When a gatekeeper goes rogue

A former Mossad chief parrots a defamatory lie about his country

Tamir Pardo

In addition to mounting physical attacks, Israel’s enemies defame it by making false accusations that it is colonialist, oppressive and so on. 

The most lethal of these lies is the claim that Israel practises apartheid. This baseless and vile smear is deployed as a weapon to demonise and delegitimise it. The claim relies for its impact on a mindset in the west which is predisposed to hate Israel, and whose bigotry is matched only by its ignorance of South Africa, Israel or indeed the plain meaning of words. 

It is therefore beyond incredible that this smear has issued from a former head of the Mossad, Israel’s legendary security service, who has devoted his life to defending his country against its enemies abroad. 

In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Tamir Pardo, who ran the Mossad from 2011-2016, claimed that Israel was implementing an “apartheid state policy” against the Palestinian Arabs in the “West Bank,” the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

“In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state,” said Pardo. “This isn’t an “extreme” viewpoint, it’s a fact.”

Totally untrue. It is not a fact. It is a grotesque libel, an expression of monumental ignorance and a trivialisation of one of the most evil regimes ever known in the world.