Dear Friends,

My Shabbat message to you this week is simple; it a request to read the following from “Camera,” an organization dedicated to accuracy in Middle East Reporting. They have set up a website, www.israelapartheidweek.com, dedicated to providing those who wish to defend Israel against claims that it is an apartheid nation the tools to do so. For the past five years, Israel Apartheid Week has been organized on selected college campuses, and the number of campuses that choose to participate in this annual Israel hate-fest has continued to grow. Please read this, look at the website, and think about ways that you and the Har Shalom community can make a difference in this fight against the current efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel. I will be speaking about this topic on Shabbat and look forward to continuing the conversation.

From the “israelapartheidweek” website:

Every March, extremists converge on campuses across the country. For a week or two, they strive to sow divisions, encourage prejudice, and incite hostility.

They come as part of "Israeli Apartheid Week," a series of lectures, exhibits and events that single out Israel for fierce attack. Students are told the Jewish state is, by nature, a racist, colonial and oppressive state. They are told Israel should be boycotted, and even destroyed. They are told this by ideologues who distort facts about the country while ignoring genuine oppression in the Middle East and across the world.

One need look no further than the event's title to understand its malignant nature. The canard that Israel is an apartheid state is an assault on the country's very legitimacy. South Africa's racist, apartheid regime was rightfully dismantled, and this campaign seeks absurdly to cast Israel — the Middle East's most progressive state and only liberal democracy — as being guilty of similar policies and equally deserving to be dismantled.

Apartheid Week is an affront to Palestinian and Israeli moderates who seek to reach peace through compromise and mutual recognition. It opposes equality and tolerance by seeking to do away with the Jewish people's right to self-determination. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that Israel, which he described as "one of great outposts of democracy in the world", has an "incontestable" right to exist. Apartheid Week's push against King's truth can only impede the dream of peace and justice in the Middle East.

Read through this site to learn more.