That title is not mine. It is the title of Steven Plaut\’s brilliant, fact-filled essay on the vast gap between reality and anti-Israel/Jewish fantasy when it comes to the state of Israel.
I am excerpting a particularly important segment of Mr. Plaut\’s piece below – grudgingly, since I so strongly hope that everyone uses the above link and read his entire piece. But I want you to see up-front the quality of his analysis:
Nowherein the real world does fair competition produce homogeneousrepresentation in any market. Indeed, the only way in which suchhomogeneity can be achieved is through a rigid anti-competitivesystem of assignments in hiring or admissions by quota, one thatsuppresses individual interests, skills, culture, economics, family,educational and regional backgrounds, and meritocracy.
Theworld is full of examples of radical departures from numericalhomogeneity in representation that clearly have nothing at all to dowith discrimination: Jews around the world are over-represented amongthose admitted into universities relative to their numbers in thegeneral population even in countries that have official policies ofdiscriminating against Jews. Asian Americans are alsoover-represented among U.S. college students but not because thesecolleges discriminate against non-Asians. American blacks are notprominent in sports because of anti-white discrimination. About 60percent of the medical students in Israel are women, and this is notbecause the medical schools discriminate against men. Israeli Arabsare grossly over-represented among students in schools of pharmacy,and it is not because these schools discriminate against Jews. Menare enormously over-represented among the prison populations in allcountries, and it is not because of gender discrimination. And so onand so forth.
Thefallaciousness of the idea that discrimination is proven by deviationfrom numerical homogeneity in representation cannot beover-emphasized. It crops up in almost every debate about ethnic orgender discrimination. When feminists, media commentators, and evenmany academics wish to prove that discrimination exists, their proofusually consists of presenting numbers that show departure fromhomogeneity. Such figures are selected when they serve the agenda ofthe commentator or advocate. Yet it turns out that Israeli Arabs ownproportionately twice as many cars as Israeli Jews;[6] no one hassuggested that this attests to discrimination in Israel against Jews.
Tremendous article – and a real eye-opener for anyone who buys into the claim that Israel is an apartheid state.
