The Sordid History Of The "Israeli Apartheid" Canard
It began with the South African apartheid regime itself, back in the 1950s and 1960s, when Israel took sides against Pretoria, and Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, apartheid's chief architect, used it to threaten South Africa's Jews. Nowadays, it's fashionable among certain sections of the ruling ANC elite, it earns the ANC some electoral currency among its rivals' constituencies, and there are trade deals with Syria and Iran to take into account.
South African Rhoda Kadalie, a former anti-apartheid activist and South African Human Rights Commissioner, and Julia I. Bertelsmann, editor-in-chief of New Society: Harvard College Student Middle East Journal, point out: "However potent the Israel-apartheid analogy, few of those who suffered from apartheid directly have bought into it."
The main reason they haven't, of course, is that the analogy is simply bogus.
Read it all.
South African Rhoda Kadalie, a former anti-apartheid activist and South African Human Rights Commissioner, and Julia I. Bertelsmann, editor-in-chief of New Society: Harvard College Student Middle East Journal, point out: "However potent the Israel-apartheid analogy, few of those who suffered from apartheid directly have bought into it."
The main reason they haven't, of course, is that the analogy is simply bogus.
Read it all.
posted by Terry Glavin at 1:38 PM
23 Comments:
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my eyebrow's raised and you need to feck off, Dirk
Dirk: Learn the difference between "Israeli" and "Jew" before you go spouting off such rubbish. That there are differences in how Israel handles non-Israelis compared to Israeli Jews, Arabs, Druze and what have you is not news, nor is it different from... well, any country you'd care to name. Using your argument, "apartheid" is universal.
I'm with Kurt on this one. You're making like a dishonest tosser, Dirk.
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Dirks argument is the "Canard in a Coal Mine" for the "anti-zionists" who still cling to the Israeli-Apartheid propaganda. That bird is dead, joined the choir eternal....
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Dirk:
Go away. Stay away.
You have your own place to post your drivel, and at that place you've written a lie about me, by falsely attributing statements to me, that you're using as some sort of advertisement for yourself. And you expect me to put up with you here?
Go. Leave. Don't come back.
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It was kinda Dirk in here, thank gosh someone turned on the lights.
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he's a persistent little housefly though, isn't he
You're spot on on this one Glavin. I always knew that Desmond Tutu, forget the fact that he came out swinging at the ANC ruling elite this week for being ego driven and corrupt,is really a fraud desperately craving syrian oild money. And what about Ronnie Kasril an old ANC comrade, radicalised by the Sharpvilel massacre, a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe who served decades in exile. A couple of yeras ago he penned a now famous document called "Declaration of Conscience by South Africans of Jewish Descent. Both Tutu and Kasrils and any other old veterans of the struggle against apartheid have deplored what they say is a very similar structure of forced seperateness, and brutal milirary occupation enforced, illegally, bu Israel. But, Galvin, knows better. Tutu and Kasrils, no good oil buddies, you say
And here's a renowned Israeli journalist Yonatan Mendel, no doubt after some loot, speaking on the comparison
If the words occupation, apartheid and racism (not to mention Palestinian citizens of Israel, bantustans, ethnic cleansing and Nakba) are absent from Israeli discourse, Israeli citizens can spend their whole lives without knowing what they have been living with. Take racism (Giz’anut in Hebrew). If the Israeli parliament legislates that 13 per cent of the country’s lands can be sold only to Jews, then it is a racist parliament. If in 60 years the country has had only one Arab minister, then Israel has had racist governments. If in 60 years of demonstrations rubber bullets and live ammunition have been used only on Arab demonstrators, then Israel has a racist police. If 75 per cent of Israelis admit that they would refuse to have an Arab neighbour, then it is a racist society. By not acknowledging that Israel is a place where racism shapes relations between Jews and Arabs, Israeli Jews render themselves unable to deal with the problem or even with the reality of their own lives.
