In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution which asserted that Zionism was racism. The resolution read: “The General Assembly … determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.”
This resolution was passed at a time when the state of Israel was in cahoots with apartheid South Africa, it covertly assisted the brutish apartheid regime in the development of nuclear weapons. All this happened against international attempts to isolate apartheid South Africa and against the US’s desperate attempt to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Israel provided military support to the apartheid government and by that it consequently assisted the apartheid government in the systematic slaughter of innocent men, women and children who clamoured for their freedom. Both Israel and apartheid South Africa deemed freedom fighters such as Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat terrorists and their organisations, the African National Congress and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, were targeted through military thuggery.
This resolution gave the Israeli government an excuse to intensify its Zionist campaign through the expansion of settlements in the Palestinian territories and by playing an international victim that is surrounded by enemies everywhere. This expansion of settlements is against the backdrop of the questionable UN resolution 181 of 1947 which partitioned Palestinian territory between Jews and Arabs. It was a resolution that initiated the so-called independence of Israel in 1948 against the protest of the Arab populace.
Coincidentally 1948 was the year that DF Malan won the general elections in South Africa and with such victory apartheid was enacted into law and racial discrimination was officially institutionalised. The relationship between Israel and apartheid South Africa is something not impressed upon often when we make reflections on particular historical events. The general pattern is to view Israel as only a nation of Jewish survivors of some of the greatest atrocities ever visited upon human beings while ignoring the subsequent atrocities committed by the very same nation against those who seek their freedom. Commonsense would inform a reasonable man that a nation of victims of the Holocaust would be guided by some measure of compassion and moral fortitude in their affairs with the Palestinians, yet to the contrary, hostility and military thuggery has defined the relationship between Jews and Arabs.
Relations between Israel and Palestine soured greatly after the Six-Day War of 1967, after which Israel moved to gain control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel’s action went against the UN Security Council resolution 228 of 1966 which condemned its military reprisals. In that resolution the Security Council promised to “consider further and more effective steps as envisaged in the (UN) Charter to ensure against the repetition of such (military) acts”. And as it has become rather common, the Security Council took no action against Israel’s military escapades and violation of its resolutions.
It was apparent from the 1960s that Israel was untouchable and enjoyed the protection of the US at the Security Council. It may have therefore made political sense for the apartheid regime, an international pariah, to forge close ties with the state of Israel. The relationship between Israel and apartheid South Africa was cemented by state visits between the two countries. In April 1976, John Vorster, on invitation from the Israelis, met with Yitzhak Rabin on a state visit. This was at a time when apartheid South Africa was in advanced stages of developing nuclear weapons. It had already completed two nuclear test shafts, north of Upington. In 1981, after visiting the South African forces in Namibia, Israeli defence minister Ariel Sharon said the apartheid regime needed more military weapons. Israel was publicly denouncing apartheid while it propped up the apartheid regime militarily and assisted its campaign of terror against the oppressed people.
Israel’s support of apartheid is a fact of history which was validated by Nelson Mandela on his visit to Israel in 1999 when he said: “To the many people who have questioned why I came, I say: Israel worked very closely with the apartheid regime. I say: I’ve made peace with many men who slaughtered our people like animals. Israel cooperated with the apartheid regime, but it did not participate in any atrocities.” Where Mandela was wrong was to say Israel did not participate in any atrocities. It may have not directly participated in these apartheid atrocities but did indirectly through its supply of weapons to the Nationalist regime.
The campaign of terror by the Israeli government continues to this day. The general and implausible excuse by the Israeli government in justifying its campaign of terror is that it is being denied the right to exist, that it faces imminent threat from its neighbours, in particular Iran. It is somewhat an imagined threat as Israel has the military capability to protect itself from hostile neighbours. Neither Hamas, Hezbollah nor Iran has the military capability to pose any direct threat on the continued existence of Israel.
Israel has specifically isolated Hamas as one of the groups that threaten its national security and has imposed a Gaza blockade effectively subjecting countless numbers of Palestinians to starvation and a lack of access to healthcare etc. This follows the 2009 Israeli military adventure into Gaza where thousands of innocent women and children were slaughtered because Hamas had been firing rockets at Israeli towns, though there had been no loss of lives as a result. Israel responded to Hamas’s firecrackers with untold and unimaginable brutality while the international community sat on the sidelines and did nothing to protect innocent women and children butchered by Israeli forces.
It is in understanding these historical facts that one begins to comprehend the general solidarity that black South Africans share with the people of Palestine. The pain they endure at the hands of Israeli thuggery is the pain we share equally with them, because it is the pain we had to endure at the hands of the merciless apartheid regime. It is time that the local Jewish community begins to renounce the Israeli government’s military thuggery and support the campaign to end its apartheid tendencies and in particular the Gaza blockade. The preservation of the historical sentiment towards Israel by the local Jewish community does not assist in the promotion of international justice, peace and human rights. The Goldstone Report on Gaza found both Israel and Hamas guilty of war crimes and gross violations of human rights. We must be unequivocal in condemning both sides, whether you are a Jew, Arab or African.
