“If this bloc of millions of ­Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.” Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak, February, 2010.

In his latest act of atonement, Judge Richard Goldstone claims that those who assert Israel practices a form of apartheid, make this accusation in order to “retard rather than advance peace negotiations.” The discrimination that Palestinians face is neither intentional nor permanent, he says.

[In the West Bank] there is no intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” This is a critical distinction, even if Israel acts oppressively toward Palestinians there. South Africa’s enforced racial separation was intended to permanently benefit the white minority, to the detriment of other races. By contrast, Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.

So, according to Goldstone’s way of thinking one could say that to the extent that Palestinians have to suffer living inside a system of Israeli oppression that looks like apartheid, it’s their own fault because they have so far failed to negotiate the terms for their own release. They’re like prisoners who keep on flunking in front of the parole board. (Let’s not raise the awkward question about what exactly they did in order to deserve being thrown in prison in the first place.)

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, is quick to use Goldstone’s rejection of the Israel-apartheid equation in order to advance his own organization’s agenda.

Those who invoke this false analogy to advance BDS, lawfare, and other forms of political warfare against Israel, have been named and shamed by the former South African judge who helped end apartheid and who was also critical of Israeli policies. This is a fatal blow to the BDS movement and the apartheid analogy.

I wonder whether NGO Monitor advisory board member, Alan Dershowitz, now shares Steinberg’s enthusiasm about Goldstone? Only last year Dershowitz compared Goldstone with the Nazi war criminal, Joseph Mengele.