgers University law student, provided the Washington Free Beacon with an email he sent during the event to a contact at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The email is time-stamped April 9, 2010, at 11:37 AM. “I am sitting in a lecture by Chuck Hagel at Rutgers,” Wagner wrote in the email. “He basically said that Israel has violated every UN resolution since 1967, that Israel has violated its agreements with the quartet, that it was risking becoming an apartheid state if it didn’t allow the Palestinians to form a state. He said that the settlements were getting close to the point where a contiguous Palestinian state would be impossible.” “He said that he [thought] that Netanyahu was a radical and that even [former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi] Livni, who was hard nosed thought he was too radical and so wouldn’t join in a coalition [government] with him. … He said that Hamas has to be brought in to any peace negotiation,” Wagner wrote.

It is important to use the word “apartheid” for the West Bank because it is accurate and descriptive. As Friedman says, if you have eyes in your head and go there, you see apartheid. And remember: Jimmy Carter was smeared for using the word apartheid in a book title in 2006… Charney Bromberg said, it’s apartheid, three years ago at Columbia… and the Nation published a piece called “Apartheid on Steroids,” by Israel supporter Stephen Robert 2 years ago.