The apartheid state called Israel in focus

Activists across the globe this week hosted activities to highlight Israeli Apartheid Week. In South Africa alone, more than 600 events were planned countrywide to expose Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people.

At the University Currently Known As Rhodes, we hosted a number of events as well.

On Tuesday, we had a debate on the question: is Israel a fascist state?

The topic was taken from the remarks made by Ehud Barak, a leading Israeli politician, who, last year, suggested that Israel had been “infected with the seeds of fascism”.

While one could accuse the former prime minister of simply playing party politics against the Netanyahu regime, he mentioned examples to substantiate his “seeds of fascism” claim.

These examples included laws which would give members of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) immunity for supporting terrorism as well as a law that would impose Israeli law on Israelis living in the West Bank; a Palestinian territory currently occupied by the Israelis.

At the debate, we also hosted international Boycott, Disinvest and Sanctions (BDS) activist, Pedro Charbel.

Charbel heads BDS in Latin America after being involved in a number of struggles in Brazil and has served on the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine/Israel.

He shared some of the victories, successes and current campaigns coming out of Latin America as well as exploring ways to strengthen relations between South – South partners and between activists from BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) on the issue of building BDS and Palestinian solidarity.

On Wednesday, we watched the documentary called “The Wanted 18”.

Released in 2014, the documentary was reviewed by the New York Times as “… [following] a worthy tradition of highlighting absurdities that arise during con- South Africa. Pretoria determined ultimately what happened in the Bantustans.

At least 13 percent of the South African landscape was carved out for the Bantustans. Even the less than 10% of the historic territory known as Palestine and which the Palestinian Authority governs is colonised by the Israelis.

It is for this reason that Israel continues to build settlements and pays Israelis to live in these settlements in the West Bank.

The other Palestinian territory, Gaza, is commonly referred to as the world’s largest prison.

It is nearly impossible for residents to move in and out of Gaza freely. Even travelling to and from the West Bank is severely restricted as the infamous wall which divides the West Bank. Literally, there are highways for Israelis and there are roads for Palestinians, just as it was under apartheid.

The hallmark of apartheid was the occupation of the majority of the land by a minority of the country’s inhabitants as well as the “separate development” of the settler community from the indigenous peoples, who were to be treated as second-class citizens.

Some would argue that Arabs living in Israel have rights and representation but so did Coloureds and Indians, and even Africans in the homelands, during reformed apartheid: reformed apartheid, but it remained apartheid.

Since its establishment, Israel has driven more than five million Palestinians into exile and has had no less than 45 United Nations Human Rights Commission resolutions condemning it.

As a pariah state there should be no doubt that apartheid Israel is as isolated today as apartheid South Africa was in the 80s.

Anyone who wishes to join the Palestinian Solidarity Committee in Grahamstown is welcomed to email Seale on w.seale@ru.ac.za.

• Seale is a lecturer in the Department of Political and International Studies at

UCKAR.