So He Said "Apartheid"! Give Kerry a Break.

It seems as if Secretary of State John Kerry launched a verbal firestorm last week.   The name "Israel"  and the word "apartheid"  escaped his lips in the very same sentence!  Ouch!
         

Without missing a beat,  conservative journalist Charles
 Krauthammer demanded that Kerry resign.  His voice was not a solitary wail in the darkness.   Public officials on both sides of the aisle yelped for Kerry's scalp:  one sterling example,  among very few these days,   of bi-partisanship at its finest.  (Even the president unloaded:  [The word apartheid is] " emotionally loaded,  historically inaccurate,  and not what I believe.").   Here's Mr. Kerry's incriminating statement,  made at The Trilateral Conference:

     If there's not a two-state solution soon,  Israel
     risks becoming an apartheid state.

It already is!  As emotionally loaded as the word "apartheid" may be,   Israel's association with  this Afrikaans-based term --- which defines a forced arrangement of "living apart" ---  shouldn't shock anyone.   Even recent Israeli heads-of-state,  Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, have invoked this term in exactly the same fashion as Kerry.   Peace advocate and former president Jimmy Carter even incorporated the dreaded word into the title of a book,  Palestine:  Peace or Apartheid.   And yep,  he caught loads of flak for that awful misdeed!

Kerry has,  under pressure,  since apologized for his allegedly ill-advised use of "The A-Word".   Why?  Why do we remain in such a perpetual state of denial about Israel?  Don't get me wrong;  I'd like to see Israel continue to thrive.  But as far as I'm concerned,  there's no justification for sugar-coating Israel's treatment of the West Bank Palestinians.  Limiting where they can live,  operate their businesses,  and cultivate their crops,  as well as the everyday imposition of military checkpoints,  is a form of apartheid ---  even if it doesn't mirror in every detail the manner in which it was practiced in South Africa. 

An organization known as the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) seems to wield considerable weight among the Washington poobahs,  in and around Congress.  And yep,  they do have the shekels and like to present themselves as the voice of American Jewry.  (Disclosure:  As a secular Jew myself,  I can state unequivocally that they do not speak for me.   Nor,  to my knowledge,  do the majority of U.S. Jews  feel an unswerving,  unquestioning loyalty to Israel).  

It seems to me that those of us not named Charles Krauthammer or Sheldon Adelson should also matter once in a while.   Let Mr. Kerry do his job and stop giving him grief for speaking the truth.