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Sunday, July 23, 2006
Israel and Apartheid South Africa By Shimon Z. Klein Bat Chefer Israel Israel is involved in a war against terrorism directed from the south (Hamas in Gaza) and the north (Hezbollah in Lebanon). As the war on both fronts goes on, there are Islamist fundamentalist sympathizers who compare Israel to apartheid South Africa ad nauseam. As I had mentioned, in a previous post that I wrote on my blog site about a year ago, nothing could be further from the truth. Those who wish Israel’s destruction make the comparison. I had lived in South Africa during the height of the apartheid period. We had experienced a Special Branch search in our home because of purchasing a book on South Africa’s Third Reich written by Brian Bunting. Some friends, living in London during the 1960s, sent the book to us in a plain cover. The book was published in 1964. The South African Police hounded those who opposed the apartheid government without mercy. I remember my late father, Chaim Eli Klein, burning many banned political books because of fears of police raids that could occur at any time. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu are great people and they both had achieved very much in the liberation of South Africa from fascism and apartheid. Both these leaders made a tremendous contribution to uniting all South Africans irrespective of their skin colour, race or creed. They found a common denominator in all South Africans who share a common homeland and destiny. All South Africans owe a tremendous amount of gratitude towards these incredible leaders. The frivolous use of the term “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians when referring to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians shows total ignorance of the situation. If anything, there is an attempt by Hezbollah and Hamas (had they been stronger) to ethnically cleanse Israel of the Jews. Sheik Nasrallah has made this more than clear in his rabble-rousing addresses to his supporters and in his terrorist activities against the Jews even beyond the borders of Israel. Archbishop Desmond Tutu established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to give a chance to those with authority vested in them by the apartheid SA regime, who abused human rights, to obtain forgiveness from those who had suffered under white rule. Many whites who were involved in suppressing blacks came out of the cupboard and confessed the cruelties that they had committed against their black victims. This commission was highly successful and played a part in the healing process to unite South Africans in a common destiny. All races, despite the terrible bloody history of white supremacy, were prepared to forgive and rebuild the new South Africa from scratch. As great as these two leaders are, they had one failing. Their knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian problem is poor and inadequate. Their intentions are good but they fail to understand the major difference between Israel’s problems with the Palestinians and with the fundamentalist Islamist terrorist groups who are committed to Israel’s total destruction. These Islamist terrorists are highly motivated in wreaking havoc and terror on innocent Israelis irrespective of their creed. I had witnessed cruelty to blacks who happened to be in “white areas” at the wrong time and who never had their passbooks (reference books or identity document “dompas”) on their person. The police arrested them and their white employers bailed them out the following day when they showed the police the relevant papers proving that they were under their employment. Under Apartheid South Africa, Blacks, Coloureds (people of mixed race), Moslems and Indians had very few basic human rights. There were so many draconian laws that prevented these people from competing in the employment market. There was the Job Reservation Act that reserved professional jobs for whites. There was the Groups Areas Act, the Mixed Marriages Act that prevented people of different colour from living in select White areas. Whites and blacks were forbidden to marry and if they did, they were sentenced to prison. There was total separation between whites and blacks. Law enforced this. Despite all these travesties of justice, goodwill between the various races in South Africa remained a uniting factor. The desire to end apartheid by all races won the day. South Africa was fortunate that they had Nelson Mandela as leader. He had served so many years in prison and came out without any malice towards anybody. He even hosted his former adversaries who imprisoned him when he became President of South Africa. This proves his greatness. South Africa’s new leaders are unable to accept the fact that Israel’s problem with her Palestinian neighbours is existential. There are not even the basic ingredients for some kind of rapprochement with the Palestinians. The ruling ANC (African National Congress) never had a manifesto that promoted destruction of the whites like Hamas and Hezbollah that has destruction of the Jews and Israel as an essential goal (genocide). Their manifesto is filled with hate for Israel and there is nothing even hinting at recognizing Israel’s right to exist let alone making peace with Israel. Where are the parallels between apartheid South Africa and Israel? Only a wild imagination of the likes of Israel-bashers could find a perverse parallel. There is no racism in the ANC manifesto in contrast to the Islamist terrorist groups’ manifestos. Much has been written about the rights of Arab citizens in Israel in previous posts and I shall not repeat that again. Suffice it to say, Israel’s Arabs have equal rights, have representation in the Knesset and there are no separate facilities such as for “Jews Only” or signs such as “Arabs not allowed”. In apartheid South Africa, signs such us “Europeans or Whites only” on park benches and public facilities was commonplace. Every public place, including public telephone booths, was segregated. The list was endless. Apartheid signs on buses insured very little seating accommodation for blacks. Much remains to be achieved in Arab human rights in Israel. It is not one hundred per cent perfect. However, there is no discriminatory legislation on the statute books preventing Israeli Arabs from competing in the job market or any professional spheres. Israel is fighting a war for its survival. This has been the case since Israel’s establishment in 1948. Those who use the apartheid South African parallel are delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist. There is no parallel whatsoever. The South African experience is not applicable to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The basic ingredient – the desire for coexistence and an end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is not there. There is no desire from Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist. The suffering of the Palestinian People is due to the desire of their Hamas leadership to carry on terror against Israel’s citizens. The rain of Qassam rockets in the south and Katyushas in the north is not a fight against “the occupation” but an attempt to bring Israel to her knees. The ANC never used violence against innocent people to promote their liberation struggle against apartheid. Suicide bombings, kidnappings, murders and blowing up people in their daily business was never part of their manifesto to achieve human rights. The “brutal oppression” of the Palestinian people is a result of the violence that the Palestinians have wrought on Israel. Israel has a right to protect herself from Palestinian violence against her citizens. Hezbollah in the north in Lebanon and Hamas in the south in Gaza are responsible for the retaliations that Israel has wrought on their respective peoples. Even if Israel carries out further disengagements without any watertight peace treaties with the Palestinians, the vacuum created will result in the rearmament of the Palestinians with Qassams and Hezbollah Katyushas in their quest to destroy Israel. It is not a matter of “liberation from the occupation” anymore. Their purpose is to establish an undemocratic caliphate or fundamentalist Islamic state replacing Israel. How does this compare with apartheid South Africa? Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by zac at 1:02 PM |
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3 Comments:
Your post makes a whole cascade of assumptions and baseless accusations against those who compare Israeli Apartheid to South African Apartheid.