The end of genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and violation of human rights begins when we condemn all rogue regimes and take decisive action against them. Equality before international law is paramount. When countries such as Iran are isolated and stringent sanctions imposed upon them, equally countries such as Israel should be subject to the same punishment. The continued protection of Israel only serves to breed resentment against the Jewish nation by the Arab world. The fight against terrorism cannot be won when all known perpetrators of such acts are not held to account. The Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the Gaza massacre happened because nations of the world, in particular those with the capacity to act, preferred to be spectators to crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights.
Hypocrisy appears to have generally been accepted to be an integral part of politics. The betrayal of the people’s trust is something that we have accustomed to accept because we have conditioned ourselves to embrace men and women of dubious constitution as masters of our destiny. Ironically, these are the very same individuals upon whom we claim to entrust with the arduous task of serving us and delivering on the promises they make. By condoning mediocrity we have nurtured politicians to becoming a menace to society. The world is in its current state because we the people have allowed it to degenerate into this seemingly unmanageable state. Wanton and indiscriminate acts of political thuggery by nations happen because we let politicians ran amok in our name.
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64 Responses to “Time to act against Israel’s apartheid tendencies”
How about Looking a little closer to home for Apartheid Tendencies, instead of this interesting, yet rather exaggerated article which its clear is more about your agenda and less about fact?
For instance, I am of a certain colour, yet am refused jobs for which I am qualified and experienced for, and this has happened to others I know and possibly will happen again. Is that any different to what was happening in Old S.A.?
Sentletse, I agree with your conclusions but there are some things you are missing. If you want to make a comaprison of the histories of two groups of people then you need to be more exact.
While 1948 may have been the date of the begining of Apartheid, it is only so under that name. There were racist laws being passed a long time before that. Some of those laws were passed around 1900 in order to protect the Afrikaner nation, who themselves had just had the experience of concentration camps and what was essentially a genocide (even though the word did not exist at the time). When you look at that “common sense” suggests that those people would want to protect themselves rather than showing any empathy to others. I imagine the trauma of being involved in something like the Holocaust or concentration camps of the Boer War would make empathy a little difficult. It does not justify but perhaps helps to explain.
Also, wrt to genocides and the holocaust, Im not sure how easy it is to prevent something like that. You may want to check out Genocide Watches website. Particularly the “8 Steps Of Genocide”, “12 Ways To Deny A Genocide” and the “Countries at risk’.
Lastly, I do not think you can accuse “those with capacity to act” as being “spectators” to the Holocaust, they were in the middle of a terrible war with the perpetrators. What more could they have done?
Excellent post. On the similarities between Israeli behaviour and apartheid- one that stood out strongly to me in my visits to the West Bank was the numerous checkpoints set up to limit freedom of movement. People we were with were often turned away from their destination (within the West Bank) because their id (basically a “dompas”) stated that they were from a different city (even if they were within their legal rights to move from one PA area to another- the Israeli army often harassed them). The segregated roads for Jewish settlers that are closed to Palestinians in the West Bank also struck me as familiar and of concern. As were the raids the Israeli army would engage in, in the refugee camps at night. On a different level, talking to Arab Israelis within Israel proper the differences in the amount the government spent on their Jewish and Arab citizens in terms of education, municipal services, and the fact that Ministers in Knesset openly called for them to live in separate areas gave a very different picture of the “democracy” we always hear about…
Whilst I sympathise with the overall message of the text, this article is a hodge-podge of invention, exageration and myth. It is a typical distortion of reality in order to make a point that could have been made better had the writer just stuck to history and avoided emotional embellishment.
Oooh - get on the riot gear, bro, fall out coming in 3… 2… 1…
Anyway - the less said on this subject the better. Better minds than ours have been unable to solve this problem. This whole issue is now painfully but wilfully ignored in my life. Both sides are right. Both sides are wrong. And until both sides acknowledge that… We will have wars, deaths, blogs and outrage.
Saying Hamas is guilty is like saying the Military wing of the ANC was wrong to target certain key individuals and assets of the Apartheid regime which have taken the focus from the systemic racial discrimination and oppression of Africans and cloured people in South Africa. We cannot deal treat the victim the same way we treat the culprit in this matter. Isreal has taken the Palestinian land and still continue to take more land and build more settlements. Whatever the Palestinians do is in response as result of the taken land.
This should more understandble espacially in this country. Apartheid was seen as an international violation. It was never justified by demonising those who fought to defeat or desmantle it, and that is a fact.
Israel should concern the author far less than Zimbabwe.
The twenty thousand killed by Zanu PF in Mashonaland was a massacre. The Mfecane was a rampage of murder. The Aborigines and Maori’s of Australia and and New Zealand were systematically exterminated. As were the native Americans of both North and South American continents. As were the native Bushman of Southern Africa, hunted for sport by both black and white.
The 9/11 attack on New York was a massacre. Suicide bombings everywhere kill and maim innocent people indiscriminately.
