Drawing Fire

Reviews / Votes

If you want an informed opinion about whether Israel is an apartheid state. . . .Benjamin Pogrund is worth reading. * The Citizen * [Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel] . . . will be valuable to anyone who genuinely seeks an understanding of the real situation on the ground, behind the political rhetoric. * South African Jewish Report * At its best this book succeeds in providing valuable empirical resources that will enable its readers to question the totalising and distorted representations of the Israel-Palestine conflict that the apartheid analogy requires. . . .Drawing Fire is . . . most illuminating when it provides its readers with the information and argument that helps us understand the current conflict and the injustices to ordinary people that accompany it. . . .[In] spite of the author's own best intentions, he is clearly worried that the occupation and settlement of Palestine is leading toward a situation in which the apartheid analogy looks more persuasive. The growth of a militant and loud anti-Arab racism within both the Israeli polity and society is a product of occupation that does not justify the apartheid analogy but may feed it if we are not careful. There is plenty to chew on in this worthy book. * Fathom * [T]he book succeeds in his primary goal of showing that although there are some broad similarities between apartheid and Israeli reality, including the OPT, the term apartheid is simply not applicable to the latter. . . .Pogrund's book is an eloquent statement of what some call 'liberal Zionism,' a humanistically based philosophy that advocates a sovereign state for Palestinians and equal rights for those with Israeli citizenship. . . .[T]he book is valuable as a statement of both hope and reality: that Israel retains the basis of a humanistically inclined country, that it is not an 'apartheid state,' and as an explication of what both Zionism and Israeli reality are and are not. * Palestine-Israel Journal * This is an essential read for everyone who wants to persuasively confront the BDS movement. * Jewish Book Council * What lends credence to Pogrund's book are his impeccable anti-apartheid credentials.... From the late 1950s through the mid-1980s, a period covering the heyday of apartheid, he emerged as one of the most persistent and courageous journalists to expose the iniquities of that system, including the brutal suppression of political dissent by those it targeted.... Although drawing parallels between apartheid-era South Africa and modern-day Israel is damaging and misleading, Pogrund is among those who believe that Israelis and Palestinians can still learn from how South Africans successfully negotiated an end to apartheid and made a peaceful transition to non-racial democracy. * Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs * Benjamin Pogrund, a foremost journalist in the struggle against apartheid and in more recent years an ardent worker for peace and social concern in Israel, brings to this study peerless qualifications for comparing the controversial historical experience of South Africa and Israel. With a combination of compassion, analytical insight, and judicious balance he unravels the welter of crass ignorance and malevolence that bedevils the contemporary polemic. -- Prof. Gideon Shimoni, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem A serious, thoughtful, engaging and timely intervention amidst a flood of ahistorical and tendentious nonsense. Benjamin Pogrund, a renowned journalist, knows both Israel and Apartheid South Africa well. Brutally honest, he exposes crude and simplistic analogies while not shying away from the harshness of Israeli rule in the occupied territories. A must for those with an interest in comparative analysis. -- Prof. Milton Shain, University of Cape Town On several lecture tours to South Africa with Benjamin Pogrund I have listened to him say there is no comparison between apartheid and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Although telling the truth can draw fire, he tells the truth. This book is about truth. -- Bassem Eid, Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group This enquiry harshly condemns Israel's settlement policy and oppressive practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories yet places them outside the context of apartheid, showing how apartheid allegations have often been cynically used to delegitimize Israel's very right to exist. Benjamin Pogrund, with skillful balance and painful honesty, demonstrates the complexity of the issues of war, occupation, terrorism, settlements, discrimination and the human tragedy of two peoples woven into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. -- Prof. Frances Raday, Concord Research Center for Integration of International Law in Israel Challenging. Provocative. Well argued. Takes no prisoners. Only the invincibly ignorant will continue to equate Israel and apartheid South Africa after reading this book. Benjamin Pogrund is uniquely placed to make the comparison. This is no whitewash and Israel is depicted fully, warts and all. But so is South Africa in the brutal decades of apartheid - to its disadvantage in every respect. -- Robin Knight While many label Israel 'an apartheid state', Benjamin Pogrund actually experienced apartheid, from Sharpeville to Mandela's liberation. He is therefore well placed to dissect the easy analogy between Zionist Israel and apartheid South Africa. This critical and detailed account of the complexity of Israel's situation will not please some, but it will be an eye-opener for many who have hitherto accepted the conventional wisdom. For those who do not think in monochrome, this is an important book. -- Colin Shindler, SOAS, University of London