The same denial of reality is reflected in the avoidance of the term apartheid. Because of its association with white South Africa, Israelis find it very hard to use the word. This is not to say that the exact same kind of regime prevails in the Occupied Territories today, but a country needn’t have benches ‘for whites only’ in order to be an apartheid state. Apartheid, after all, means ‘separation’, and if in the Occupied Territories the settlers have one road and Palestinians need to use alternative roads or tunnels, then it is an apartheid road system. If the separation wall built on thousands of dunams of confiscated West Bank land separates people (including Palestinians on opposite sides of the wall), then it is an apartheid wall. If in the Occupied Territories there are two judicial systems, one for Jewish settlers and the other for Palestinians, then it is an apartheid justice.
The idea that the aparthied/Israel connection isn't supported in South Africa, or that it's simply a product of elite opinion, as the two autors claim, is bullshit. Quick story. I had the honour of being at the beloved Walter Sisulu's funeral several years back. It was held in Soweto in a large outdoor soccer stadium packed with tens of thousands of mourners, who mostly ariived on buses from Soweto and surrounding townships. The event had the feel of an old political rally, frequantly breaking into songs and chants from the old days. IT was quite the day. When it was announcded that the Palestinian representative was in attendence the crowd roared in approval. Oganisational links between the ANC and the PLO were forged in the 1970's and remain quite strong (although the ANC and PLO have deacyed over time). AT the same time, I should add both both the Israeli and US, in the 1970's though until the 1980's were providing military and political cover to the aparthied regime. Any poll conducted on the matter, and there have been may, show that south africans by in large support the palestinian cause far more than in othter countries. Thy understand and see the link through their own struggles to overcome apartheid. Surely Glavin knows the history
Kadalie's screed which attacks the political participation of South African Muslim activism is particularly slimmy. Nowhere does she mention that MUslim South Africans were in fact overrepresented in the anti aparthied struggle that men like ahmed kathrada and dadoo made tremendous sacrifices, that groups like call of islam collabarated wi the black conscouness movements of the 1960's and 1970's, of which biko was a part of. Groups that helped spark the uprisiongs in soweto and fuelled the resistance in its darkest days, when the main leaders of the ANC were all either banned and exiled. She simply writes out this history and paints a picture of a south african muslim communitty motivated to be in politics simply to denounce Israel. She does an incredible disservice to the memory of a movement. As for applauding Israel for being strong in the face of terror in a week where over 100 Palestinian civilians were killed, that's frankly disgusting and beyonf inhumane.
Glavin has all of a sudden assummed a very silent posture
amazing, ahmed, how you can write all these words without once mentioning the magic word "security," which is the reason for virtually all of the circumstances that you cite as proof of Israeli apartheid. Get rid of the security issue: no wall. No separate roads. No being scared of having Arabs as neighbours. and on and on and on.
And also no mention of the other societies adjacent to Israel, which, by your own definition, would also have to described as apartheid, in terms of how one group (say, for example, muslims in saudi arabia, or alawites in syria, and on and on and on) are treated, compared to lesser advantaged groups (without recourse to the legal system, as they have in Israel).
But this is the way you and your fellow hard"leftie" gang operates, selectively quoting Israelis to back up your contentions, and ignoring the rest of reality, counting only the bodies that you can lay at the feet of the Israelis (or, sometimes, the americans), and absolving the other side of all sin. Must be nice to live in such a black and white world.
Incidentally, here's a quote discussing Ilan Pappe, which would describe you equally well:
"Every Zionist reference to "transfer" is treated as evidence of the plan; every Zionist disavowal of transfer is treated as an act of dissembling. Every Arab declaration of war against the Jews is treated indulgently, as mere rhetoric; every Arab claim of persecution is accepted without challenge. Every Zionist atrocity is treated as part of their transfer plan; every Arab atrocity is treated as a defensive response to Zionist aggression (or is airbrushed from the history)...
--Anthony Julius, March 2008
As for Glavin, he probably hasn't seen your posts, otherwise he'd give them a much deserved delete. We read this one-sided crap everywhere else, doesn't need to pollute the environment here as well.
have a nice day.
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