ISRAEL legitimately went to war with a belligerent sworn enemy who initiated war with Israel. One thousand five hundred innocent dead on the Palestinian side is nothing. Hardly a massacre.
The status quo which Israel and all world nations find themselves in at the present, will not be changed, and no amount of ‘acting’ will make Israel go away. So, it will be better for all (who should be more concerned with real and relevant problems on our doorstep), to let Israel and the Middle East sort out its own problems without unnecessary and misdirected interference.
Really, so is there only ONE side of this story you care to analyse?? You would certainly speak from the other side of your face if it was you who was invaded bro’! I mean, is this just a gig for you? The middle east is the only area in the world where you can be invaded by your neighbours with murderous intent, you are forced to fight back, push back and find security and then the foreign commentators feel they have the bleeding moral right to tell you to give it back to the invaders, so they can stand a better chance next time!
Mr. Diakanyo your diatribe on Israel’s apartheid tendencies are not really worth wasting time, suffice it to say that you are not only selective in your target but naive insofar as to think that no other country was complicit in selling arms, technology and more to the apartheid regime.
Your take of history is also a bit misty and needs clarification but again I wont attempt to correct this.
Only one question that you would perhaps respond to and whilst you are pointing fingers what about the support that your own government and party are giving to the despots of the world today – in Myanmar, China, Cuba, Libya, North Korea etc etc. What about those high ideals of morality that the ruling party stood for and espoused whilst in exile, all made way for the mighty $ and hunger for power.
Your mention of Rwanda is most apt and I question why our government was so silent during this genocide. I question why our government is still so silent when we are still witnessing genocide in the DRC – in that same country over 500000 women have been raped, disfigured and mutilated without a whisper from our government. In Darfur where women are sent out of refugee camps to collect firewood as they only get raped whereas the men get killed – this killing field score is almost 1 million dead to date and rising.But lets wine ans dine Mugabe whilst denying the Dali Lama a visa
“…I have come to join you today to add our own voice to the universal call for Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
We would be beneath our own reason for existence as government and as a nation, if the resolution of the problems of the Middle East did not feature prominently on our agenda.
When in 1977, the United Nations passed the resolution inaugurating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, it was asserting the recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine. In the same period, the UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system.
But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians…
We are proud as a government, and as the overwhelming majority of South Africans to be part of an international consensus taking root that that the time has come to resolve the problems of Palestine”
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT NELSON MANDELA AT THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
Pretoria, 4 December 1997
Mallencolly, the Nats came to power on the basis of extreme nationalism and racial separation. Previous discriminatory laws had been very much less extreme. Israel was less racist and more faith-ist, very much like the countries that surround it. The Nats also supported the Nazis (read through their paperwork of the WW2 era) which makes Israel’s dealings with them a bit odd. Lastly, your comments about genocide in the Boer War bear no scrutiny. Afrikaner nationalism created this as a focal-point to reject anything other than extreme Afrikaner nationalism as the only way forward for the Afrikaners. Genocide implies the desire for the complete ethnic cleansing of a group of people, which was never the aim of the South African War. It is unfortunate that politicians of the time did not care about the poisons they introduced into the South African polis, as long as it brought about their own personal power. The only genocide that has every occurred in South Africa was the annihilation of the San Bushmen, by the Bantu and the Boers.
Apartheid was supported by the US (through Israel?), the UK and other European countries in an attempt to stop the East bloc from penetrating Africa (cold war). It is not a coincidence that Apartheid finished shortly after the Berlin Wall had fallen.
The present role of Israel is nothing more than protecting the US interests in the Middle East; mainly the oil resources. Establishing the state of Israel in 1948 was a brilliant act by the US to keep a finger in the oil pie. Maintaining the pressure, using the nuclear ambitions of Iran (after Irak has been brought under control) is a logical progression of maintaining control in the region.
The Chinese threat of taking over the world economy is already getting the attention of major commercial organisations in US and Europe. Pressure on China to make economic concessions is already mounting. Increased sable rattling in N Korea through the Korean pawns in the South is an early indication. If it is not oil then nuclear dominance will be used to put the fear in the rest of the world in order to get the UN to vote in favour of the US, being the real aggressor on a global scale.
Why doesn’t any of the Pro-Israel comments mention anything about Israel ignoring UN resolutions and nothing happening to them? Yes Zimbabwe has a tragic situation, but the sanctions have crippled them. Why is Israel above international law? And why do the Israeli’s not want to discuss that?
The first racist laws in South Africa were passed by the early Dutch settlers and included prohibition of interracial marriage and the “black” ownership of property. And of course, if we consider slavery and racism identical then there was a series of laws that allowed Dutch/Afrikaner settlers to punish their slaves with rather brutal measures and even harsher measures to capture lost slaves. The Dutch/Afrikaner settlers were fond of their slaves: when the British banned the practice of slavery in 1834, it was the niece of the Afrikaner hero Piet Retief who articulated the views of the Afrikaner community when she wrote that emancipated slaves `being placed on an equal footing with the Christians, contrary to the laws of God and the natural distinction of race and religion’ and added, `wherefore we rather withdrew in order thus to preserve our doctrines in purity’. Major historians, despite years of apartheid propaganda, now consider the Afrikaner Migration into central South Africa inexorably linked with the abolition of slavery in the Cape.
