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Kerry's warning to Israel lost in furor over 'apartheid'

Instead of internalizing the warning from US Secretary of State John Kerry about a single-state solution, pro-Israel advocates in the United States and the Israeli right focused instead on his choice of words.
Israelis hold a sign depicting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during a protest outside his hotel in Jerusalem, against the release by Israel of Palestinian prisoners as a confidence-building gesture, March 31, 2014. Kerry broke from his travel schedule for the second time in a week and rushed back to the Middle East on Monday to try to salvage Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (JERUSALEM - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - RTR3JD9P
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It’s too bad that US Secretary of State John Kerry used the explosive term “apartheid” to warn of the severe implications of burying the two-state solution. It is also too bad that professional Jewish politicos, headed by the pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), once again managed to turn the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy into a weapon in the struggle between the two rival parties in the United States.

The term “apartheid” does an injustice to pre-1967 Israel, before the war during which the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip areas were conquered. In those days, Israel did not have racist laws that discriminated against people. There was no political reality in which a despotic minority ruled by force and fascist laws over a majority lacking any political rights or basic civil rights. Then the war came, and its outcome is known.

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