(Crossposted at Jewish Voice for Peace blog Muzzlewatch)

American Muslims for Palestine launched an ad campaign this week on San Francisco buses condemning Israeli apartheid. Predictably, local branches of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council, immediately issued a statement in effect calling the ad hate speech for using the word ‘apartheid’. They have called on “all civic, ethnic and religious leaders who oppose bigoted lies and demonization to exercise their constitutional rights by condemning these inflammatory advertisements.”

Below is a line by line reading of their media statement.

First, it’s hard to know if the people who wrote this press release actually believe what they wrote. The points they make against the ad are so off the mark, and often offensive, it’s hard to believe anyone could write them sincerely. (I’m deleting the names on the release because I don’t think it’s fair to blame them. I think people at the top should be held accountable for such nonsense.)

The release header:

For Immediate Release: May 9, 2013 Contact: XX Communications Manager, Jewish Community Relations Council XX Regional Director, Anti-Defamation League Bay Area Jewish Community Condemns Deceptive Apartheid Ads

Saying something over and over again doesn’t make it true. The Bay Area JCRC, and local offices of the ADL and the AJC, are not synonymous with the “Bay Area Jewish Community.” In fact, while the Jewish Community Relations Council claims to represent Bay Area Jews, they won’t release the number or names of groups they represent. That certainly makes one wonder if the number is embarrassingly small. And it’s likely shrinking. There is no shortage of Jews around here, from a wide political spectrum, who would be appalled to be associated with an attack on a Muslim group for using a word that Israeli officials use regularly. (More on that later.)

Back to the press release: San Francisco – Today, another misleading advertisement appeared in San Francisco targeting one segment of our community in an attempt to sow division in our city. The Bay Area’s organized Jewish community strongly condemns the ad’s deceitful claim that Israel is an apartheid state. Placed by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the ad is morally reprehensible as it employs inflammatory rhetoric designed to delegitimize Israel’s very existence.

First we see the predictable talking point about initiatives that seek to pressure Israel to abide by international law seeking to “divide the community.” The irony of course, is that actually the community is pretty united, certainly increasingly so. On campuses, for example, over and over again you have a veritable rainbow of organizations backing these initiatives –including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, secular, Southeast Asian, Latino, African American and so forth, all united-increasingly opposed to “coalitions” of a handful of similar and non-diverse groups. (Kind of like those UN votes for Palestinian rights where nearly every country in the world stands on one side, and Israel, the US, Palau and Micronesia stand on the other.)

This is the gist—the JCRC and ADL claim the ad is essentially a hate crime designed to delegitimze Israel’s existence. This is the de facto talking point these days; it is intimidating language, used for lack of a good argument. It goes like this:

Q “Isn’t the occupation wrong?”-

A “You want to destroy Israel!”

Q “Doesn’t it seem unfair that 93% of the land in Israel is reserved for Jews only-what about the 25% of non-Jews?”

A “You want to destroy Israel!”

It doesn’t really matter what you say or do, the answer always is, “you REALLY want to destroy Israel” (or delegitimize it, which is supposed to be a roundabout way to destroy Israel). Dig a little deeper, and according to the 6 million dollar Israel Action Network, which openly spies on groups like Jewish Voice for Peace* and provides talking points and strategyto defenders of Israeli government policy, the aim of delegitimization is to “isolate Israel as a pariah state and reject the notion of a two-state solution.” If that were at all true, you’d think they’d go after the original two-state solution killers– the settlers, the Israeli government and Bibi Netanyahu whose party openly opposes a two-state solution. But nary a peep. Their harsh condemnations are reserved only for those trying to end Israel’s ongoing violations of international law.

Back to the next paragraph of the press release:

The ad’s false claims diminish the suffering of the millions of people who were truly subjected to apartheid. The term “apartheid” describes the systematic oppression of the racial majority population by South Africa’s minority through comprehensive racial discrimination. In sharp contrast to Apartheid South Africa, Israel is a diverse democratic country that affords equal political and civil rights to all its citizens.

Israeli human rights groups have much to say about the very unequal apportioning of rights to Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, but why bother to argue the obvious? Instead, let’s just take one of the organizations behind this press release that defines apartheid for South Africans (because really, how dare Archbishop Tutu do so). Michelle Goldberg wrote in The Daily Beast about the ADL’s moral standing on defining South Africa, describing the NYT’s Sasha Polakow Suransky’s (no relation) writing on the issue:

In the 1980s, at a time when Israel maintained close ties with South Africa, the ADL went on the attack against Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. As Sasha Polakow-Suransky reported in his recent book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, ADL National Director Nathan Perlmutter co-authored an article implying that the ANC was “totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel and anti-American.” The ADL sent spies into the American anti-apartheid movement, as well as other movements critical of right-wing American foreign policy. Eventually, the organization was surveilling much of the American left. In 1993, a California police raid on the offices of the ADL and one of its investigators yielded files on Greenpeace, the NAACP, Act Up, New Jewish Agenda, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and several Democratic politicians, among hundreds of others. The ADL eventually settled a class-action lawsuit brought by several of its targets.

The ADL apparently had no problem with Apartheid South Africa when it existed, but now they claim authority to dispute the many South Africans, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who decry the many similarities between that regime and Israel’s occupation.

The release, again:

We hope for a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and an end to the suffering on both sides. In stark contrast, AMP’s apartheid rhetoric is profoundly misleading, and harms good faith efforts toward a peaceful resolution based on two states for two people. Locally, the campaign promotes polarization and division among San Franciscans, who pride themselves on fostering strong inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations. (For a detailed report outlining AMP’s established record of using false, biased and offensively anti-Israel materials please visithttp://www.adl.org/israel-international/anti-israel-activity/profile-american-muslims-for.html) The Jewish Community has long stated our concern that the repeated appearance of offensive anti-Israel and anti-Muslim ads is making our public transit system a battleground for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While protected by the First Amendment, extremist language directed at any group has no place in our city. We call upon all civic, ethnic and religious leaders who oppose bigoted lies and demonization to exercise their constitutional rights by condemning these inflammatory advertisements.

Finally, and here’s the heart of the matter: if calling AMP’s use of the term “apartheid” is, as the release describes it, “misleading, inflammatory, divisive, offensive and bigoted,” where is the AJC’s, ADL’s and JCRC’s outrage about these Israelis who have used the same term to describe the occupation? Surely they didn’t miss these statements, as attuned as they are to the “A” word. But once again—it’s perfectly alright for high ranking Israelis to regularly use the word apartheid, but it’s not OK for Muslims to do so? What kind of message about bigotry does that send?