Interesting factoid: life in Palestine may be awful, but Palestinians rate higher on the UN’s HDI than South Africans. What this means is that, in both absolute and relative terms, South Africans are more impoverished than their Palestinian counterparts (in terms of access to meaningful education, healthcare, life expectancy, morbidity etc.).
If a group of people or certain states do not conform to communisn or new age or a universal anti Christ ungodly propaganda they will always be the target of abovementioned gaga.
Please do not let the god of this world get the better of you
Sentletse, you really are ignorant about the (South African) Jewry’s stance against Apartheid.
Wolpe, Bernstein, Kasrils, Gordimer and the Krok Brothers spring to mind as fighters against Apartheid.
In the process they also vilified Afrikaners: Gordimer with her books for which she was awarded the Nobel Price; the Krok Brothers (makers of skin lighteners) who financed the Apartheid Museum.
I think that you are overplaying the bond between the Afrikaner-led South Africa and Israel.
Most Afrikaners view the Jews as God’s chosen People and for that reason have empathy for Israel.
Israel’s attitude towards South Africa was more driven by economic reasons than by any ideology. If you read the Jewish Affairs you cannot but notice the general antipathy towards Afrikaners and Apartheid.
It is one of life’s ironies that the USA was instrumental in overthrowing the pro-Western Shah – to be replaced by the militant anti-USA Ayatollahs.
Similar irony that Jews in general worked so hard to overfrow Apartheid – to be replaced by a government that is distinctly cool towards Israel.
Lastly, I take exception to equate Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians with Apartheid. I have never seen the physical walls in South Africa to keep undesirables out or the constant harassment that the Palestinians are subjected to.
@Panchetta: “One thousand five hundred innocent dead on the Palestinian side is nothing.”
Do you really beleive what you wrote there. If so, you are scarier than Hannibal lecter. One life lost is one too many. 1500 - thats what - the population of three good-sized suburban schools. The amount of people at an average mall on a saturday morning. Yeah, kill ‘em, its nothing, really. Just a tiny amount of innocents.
Bloody hell… sentiments like that makes this planet more bizarre to live on than any Larson cartoon.
Actually, how fucking brutal! Its been a while since a comment repulsed me to the level yours just have. I literally feel nauseous when I read what you wrote.
The way this article has been written, turns my mind back to many years ago when somebody said: :”What are we going to do about the JEWISH PROBLEM” And we all know what happened after that. The jews are just making sure taht HITLER does not ask that quaestion again.
What about the continuous ignorance of International Law? Other countries get punished with heavy sanctions? Why are all the pro-Israel ones so silent on this?
In fact, from the onset the Jews were very wrong for colonising the Arab land and to make matters even worse, they opressed them with the help from the US. This is exactly the same thing done they the white people during apartheid. Don’t even talk about the UN as the purpose for its existance is to push the Westerners racist and oppressive agenda.
Well said, everyone who can think clearly knows that Israel is an apatheid state. It sometimes makes me laugh and yet it is so tragic that everytime Israel get mentioned people find it necessary to defend and start accusing the oppressed.
The biggest tragedy is South Africa is that we did not have a war to effect change in SA. If we went to full blown war our society would have normalised over 25 to 40 years. Agreements that were done by negotiations betrayed and fooled the oppressed. The so called freedom is mainly for white to go on enjoying privilleges and insulting every black person who is trying to make meaningfull change is the country. Somehow we need a Mugabe in SA for meaningfull change to happen. The status quo for more than 75% of the population have not changed, not because they don’t want to better themselves.
I don’t understant why we willingly dismantled nuclear weapons. If you are serious as a country get some. Iran is doingwell to try and get some. If your neighbour is agreesive and have a machine gun you better get something to be able to protect yourself. The irony is that one of the smallest countries like Israel are allowed to possess nuclear weapons yet a whole country like Iraq was destroyed on the guise that they had some. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
@whiteguy,The notion that only Africans benefit from affirmative action is droning, deceptive and gibberish. I spent 7 years looking for a job; my first job was a month to month contract position which lasted 2 years. At one point (after 3 years looking for a job) I was denied a position for being a male after a very rare interview opportunity, I felt that the colour of my skin and sex are to blame for my misfortune. But looking back today with some anger of course, I realize that we (black or white) had to make sacrifices for other beneficiaries (White and African females, Indians, Coloureds and the disabled) of AA, EE and other policies aimed at redressing the imbalances of the past.
By the way, I also know dozens of young black people who hold so-called relevant qualifications and / or post-graduate qualifications some with relent expirience, they are rooming the streets of our townships looking for an in-service training to complete their degrees and / or to get just one short at an interview.
