Genocide, Variations on a Theme #II
I first became aware of the fact that Israel was an Apartheid State when Ronnie Kasrils told the South African National Assembly that:
“In light of the suffering that we Jews have experienced ourselves, especially in the past century, we object to the ruthless security methods employed by the Israeli government against Palestinians. [. . .] These include the deployment of bulldozers, tanks, helicopter gunships, and fighter planes; the use of lethal force, as a matter of policy, even against civilians armed with stones and slings; the targeted assassination and extra-judicial killing of political leaders and activists; the “collective punishment” of Palestinian communities; the demolition of homes, destruction of farms, and uprooting of olive groves; and the stringent curfews and road blocks that make normal life impossible and create a daily ritual of control and humiliation. These intolerable practices, together with the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, invite condemnation of the Israeli government and give rise to further resistance against it. [. . .]”
“We take note of the fact-finding report by members of South Africa’s Parliament who visited the Middle East in July 2001. The report observes: “It becomes difficult, particularly from a South African perspective, not to draw parallels with the oppression experienced by Palestinians under the hand of Israel and the oppression experienced in South Africa under apartheid rule.” We are committed to justice and freedom for pragmatic, as well as ethical, reasons. Oppression almost always gives rise to rebellion and thereby threatens the security of the oppressor. Repression and reprisals in response to rebellion provide no relief. They only deepen, broaden and prolong the cycle of violence and counter-violence. The notion that security can be achieved through reliance on force is demonstrably false, as the struggle against apartheid testified. The struggle against apartheid also demonstrated that successful resistance to oppression depends on a coherent non-violent strategy alongside the armed struggle.”[1]
His sentiments were echoed by Bishop Desmond Tutu who wrote:
“I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”
“On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?”
“I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: “Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews.””
“My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?”[2]
Of course, Bishop Tutu was unaware then (as many are unaware now) that the Zionists weren’t the ones humiliated; on the contrary: they were firm allies of the Nazis. This fact alone explains a lot.
The relationship of Israel and South Africa was explored by Chris McGreal in a series of articles for The Guardian.
“There are few places in the world” McGreal wrote[3] “where governments construct a web of nationality and residency laws designed for use by one section of the population against another. Apartheid South Africa was one. So is Israel.”
“Comparisons between white rule in South Africa and Israel’s system of control over the Arab peoples it governs are increasingly heard. Opponents of the vast steel and concrete barrier under construction through the West Bank and Jerusalem dubbed it the “apartheid wall” because it forces communities apart and grabs land. Critics of Ariel Sharon’s plan to carve up the West Bank, apportioning blobs of territory to the Palestinians, draw comparisons with South Africa’s “bantustans” – the nominally independent homelands into which millions of black men and women were herded.”
“An Israeli human rights organisation has described segregation of West Bank roads by the military as apartheid. Arab Israeli lawyers argue anti-discrimination cases before the supreme court by drawing out similarities between some Israeli legislation and white South Africa’s oppressive laws. Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission, visited the occupied territories three years ago and described what he found as “much like what happened to us black people in South Africa”.”
“As far back as 1961, Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African prime minister and architect of the “grand apartheid” vision of the bantustans, saw a parallel. “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state,” he said. It is a view that horrifies and infuriates many Israelis.”
“A prominent Israeli political scientist, Gerald Steinberg, responded to an invitation to appear on a panel at a Jerusalem cultural centre to debate “Is Israel the new apartheid?” by denouncing the organiser, a South African-born Jew, for even posing the question.”
“As you are undoubtedly aware, the pro-Palestinian and anti-semitic campaign to demonise Israel focuses on the entirely false and abusive analogy with South Africa. Using the term ‘apartheid’ to apply to Israel’s legitimate responses to terror and the threat of annihilation both demeans the South African experience and is the most immoral of charges against the right of the Jewish people to self-determination,” he replied.
“Many Israelis recoil at the suggestion of a parallel because it stabs at the heart of how they see themselves and their country, founded after centuries of hatred, pogroms and ultimately genocide. If anything, many of Israel’s Jews view themselves as having more in common with South Africa's black population than with its oppressors. Some staunch defenders of Israel’s policies past and present say that even to discuss Israel in the context of apartheid is one step short of comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, not least because of the Afrikaner leadership’s fascist sympathies in the 1940s and the disturbing echoes of Hitler’s Nuremberg laws in South Africa's racist legislation.”
“Yet the taboo is increasingly challenged. As Israel’s justice minister, Tommy Lapid, said, Israel’s defiance of international law in constructing the West Bank barrier could result in it being treated as a pariah like South Africa. Malaysia’s prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has called for a campaign against Israel of the kind used to pressure South Africa.”
“Like the struggle against apartheid, the struggle of the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation of their country enjoys enormous support from the global community,” he said. “Therefore, a more concrete expression of this support by global societies to this campaign is timely and fitting.”
“Anglican, Presbyterian and other churches have backed sanctions against Israel. Last year, one of the UK’s university teaching unions endorsed a boycott of two Israeli universities, before reversing its decision amid a torrent of criticism over the reasoning behind the move.”
“The Israeli government has condemned boycotts as anti-semitism and an attempt to “delegitimise” the Jewish state. It asks why only Israel, a democratic country, is singled out for sanctions. A few protests are not a bandwagon, but underpinning Israeli hostility is a fear, expressed in a secret Israeli foreign ministry report, that Israel’s standing abroad could sink so low in the coming years that it might find itself on a collision course with Europe which could see Israel as isolated as the apartheid regime and with serious economic consequences.”
“Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip last year, and the relinquishing of direct Israeli control over that territory, temporarily dampened some of the criticism. But even as the Gaza pullout was under way, Israel was entrenching its control of those parts of the West Bank it wants to retain, using the barrier to mark out an intended future border that would carve up the territory, and expanding Jewish settlements it intends to annex – a strategy that, if carried through by Sharon’s successors, is likely to strengthen the comparisons with apartheid and fuel calls for sanctions.”
It is profoundly regrettable that the power of the Israel Lobby, the influence of Zionists and their ability to obfuscate reality (and history) triumphed for so long. It would have been much better for many Israelis if the country had been reformed from within. Now Israel faces an existential threat: the justified charge of genocide.
[1] https://www.pij.org/articles/1097/declaration-of-conscience-by-south-africans-of-jewish-descent-23-october-2001
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/29/comment
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/06/southafrica.israel