Madam, - Anthony Behan (February 26th) castigates Jimmy Carter and myself for using the term "apartheid" in relation to Israel, rather unflatteringly (to me) suggesting that only the former "should know better".
He is of course correct to point out the danger that such language may allow "the target of one's concern an 'easy out'". However, I believe that in relation to Israel the term, which literally means "separation", is anything but an "emotive and altogether irrelevant point. . . of reference". Were we conducting this discussion in Afrikaans, the word would crop up of its own accord whenever the "separation barrier" was mentioned, and given that many of the most passionate defenders of the Palestinian cause are South African veterans of the anti-apartheid movement - some of them Jewish, such as Ronnie Kasrils, for whom Zionism is "worse than apartheid" - the use of the term seems perfectly natural. The intimate links between Israel and apartheid South Africa emphasise this affinity still further.
Furthermore, in 2001 the Israeli academic Uri Davis founded the Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine, "taking as its point of departure the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and their articulation in international law and the struggle of the peoples of South Africa against apartheid and their work for democracy and reconciliation". This movement spearheaded the global activist consensus whereby the tools deemed essential in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa - notably boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) - are the same ones to be directed against the Israeli regime until such time as it ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.
So perhaps, whatever about my humble self, Jimmy Carter does know better. - Yours, etc,
RAYMOND DEANE,
Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign,
Dame Street,
Dublin 2.