My must read of the day is John Kerry’s Press Statement, "On Support for Israel," from the State Department:
For more than thirty years in the United States Senate, I didn’t just speak words in support of Israel, I walked the walk when it came time to vote and when it came time to fight. As Secretary of State, I have spent countless hours working with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Justice Minister Livni because I believe in the kind of future that Israel not only wants, but Israel deserves. I want to see a two state solution that results in a secure Jewish state and a prosperous Palestinian state, and I’ve actually worked for it.
I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes, so I want to be crystal clear about what I believe and what I don’t believe.
Kerry deeply offended many people by making a derogatory comparison and no one at the State Department will acknowledge it was wrong.
State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki immediately defended Kerry's comments in a series of tweets. When the Associated Press’s Matt Lee, at yesterday’s press conference, pressed her on the issue Psaki refused to answer if "using the word was smart."
Kerry's doing the same thing in this statement, excusing the behavior and not really addressing the reason people are offended. Attributing the critiques to partisanship is false—Republicans, Democrats, and AIPAC have all come out and condemned the use of the word.
It wasn't just an awful choice of words; it's grossly inaccurate.
Apartheid is a word in Afrikaans. It is not a synonym for anything like "separate" or "unequal." It is the word for an official government policy that made citizens, who were racial minorities, second-class. It was intended to oppress them and deny them basic rights.
That does not happen in Israel. There are Arab Israeli citizens, and you can find many examples of their success in the country and of their rights. They can own land, take cases to court, go to school, vote, they can use the same bathroom as the Jewish Israelis, etc.—and Arab Israeli women have equal rights and protection under the law, unlike many countries in the Arab World.
None of it is comparable to the South African apartheid state.
How does a Secretary of State mistakenly use that word? Especially one that spent "more than thirty years in the U.S. Senate" not just "speak[ing] words in support of Israel," but "walk[ing] the walk when it came time to vote and when it came time to fight"? They don't.
Kerry knows what the apartheid analogy means, and chose to use it anyways, in a setting where he thought no one would hear.
At the very least he should've have issued a sincere apology, not a statement explaining his general views on Israel. He's not sorry he made the comparison, but he is mad other people are mad.