If you want to whine, let’s start by addressing the over-representation of white females in the boardrooms…
@Noko, And does it surprise you that the persons defending Israel are white? Makes you wonder if any black person in their right mind would let them ever again be in political power. I mean they’re still opressing us even though they are only a minority in government.
And Noko, you seem to be a bit ill-informed with regard to the South African nuclear weapons. The apartheid government are the ones who dismatled them just before the black government came into power. Well, for obvious reasons.
Sentletse me thinks you should stick to insulting and undermining Zuma and the ANC. It’s guaranteed you’d never be vilified and your intelligence questioned.Instead you’d be put on the same pedestal as Mr Mandela.
Sentletse, the problem with your article is that it is ± 95/5 one sided so the reactions will also be very one sided. Better with your platform and wisdom to write a more balanced article (one side is never ever 100% correct) that has solutions at the end. Your tone and one sidededness ensures that the debate will be ‘violent’ (check Noko’s pathetic contribution) and contribute nothing to solutions.
If Israel is an Apartheid state then so to is Lesotho, Swaziland, Pakistan not to mention Northern Ireland and many others that “prefer to live with their own.”
From 1949 until 1967 the West Bank was part of Jordan and the Gaza strip part of Egypt (with no Arab protests) so surley a solution to consider is for this situation to revert and prevert another “Arab” apartheid state in the region that the two state solution offers.
All those who complain about Israel ignoring UN resolutions what about Arabs totally ignoring the 1st resolution in 1948, (incidently the 1st country to vote for it was the USSR) thus setting the president??
Last question to the Israel haters, Egypt and Jordan suffer no problems with Israel, why? Easy they have signed a peace treaty which both sides honour so why dont the “Paletinians” get wise and do the same thing?
Sentletse you wrote: “Neither Hamas, Hezbollah nor Iran has the military capability to pose any direct threat on the continued existence of Israel”.
That has to rank as one of the most naive observations of our time! Honestly, how can you say that? Where were you when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made that infamous pronouncement that Israel must be “wiped off the map”? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/world/africa/26iht-iran.html
That is deadly intent for you. And when deadly intent is fully matured, it gives rise to deadly capability on a scale greater than 9/11, Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the Holocaust, etc.
But then again, let us not expend our energies needlessly by fighting other peoples’ wars. We have xenophobic attacks in our own backyard which are slowly tainting South Africa’s human rights record and democracy. To be fair, we must first master our own demons before clamouring to pontificate on the evils of others.
The real danger of the Israel issue, is the distortion of morality and the deliberate rationalised looking away.. the parable of the injured Samaritan on the highway and uninvolved Rabbi rushing on a holy mission, couldnt be more apt here…
Even the South African Chief Rabbi cannot pronounce himself clearly to condemn the atrocities committed by the Israeli government against Palestinians.
And of course you know that according to our white friends in South Africa, I cant say that because I have not “criticised” Mugabe - as if the seeing of any evil is a conditional matter.
There is no Holy Scripture or morality that condones what Israel does to Palestinians. There never was a God who condones the fatal humiliation of a pregnant Palestinian woman at a military check point. Or the use of poison tinged bullets that attack the human immune system as were used in Gaza by Israeli soldiers!
Quite right @Michael Liermann. What regard for human life can we expect from Hamas if the power balance were to shift in their favor.
Hamas have no concerns for ‘moral high-ground’; - they would slaughter Jews at the drop of a hat if they could, purely as an expression of worship.
@ Gerry
A little over dramatic, is what you are. The same Palestinians who were UNFORTUNATELY killed during the recent Gaza war with Israel were dancing in the streets and celebrating the 9/11 massacre of over 3000 innocent souls. You should be positively vomiting at the thought of that.
@ Gersie Dee.
Israel has not broken any International Laws. The UN and UNHRC is overwhelmingly biased towards Israel by virtue of Middle Eastern and Africa Block countries out-numbering all others. Therefore a disproportionate number of resolutions are initiated and passed against Israel, while real and current atrocities are ignored. In any case, International Law is not a suicide pact, and must apply equally to both sides of a conflict.
Can you state when the san were annihilated by other Africans.Which ethnic group carried out this massacre? and when? Give the dates. You do not need to give the exact dates just the period or epoch.
Thank you for further reinforcing my point about the dates of racist laws in South Africa.
I was talking about the laws passed that introduced restrictions on movement, land ownership, voting and working in specific trades. There were many similar laws previously (as you say in the early dutch colonies) but had been changed. Something that is worth noting is the general sentiment towards slavery in colonies the world over. The brits followed the trend and the boers did not. Also what is intersting is that. In the Boer Republics, there does not seem to be any racist laws being passed until after 1900 while in the British Colonies there were (introduction of pass laws etc). There seems to have been a reversal. After Unification there also seems to be an increase in racist laws passed. If you have a full list it would be intersting to see. The list of laws i have seen, doesnt seem to be complete.
