SAshould support Apartheid Week
Africa’s ruling party, the ANC.
Endorsing Israeli Apartheid Week, the ANC said: “The ANC recognises that the international anti-apartheid movement and sanctions campaign was shouldered, taken on and defended by thousands of ordinary citizens from numerous countries around the world.
“These ordinary citizens made our struggle, their life. We are forever indebted to them. Today we humbly continue the internationalism of our movement in lending solidarity to the people of Cuba, Western Sahara, Swaziland, Palestine and others struggling.”
For South Africans and our liberation, people of the world mobilised in their hundreds of thousands – if not millions – during the 1980s.
Today we South Africans have the opportunity to “give back” by joining the international movement in solidarity with the indigenous Palestinian people (and their progressive Israeli allies) who are challenging and confronting Israeli apartheid.
A press conference was held recently to launch Israeli Apartheid Week by the children and grandchildren of former antiapartheid icons, including relatives of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Chief Albert Luthuli, Beyers Naude and the Reverend Frank Chikane.
At this conference it was stressed by participants that employing the word “apartheid” to describe Israel is done neither maliciously nor lightly but, on the contrary, with sadness.
Sadness that another people, this time the Palestinians, have to endure what many of our fathers and mothers endured during the 1980s.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu speaks passionately, for example, of how he is “deeply distressed” in his visits to Palestine. He says they “reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about”.
Israel’s system of pass laws, checkpoints, separate roads and a host of other measures all contribute towards Israel’s apartheid design, a design which far surpasses apartheid South Africa in its sophistication.
The white government of the 1980s could only have dreamt of, for example, an 8m high, 800km separation wall (deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice) snaking its way around and suffocating Palestinians in Bantustans, cutting Palestinians off from their land and resources.
In addition, what makes Israeli apartheid far worse than what we experienced in South Africa is the continuous military violence and aerial bombardment of a surrounded, besieged people.
We witnessed this brutality during the bombing of the Gaza Strip last year which saw the deaths of more than 2 000 Palestinians, including over 500 children.
It is true that Israel can be compared with apartheid South Africa. However, there is also a legal case that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.
Most recently, in March last year, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Professor Richard Falk, found in his UN Human Rights Council Report that Israel’s policies bore “unacceptable characteristics of apartheid”.
We also recall that in 2009 a Human Sciences Research Council report commissioned by the South African government found Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid.
Some detractors and Israeli apologists try to claim that there are some Arabs in Israel’s parliament or who hold certain positions in the government.
But as the Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, Haneen Zoabi, puts it: “We are here in these positions not because of Israel but in spite of Israel.
“Apartheid South Africa, too, tried to have a sprinkling of black people (Indian, black and coloured) in certain positions in an attempt to suggest there was no racism in apartheid South Africa. Israel and her apologists are doing the same.
“However, the reality of racism and apartheid is overwhelming. No amount of sugar coating can, for example, erase the fact that Israel has over 50 legislated acts of discrimination.”
What can erase this discrimination and oppression is pressure – from Palestinians, from within Israeli society and, as we learnt during apartheid, from the international community.
This is where we on the southern tip of Africa come in.
Israel has been under the impression that it can (with US cover) get away with its illegal settlement construction, occupation, discrimination, war crimes and violations of international law.
However, the BDS campaign (launched by Palestinians in 2005) has proven to be an effective form of holding Israel accountable.
Several European governments, banks and pension funds have instituted boycotts and divestment measures against Israel’s illegal settlements and their products.
In January last year ABP, the world’s third-largest pension fund, as well as two major European investors announced a review of their holdings in Israeli banks.
Two weeks before that, PGGM, the second-largest Dutch pension fund, announced its intention to dump its holdings in five Israeli banks: Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank and Mizrahi Tefahot.
Denmark’s largest bank, Dankse Bank, also announced its blacklisting of Israeli banks. Germany has placed restrictions and conditions on grants to Israel.
Last year, the pension fund of Luxembourg’s government workers added all five of Israel’s major banks and several Israeli firms to its list of banned investment targets.
This year, Amnesty International has called for an arms embargo on Israel. And, in a significant move, the Presbyterian Church has divested, along with the Methodist Church, from companies involved in Israel’s illegal occupation.
Last July, Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, decided to stop selling Israeli products originating from the occupied Palestinian territories.
The year before, three major supermarket chains in the Netherlands – Aldi, Hoogvliet and Jumbo – announced they would no longer sell products that come from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In April 2012, UK supermarket chain The Co-op adopted a complete boycott of Israeli companies.
Last October, after sustained protests and campaigning, US department store chain Macy’s stopped carrying Israeli settlement products for Soda Stream.
In our own country, the University of Johannesburg in 2011 terminated its relations with Israel, followed by various SRCs adopting an academic boycott of Israel resolutions.
Last year, the South African agricultural company Karsten Farms terminated its relations with Israel’s Hadiklaim.
The ANC for its part, at the national executive council level, announced last year that “companies that do business in the Israeli-occupied territories, such as Capegate, G4S Security and Caterpillar must not be allowed to do business with the (South African) state”.
The ANC has also resolved to “join the call for a cultural, academic and education boycott of Israel, including travel bans for members and leaders of the ANC, the tripartite alliance, the cabinet, of Parliament and government officials.”
BDS is moving at supersonic speed. As we get closer to the 10th anniversary of its launch, we invite all peace- and justiceloving South Africans to join us in this non-violent human rights campaign that is taking the energies and commitment of ordinary people to build an extraordinary movement in the pursuit of a more just and peaceful world. Where a child can be a child, even if that child is Palestinian.