If Warnock Opposes BDS Then Why Does He Liken Israel to Apartheid Era South Africa?

Earlier this week, I was dismayed with Georgia Democratic Senatorial candidate Raphael Warnock signing a petition last year which likened Israel to Apartheid Era South Africa. In an article in The Forward, Ari Berman tries to make a case justifying Georgia Democratic Senatorial candidate Raphael Warnock signing a petition likening Israel to Apartheid Era South Africa:

On Nov. 5, Jewish Insider published an article headlined “Raphael Warnock signed letter likening West Bank to apartheid South Africa.” The article refers to a statement that Warnock signed, along with a group of Black and South African Christian clergy, after the group toured Israel and the West Bank in 2019.

The statement expresses the group’s support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and says that the group toured Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial, and visited a refugee camp. According to the letter, the group learned about living conditions in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank and participated in a bible study with a rabbi.

The statement is highly critical of Israel’s military occupation and of settlement expansion in the West Bank, which it said served to “render the proposed two-state solution unworkable.”

But its comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa — an equivalence rejected by nearly all American Jewish groups — is more nuanced that the one suggested in Jewish Insider’s headline.

In a section listing “patterns that seem to have been borrowed and perfected from other previous oppressive regimes,” the statement includes “The heavy militarization of the West Bank, reminiscent of the military occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa.” (South Africa held Namibia under military control from 1915 through 1990, an occupation deemed illegal by the United Nations.) Jewish Insider quotes this section of the clergy’s statement in the ninth paragraph of its story.

Berman notes that Warnock opposes BDS. Indeed, Warnock put out a statement objecting to BDS' "anti-Semitic overtones and its refusal to acknowledge Israel's right to exist." While I appreciate Warnock's position it raises this question. If Warnock indeed imposes BDS then why would he sign a statement likening Israel to Apartheid Era South Africa - a regime which was subjected to an international BDS campaign? If one does not think Israel should be subject to a BDS campaign then why agree in principle with a statement likening it to one of the world's most despised regimes?

I would love nothing better than to direct these two questions to Warnock himself.