Lesego, you have obviously never been to Israel, the Jews and Arabs living there are mostly Semetic and range in colour from pale to very dark, all of them. Often the only way one can tell if it is Arab or Jew is by the head dress not the skin colour.
The Ethiopean Jews airlifted to Israel some years ago are very dark.
Let me ask all anti-Israel commentators here if they subscribe to the values of GAY RIGHTS, WOMANS RIGHTS, freedom of WORSHIP and EXPRESSION, basic democratic RIGHT TO VOTE, a fair and impartial JUSTICE SYSTEM with all being equal under the law. Opposed to the DEATH PENALTY?
The only country in the Middle East that has applied precisely the above values, consistently and ever-more broadly, is Israel.
It is not Palestine, where gay Palestinians flee for their lives and wind up on the streets of south Tel Aviv. It is not Egypt, or Jordan, where honor killings of women are endemic. It is not Iran which has the second highest execution rate in the world. It is not Egypt which has lived under the boot of a military regime for the past 28 years.
Israel is the only country that espouses the above values that you and I share. So, before you criticise Israel, and before you call it an apartheid state, ignoring the 120 thousand African (Ethiopian) Jews and 75 thousand Indian Jews, and the 2 million Sephardic Jews (Arab Jews). Before you do that, think about our shared values. By all means, criticise Israel, but don’t do it from a standpoint of being a hypocrite to your own values.
@Panchetta - So you are saying the UN is actually the party in the wrong? Regardless of who made the law, when the law gets broken the perpetrators get hit with sanctions, as is the case with Iran, Zimbabwe and the former Apartheid government. Israel seems to be above any form of punitive measures. Why? please tell me why? when innocent people are being killed on land that was forcibly taken from them? What don’t you understand. Have you read the Goldstone report?
Those who claim that Israel “colonized” Palestine need to consult their history books. Can you tell us when Palestine was established as a country? What was its capital city? Who were its famous kings or rulers? What is the Palestinian language?
Palestine was a territory that belonged to the Ottoman Empire, after the fall of this empire some states in that region were established such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan etc. By the British.
The West Bank until 1967 was under Jordanian rule as Gaza was under Egyptian control and never a mention of a Palestinian state then. Both countries refused to include their Arab brothers into their citizenry – wonder why?
Israel conquered these territories in a war initiated by Arab State with the intention of annihilating Israel.
Israel withdrew from Gaza 5 years ago and left an infrastructure, which could have turned that territory into a second Dubai – but sheer hatred and Hamas’ greed for power turned it into what it is today.
For the record Egypt has enforced the blockade of Gaza far more diligently than has Israel -
Why can’t we be allowed to bash the racist tendencies of the Zionist regime of Israel in the same vigor as we all do when we slander Libya, the Communist Republic of Korea/Cuba/Venezuela/China or Zimbabwe for that matter?
Why are blind loyalists of Israel always have to resort to gutter language & slurs when something not so good is mentioned about that extremely conservative half state?
Is Israel immune from criticism? Are they beyond scrutiny? Are they secrosanct?
It is the fact that (just like many nations in the world) Israel has very racist elements…and we should deal with them, here in SA…with “cool minds”.
Panchetta I can only agree but given the diatribe that we read in Diakanyo’s article and those blogs supporting him one can only conclude that whatever truths we try to present to these seriously biased people is of absolutely no avail. Their view is not only perverted but the history that they are reading is alarmingly frightening.
I well remember the apartheid history that was taught at state schools during that era and just how distorted it was. Clearly the same propaganda is now replacing factual history, which is being written and taught with the slant that is intended. How different is the system now to what it was then – and that is the alarming thing we need to understand.
Inculcated with this view on true facts we will never argue a successful case against such ignorance.
Brent, Israel is a no go area so why would a black South African like myself ever aspire to go get murdered at those Israel soldiers’ check points? You’re a white guy so they’ll think you’re a Jew.
In a way you are right. The British government made a great show of “colour-blind” law in official documentation and in their rather idyllic statements to the press. However urban and territorial segregation was more fully developed in the Cape and Natal than in the northern Afrikaner republics. But that has more to do with the more urbanised nature of Natal and the Cape (not to mention that these colonies had a more established juridical system). To state that in the “Boer Republics there does not seem to be any racist laws being passed until after 1900″? This is one of those old Afrikaner Nationalist perversions of history. As the Boer republics urbanised and expanded their juridical power over the areas they controlled, the racist laws came flooding in. The 1858 Grondwet of the Afrikaner South African Republic (SAR) declared that there would be “no equality between coloured people and white inhabitants of the country either in Church or State”. Inter-racial marriage was not recognised in the Transvaal. Legislation against African squatters was passed in the SAR in 1895. Indians were forcibly banished from the Free State in the 1890s. In fact the only difference between the Afrikaner republics and the British colonies in terms of racial laws were that the Afrikaner republicans were more open about being racist.
@Panchetta: While I wondered if you even deserve a response after your heartless comment about “only 1500 dead” being “hardly a massacre” which was the most disgusting comment I have ever seen.
