Madam, - Raymond Deane's claim that present-day Israel is akin to apartheid-era South Africa (February 19th) is based on misinterpretations and misrepresentations.
For instance, his statement that "93 per cent of land ownership in Israel is reserved for Jews" demonstrates a lamentable unfamiliarity with the facts. Only 6.5 per cent of Israeli land is available for private ownership; this is more or less evenly divided between Arab and Jew and there are no restrictions on its purchase or sale.
The remaining 93.5 per cent is, under the terms of a 1960 Basic Law, designated "Israel Land" and held in perpetuity by the state. Administered by the Israel Lands Authority (ILA), it cannot be bought or sold and is available only for lease. Some 80.5 per cent of the land is made up of government-owned "state land" (largely made up of public lands inherited from the British Mandatory authorities) and Israeli Arabs, as citizens of the state, have the same rights to lease it as Jews. Indeed, about 50 per cent of Arab farmland is leased from the ILA.
The other 13 per cent is privately owned by the Jewish National Fund, a charitable organisation set up in 1901 to purchase land expressly "for the purpose of settling Jews". Given this, there were restrictions on its lease to Arabs but these, frequently observed in the breach, were struck down by the courts and overturned by the Israeli attorney general in January 2005.
Nor do Mr Deane's statistics regarding third-level education convey the true picture. It is true that only about 8 to 9 per cent of Israeli university students are Arabs, but this has less to do with third-level academic "apartheid" than with factors such as higher school drop-out rates (about 30 per cent of Israeli Arabs have left by age 17, as opposed to 10 per cent of Jews), lower matriculation pass levels, poorer proficiency in English (Arabs study it as their third language while Jews learn it as their second) and the mores of Muslim society. In fact, Christian Israeli Arabs have the highest rate of university attendance in the country, standing today at two and a half times the national average.
Furthermore, his reference to the security fence as "the Apartheid Wall" is wilfully misleading as the structure is an example of neither "apartheid" nor a wall. The concrete wall sections form only 5 per cent of the barrier, the remaining consisting of a series of conventional chain-link and wire fences. The only "apartheid" this legitimate, effective and wholly proportionate response to the terrorist murder of over 1,000 Israelis in six years seeks to enforce is between Palestinian suicide bombers and Israel's citizenry.
The fact is that the Israel-South Africa equation is intellectually feeble and morally questionable. Israel is a multi-ethnic society whose declaration of independence pledges to "ensure the complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex". Unlike black South Africans, Israeli Arabs (who, incidentally, form the minority) are full citizens of the state, enjoying full civil and social liberties, voting rights, political representation and recourse to the courts, and the same rights to education, healthcare and social benefits as Jews.
Of course inequalities exist and Israel, like all countries, has its fair share of racists. But nothing in Israel compares to the institutionalisation through parliamentary law of ethnic separation and discrimination based on a philosophy of racial superiority which defined apartheid.
In arguing otherwise, Mr Deane engages in a slovenly form of ahistorical analogising which serves only to demonise the Jewish state and trivialise the plight of an entire generation of black South Africans. - Yours, etc,
SEÁN GANNON,
Chairman, Irish Friends
of Israel,
Dublin 6.