In fact, Desmond Tutu himself has made this comparison in a piece entitled "Against Israeli Apartheid."
Quoting That Article:
"Divestment from apartheid South Africa was fought by ordinary people at the grassroots... Eventually, institutions pulled the financial plug, and the South African government thought twice about its policies.
Similar moral and financial pressures on Israel are being mustered one person at a time.
These tactics are not the only parallels to the struggle against apartheid. Yesterday's South African township dwellers can tell you about today's life in the occupied territories. To travel only blocks in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in Israel's cities, but their luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralyzing an entire people. The indignities, dependence and anger are all too familiar.
Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels to what we went through. Ronnie Kasrils and Max Ozinsky, two Jewish heroes of the antiapartheid struggle, recently published a letter titled "Not in My Name." Signed by several hundred other prominent Jewish South Africans, the letter drew an explicit analogy between apartheid and current Israeli policies. Mark Mathabane and Nelson Mandela have also pointed out the relevance of the South African experience. "
Veteran South African journalist Allister Sparks also recently compared Israeli Apartheid to the South African struggle.
In addition, the African National Congress did commit acts of violence that killed innocent civilians. They began with nonviolent acts, then sabotage and other low-level acts of violence that escalated as the repression by the state escalated. Wiki Pedia has some more information on that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_National_Congress
They mention that Desmond Tutu was often critical of the ANC for their use of violence.
Some people to this day continue to call Nelson Mandela a "terrorist" for his participation in planning acts of violence.
I totally support Israel in its struggle, but I believe the parallels are entirely obvious and find the increasingly desperate efforts to point out differences rather ironic, if not utterly cynical. If people realized that the ANC government of South Africa is actually openly racist and today runs the most brazenly racist policies on the surface of the planet, it will be possible to see the Israel vs. South Africa situation in proper perspective.
South African whites were with their backs against the wall, faced by enormous hordes of demonstrably Anti-white Black Nationalists that had shown their murderous style and disregard for life all over Africa since the early 1950’s. Israel is with its back against the wall facing hordes of demonstrably Anti-Jewish Fundamentalist Arabs who have shown their murderous style and disregard for life everywhere in the Middle East since the 1970's.
The Israeli Government and the Earlier South African government both settled on homeland policies and for the same basic reasons. In South Africa it was obvious that the black people would outnumber the whites. In Israel it is brazenly obvious that the Palestinians would outnumber the Jews pretty soon. Without those homelands, “The Jewish State” is numerically doomed by Democracy. Like in SA’s homelands, unemployment is high in the Palestinian areas. Like in SA, the birth rate in those homelands is staggeringly high. This all seems totally parallel to me.
For reasons best explained by the United States, that country found the homeland principle evil in South Africa and now ironically (or is it cynically?) finds it totally supportable in Israel. I believe that is called "having an ally that asks no questions". Israel is lucky indeed.
Both the SA and Israeli Judeo-Christian groups wished to run themselves by a democracy, but did not wish to be ruled by a non-Western civilization that they could not relate to and which, in the case of South Africa, was very far behind their own in development. The present miserable decay of Law, Order and Civilization in South Africa proves that their fears were very well founded indeed. So, I’d prefer for those who value Democracy and Judeo-Christian values not to take their moral lead from Ronnie Kasrils, who is trained as brigadier in the Soviet Army, an institution not known for its support of Western principles of Democracy.
In South Africa, in the early 1980's the ecoomic situation of black people was dramatically improved and an offer of freedom was made to Mandela if he would swear off violence. The response was that the ANC turned to open terrorism against civilians, using their anti-tank and limpet mines angainst ordinary civilians and farmers. In this they had the help of the Soviet Union from Angola. That is open unadulterated undeniable terrorism. When SA reacted,the world imposed sacntions. When Israel pulls out of Southern Lebanon, or out of Gaza, it gets immediately attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, supported by Iran via Syria. Why is anyone surprised? These kinds of terrorist groups are trained to do this. So the parallels absolutely abound. Israel just somehow manages to elude the sanctions.
When South African whites lived through their darkest days, the West was convinced that all the woes of the world could be solved by Democracy and it was forced onto South Africa, whether it fitted or not. Now, with 2500 soldiers dead in Iraq, Americans are not so sure anymore. They are right to not be so sure. What a dilemma for those of liberal conviction in a Politically Correct Western World that is having a very hard time coming to terms with its own vulnerability in the face of the Fundamentalist Muslim challenge.
The question: Why not sell Israel down the river by 2010 if they found it so easy to sell South Africa down that river in 1990 and then congratulate themselves on having "brought democracy"?
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