User:Ryan Paddy/Delegitimisation

Some critics of the apartheid analogy state that it is intended to delegitimize and demonize Israel and Zionism, applying a higher standard of behaviour to the Jewish state than to other nations or to the Palistinian Authority in order to justify the boycotting, ostracism, or elimination of the State of Israel. Philosopher Bernard Harrison describes the apartheid label as "hyperbolic". He states that while there are reasonable grounds to criticize Israel for the establishment of settlements in the West Bank, or for the treatment of Christians and Muslim Arabs in Israel as "second class citizens", the apartheid comparison is a politically-motivated exaggeration of the situation in Israel intended to undermine its moral basis for existence.

Historian Robert Wistrich has argued that the apartheid label is a continuation of the historical vilification of Jews using accusations such as deicide and blood libel, and that it is propaganda used by the Muslim world resembling that used against Jews by Nazi Germany. Arguments have also been made that historical Russian antisemitism later manifested in the Soviet Union as accusations that Israel's policies resemble apartheid, a discourse that was designed to help Arab states allied to the USSR. Anne Bayefsky, a Canadian political scientist specializing in international law and human rights, considers the delegitimization of Israel pursued at Durban to be part of a current campaign to legitimize Islamist and leftist terrorism as justifiable "popular resistance," not just against Israel but against liberal democracies and Western societies generally.