A few months ago I wrote a post titled The Problem With BDS where I argued that the comparison of Israel with with South Africa may not be appropriate and perhaps counterproductive to the interests of the Palestinians. My position in not an original one and is primarily derived from Chomsky’s assessment of the circumstances. Since then, Chomsky has published an essay in The Nation explaining his position in detail. Predictably, Chomsky’s essay has been selectively quoted by the likes of Fred Lazin who, in a recent appearance on CrossTalk, conveniently omitted the fact that Chomsky’s criticism of the analogy between Israel and South Africa is due to the fact that, in his view, “the road ahead is not toward South Africa, as commonly alleged, but toward something much worse.”
The “much worse” is the slow and steady elimination, as Chomsky puts it, of Israel’s “Palestinian burden.” As he explains, unlike South Africa – where the black population was the white’s workforce – Israel doesn’t need the Palestinians. It is for this reason that, in my opinion, the genocide of Native Americans by European settlers seems a more apt comparison.
Continue reading at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/17/1314701/-Are-the-Palestinians-Israel-s-Native-Americans#