Israel and South Africa are two different countries with two vastly different histories. A simplistic rhetorical linking of the two countries' policies of discrimination is generally fruitless and ill-advised. Nonetheless, in looking at specific similarities between Israel's proposed "Third Amendment" and South African "emergency legislation," we can see why analysts feel justified in raising the comparison.

Professor Donna Arzt of Syracuse University has studied in some detail the resemblance between the bill currently before the Knesset and the recently enacted "Disclosure of Foreign Funding Act" in South Africa.

South Africa, it turns out, has already enacted an eerily exact analogue to what Israel is now considering. It has legislated an end to foreign funding of social, educational, and health services--as well as political organizations--when the funding is deemed not to be "in the public interest."

The South African law and the proposed Israeli legislation both rely on such vague language. Both grant sweeping powers to the police, and strictly limit court supervision. Both allow search and seizure of property without warrants. And both bypass important elements of due process-in South Africa, suspects are required to give oral evidence with out a lawyer's assistance, while in Israel the normal rules of evidence would be bypassed.

Professor Arzt concludes that the amendment now facing the Knesset "would place Israel in a camp with the country most widely known for its manipulative uses of law and the legal system to repress civil liberties and civil rights."

SUCH a comparison may in the end not be all that productive. One could just as easily compare the United States to South Africa on the basis of our lack of a national health insurance system.

The point is not that Israel and South Africa are the only countries in the world with deeply flawed policies. Rather, it is that both countries do indeed have flawed and oppressive policies, and that there should be no immediate and arbitrary taboo against discussing them in the same breath.

Although dozens of Jewish and Arab groups in Israel have vocally opposed it, the "Third Amendment" is widely expected to pass and become law. And that's a shame. For its own good and for that of all its people, the Israeli government has got to wake up, realize it's not 1948 but 1989, and negotiate whole heartedly for a peaceful and just solution to the problems it's done a lot to create.