However, I have to call you up on your defense of Israels values.
Criticism of Israel does not mean acceptance of human rights violations in other parts of the Middle East. However, given Israel proclaims it has shared values with the Western world, its violations of these values are even more shocking. Sure Israel may look good compared to Egypt- but who wants to be compared to a military dictatorship? It looks pretty bad on its own merits and compared to a decent society.
Btw, I might add that the rights you have mentioned apply only to its citizens (and even then, do not always apply to its Arab Israeli citizens), and do not apply to those in the territories it occupies. A fair and impartial justice system? All equal under the law? Give me a break… Sure, Israel is accomodating to different genetic backgrounds (though there is alot of evidence of discrimination across communities, such as orthodox Ashkenazi parents (white) protesting against Sephardic children (arab) in their schools a month or two ago)However, there is one proviso…you must be Jewish. In Israel discrimination is not White over Black. It is Jewish over non-Jewish people. But discrimination is still discrimination. And human rights violations are still human rights violations.
The most paramount right is that of right to life. It would therefore follow that the ongoing Israel murders of Palestinians nullifies all those rights you are naively punting.
Gersie dee you honestly have a short take on fact and history. You refer to the Goldstone report (all 537 pages that I have read), which means that you are referring to Gaza.
Gaza was never forcibly taken from the Palestinians – that territory has been governed by Egypt since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War until 1967 when Israel conquered the whole of the Sinai Peninsula in a war forced on her by the Arab States.
In 1978 when Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David Accord, which ended the hostility between these two countries. Egypt would not take back control of Gaza that it had previously governed! Wonder why?
Israel then ended its occupation of the Sinai but remained in Gaza until 2005 when it withdrew from every inch of that territory, leaving an infrastructure that could have turned Gaza into a second Dubai. However that was not to be since Hamas’s agenda was one of belligerence not only to Israel but also to Fatah and its supporters who have been systematically decimated since.
Human rights, gay rights, women’s rights simply have no room in Gaza. Just recently Hamas closed down 7 UN aid agencies. Girls schools have been forced to close.
I challenge you to refute this
It never ceases to amaze me how afraid the Arab and Muslim world is of Israel - the tiniest country in the Middle East - and of no more than 14 million Jews worldwide.
If there were real concern about the Palestinians and their plight in the Arab world, those living in Gaza would have been taken in by Egypt (who doesn’t want them), Jordan (who definitely doesn’t want them) and / or Lebanon (who absolutely doesn’t want them). So none of their countrymen wants them - what does that say about the humanitarian feelings of Muslims towards their own? Sadly, they are being used as pawns by their fellow Arabs to divert attention away from a world of people most of whom live in extreme poverty; most of whom are illiterate; most of whose women and girl-children are abused and humiliated in the most appalling and horrific manner; and most of whose leaders live in obscene and cruel opulence, autocratic and dictatorial, abusive and condemnatory, while paying little if any heed to their own.
Internationally it is politically incorrect to be antisemitic; to express antisemitic comments is frowned on; yet diatribes like this one are nothing more than an attack on the Jewish people, and should be given short shrift. Israel is the spiritual home of the Jewish people - the link between the two is eternal and indissoluble - and perhaps that’s what frightens the Arabs: that we Jews care for one another,and will do for all time.
S, The argument is branding Israel as an apartheid state, so lets examine what was an apartheid state as we know it and we should know better than most.
Does Israel have pass laws? No
Does Israel have job reservation on its statute books? No
Does Israel have ‘Bantu’ education? No
Does Israel have a Group Areas act? No
Does Israel have whites only signs on toilets, park benches, Govt. buildings? No
To correct you Arab citizens of the State enjoy all rights that Jewish citizens do and yes Israel does practice a fair and impartial judicial system – please refer to the countless judgments handed down by the courts favoring not only Arab citizens of the State but Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
You mention social discrimination between Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities that hardly exists today, however our social discrimination right here at home is certainly a yardstick to compare with given the very recent xenophobic violence. (As they say – Those in Glass Houses…) It is only the very naïve that believe no discrimination exists anywhere in the world. Gaza, The West Bank and ALL Arab countries practice the very worst kind of discrimination against non believers, gays, women - Iran stones to death women simply accused of infidelity!
@ Lebo
The same standards must apply to Palestinians and Hamas in particular. What right to life does Hamas afford to Israeli innocent civilians when it instigates war by lobbing ordinance over their border into Israeli towns? And let us not forget their religious right to martyr themselves in suicide attacks against innocents from all walks of life. Do you consider Hamas suicide bombers as murderers?
Israel does also have the right to defend its civilian population; - although it would seem that half the world does not think so.
You pull another one.
@ S
The general definition of a massacre is what? Is it when a few thousand civilians are marched off to an open pit and gunned down? Is is the when a building full of innocent civilians is bombed by flying a plane into it? Is it when a marketplace full of shoppers in Tel Aviv OR Baghdad is bombed for maximum casualties?
