SA’S apartheid past is the Palestinians’ present
IN A shocking display of blatant disregard for Palestinian civil liberties, Israel has resorted to tyrannical tactics reminiscent of South Africa’s outlandish banning orders during apartheid’s heydays.
Not surprising at all, for the settler colonial regime has, during the past few decades, replicated apartheid and expanded it beyond the Verwoerdian model.
Its assault on Palestinian civil and human rights organisations is the latest manifestation of commitment by Israel’s right-wing Jewish extremists to apartheid’s repressive ideology.
Reports from Amnesty International as well as Palestinian activists confirm that the Israeli Defence Ministry, on October 19, issued a military order declaring six Palestinian civil society organisations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to be “terrorist organisations”.
The groups are: Addameer, al-haq, the Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Bisan Center for Research & Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees.
Outlawing the organisations as “terrorist” is a fallback to apartheid South Africa’s era of kragdadigheid and is rooted in a racist 2016 Israeli statute designed to criminalise their legitimate activities.
In addition, the draconian whip empowers Israeli authorities to close their offices, seize their assets, arrest and jail their members, and it prohibits funding or even publicly expressing support for their activities.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International, who work closely with many of these groups, said in a joint statement: “This appalling and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement. For decades, Israeli authorities have systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who criticise its repressive rule over Palestinians.
“While staff members of our organizations have faced deportation and travel bans, Palestinian human rights defenders have always borne the brunt of the repression.
“This decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations.”
It goes on to declare that the decadeslong failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to act in the brazen manner.
This is certainly true if we consider the duplicitous stance adopted by most Western countries led by the US. Not only have they turned a blind eye to injustices perpetrated against Palestinians by funding and militarily equipping Israel in addition to shielding it from accountability, they share culpability for gross human-rights violations.
A crucial question that arises is: How will the international community respond?
This applies to South Africa as well. Will the Anc-led Ramaphosa government remain wedded to clichés and rhetoric about futile dead-end prospects such as “two-states living side-by-side” – a false sense of expectation repeatedly voiced by the discredited Palestinian Authority – or take the bull by the horns?
It remains pointless to articulate a vision that keeps turning out to be a mirage. Solidarity activism requires tough choices.
If South Africa considers itself as an independent sovereign state with a strong human rights ethos underpinning its foreign policy, it dare not remain in a perpetual state of paralysis by pursuing Bantustan options for Palestine.
The recent visit by Muna El Kurd, of #Savesheikhjarrah fame, highlighted an unprecedented escalation of repression by the Zionist colonial entity. Detention without trial, torture, home demolitions, forced expulsions, targeted killings by heavily armed Jewish settlers in cahoots with the regime’s occupation forces … the list is endless.
Against this background of intensely brutal oppression, Palestinians face further arbitrary criminalisation resulting from the outrageous decision to outlaw civil society groups.
Just as the instrument of counterterrorism legislation was ruthlessly used to suppress South Africa’s liberation movements including the groundswell of dissenting voices from media to rights organisations opposed to apartheid, so too is it deployed in Israel today.
As El Kurd poignantly observed: “Your past is our present.”
South Africa’s response to Israel’s unlawful, uncivilised medieval practice to constrain legitimate human rights and humanitarian work, will thus be a true test of its resolve to protect human rights defenders in Palestine.