Draw­ing Fire: Inves­ti­gat­ing the Accu­sa­tions of Apartheid in Israel sin­gu­lar­ly sets out to show that there is no par­al­lel between the apartheid of South Africa and Israel. The author wants it to be clear that what white South Africa did to blacks is not at all sim­i­lar to ten­sions between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans — a the­sis that many peo­ple may find dif­fi­cult to swal­low because the pro­pa­gan­da claim­ing that Israel prac­tices South African-style apartheid is so very pervasive.

Ben­hamin Pogrund is a South African jour­nal­ist who worked for 26 years at the Rand Dai­ly Mail in Johan­nes­burg and was the newspaper’s deputy edi­tor when it was closed by the Apartheid gov­ern­ment. It was Pogrund and his news­pa­per that pio­neered cov­er­age of the sto­ry of blacks in South Africa. The Dai­ly Mail was shut­tered because it was anti-Apartheid; his cre­den­tials on this mat­ter are impeccable.

The most con­vinc­ing seg­ment of the book is a twen­ty-page chart list, item by item and issue by issue, com­par­ing Israel and the Pales­tini­ans to South Africa and the blacks.

The author asserts that the entire argu­ment is about dele­git­imiz­ing Israel more than it is about defend­ing Pales­tini­ans. He believes that the pur­pose behind the charge is to con­demn Israel as an ille­git­i­mate state. In that way, he con­cludes, sanc­tions and oth­er inter­na­tion­al actions can be brought against Israel to ulti­mate­ly cause the demise of the state.

This is an essen­tial read for every­one who wants to per­sua­sive­ly con­front the BDS movement.