Or is it 1500 (majority of which voted for Hamas) Palestinian civilians (of which at least half were cowardly Hamas MILITANTS, hiding among them), who were caught in crossfire during a war situation. Its called collateral damage, and Israeli’s and I are just as appalled by unnecessary death and any other. If you are not going to apply rational objectivity to this matter then at least apply the same subjective emotional response to the difficulties that Israel have to contend with.
@ Gersie Dee
The UN is a club, and like all loose democratic institutions, cliques are formed along class (and other) lines. The UN does not make laws, but only pass some resolutions (if not vetoed) which make their way into International Law. These resolutions may be made into binding law by respective countries (if they choose), or ignored if it suits them.
As mentioned, third world countries outnumber Western Democracies three to one, and the easiest and smallest Western country to bully and harass happens to be Israel - which is perfectly placed within their midst to show up the deficiencies of non-democratic, value-less and backward regimes of Africa, South America and the Middle East.
@ Jeremiah Kure on July 21st,
You must be hasbara - you have made reference to a statement that was never made. What Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually said was:
“Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel
This sentiment is shared by many and refers to the zionists regime - not Israel. And it contains no threat from Iran either.
@panchetta
Not entirely true. The Maoris fought the Brits to a truce and forced them to enter into a treaty. This was because the Maori had developed an effective ‘fort’ type defense that was all-but-impenetrable.
Whatever legal terminology you choose to use (I use the common use), the fact that so many people died in the concentration camps through neglect and what seems to be deliberate starvation (not only boers and which was known by the Commons http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/lxxxix.html) as well as things like scorched earth, etc, would today be considered a crime against humanity. You should read those parliamentary debates, very interesting. So wrt your semantic point, Its debatable. I will remind you, though, that the dead would be no less dead, all of them, boer or otherwise.
It is intersting that you make point out where the differences are (nationalism and faith-ism). The similarity between them is loss of lives and close to total economic destruction. Germany can be included under close to total economic destruction, a factor in the rise of the Nazis. We know how that one turned out. It seems to me that, when a nation feels threatened (and surrounded) empathy is the last thing on their mind.
@ John Everyman
Can you point me in the direction of a full list of laws? It would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Lesego you are obsessed by colour. In the Middle East mostly your dress identifies you not colour as Arabs/Israeli’s both come in many different hues from black through to white the blackest being the Ethopian Jews.
Michael Liermann, think it is your hair that is ruffled. Panchetta’s statement was made in the contex of other much worse ‘massacres’ that are ignored by “The Left” - thus by logic israel’s is also not a massacre.
@ Gersie…UNGA resolutions are non-binding UNSC are binding and therefore law. all those have been kept by Israel at least…where are your cries of Hizbullah rearming itself and setting flottillas ISrael’s way in contravention of UNSC 1701??? You should go read the resolutions of the UNSC against Israel and then say if those are being broken I do not see…the wording of one comes to mind land taken BY war must be returned…nowhere does it say FROM war…in all the wars Israel got land was after it was attacked. 1967 and 1973 were both started by the arabs and they ended up losing the land.
It is so funny how people just forget the real facts like when was the first hospital built in West Bank or Gaza and who built it? When were the first schools built ? When were the first universities built?
How you forget how they( the Palestinians) were oppressed by the Egyptians and Jordanians while those territories were under their control.
What about the expelling of the Jews from Arab countries? They have title deeds for land massing the size of the sinai desert yet no one cares about their situation.
How your facts are misguided to push, and BTW The US was going to vote against Israeli statehood until Edward Jacobson asked him to vote for.
How you forget at anytime Palestine could have declared independence and they would have had all of Jerusalem…yet they never….why????????? AN AGENDA
Why is no one worried about how the Turks and Iranians bomb villages for days on end and kill hundreds if not thousands of Kurds? But if Israel kills one person then front page news it will be for the rest of the week?
Why is it that the Palestinians have their own UN refugee commission UNRWA, yet the rest of the world have to use the UNHCR. Why is it that the Palestinians are the beneficiaries of the worlds most aid?
Ask yourselves how much of this world aid comes from their so called Arab/Persian/Turkish “brethren”….if 1% I will eat my hat…Saudi pledged $500 million in 2007 and how much has arrived?
@ Gersie Dee
The UN is a club, and like all loose democratic institutions, cliques are formed along class (and other) lines. Resolutions may be made into binding law by respective countries (if they choose), or ignored if it suits them.
As mentioned, third world countries outnumber Western Democracies three to one, and the easiest and smallest Western country to bully and harass happens to be Israel - which is perfectly placed within their midst to show up the deficiencies of non-democratic, value-less and backward regimes of Africa, South America and the Middle East.
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How about Looking a little closer to home for Apartheid Tendencies, instead of this interesting, yet rather exaggerated article which its clear is more about your agenda and less about fact?
For instance, I am of a certain colour, yet am refused jobs for which I am qualified and experienced for, and this has happened to others I know and possibly will happen again. Is that any different to what was happening in Old S.A.?
Where are your thoughts on that?
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