INTRODUCTION - SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID
On the 3rd of February 1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech in the South African parliament referring to the Winds of Change - the anti-colonial independence movement - that was sweeping through Africa. He urged the white minority government of South African to recognize this change, saying:
The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.
Then South African President Hendrik Verwoed, often called "the architect of apartheid", replied:
And the white man came to Africa, perhaps to trade, in some cases, perhaps to bring the gospel; has remained to stay. And particularly we in this southern most portion of Africa, have such a stake here that this is our only motherland, we have no where else to go. We set up a country bare, and the Bantu came in this country and settled certain portions for themselves, and it is in line with the thinking of Africa, to grant those fullest rights which we also with you admit all people should have and believe providing those rights for those people in the fullest degree in that part of southern Africa which their forefathers found for themselves and settled in. But similarly, we believe in balance, we believe in allowing exactly those same full opportunities to remain within the grasp of the white man who has made all this possible.
The speech is striking in its apparent moderation and its guile. It is striking also in its parallels to the Zionist narrative - a benign arrival of "a people without a land to a land without a people". And relevant also to the policies of Israel and the rhetoric of its apologists: separate but equal. Separate, however, is not equal.
This was the creed of Apartheid South Africa; a policy of separation, a system designed to maintain white privilege and black oppression. It is worth noting some of the hallmark features of the regime:
- Racial classification: the ability of a pencil to stick in your hair and the shade of your skin determining the category into which you fell.
- Policy of segregation: The Group Areas Act of 1950, the provision of separate amenities, forced removals, restriction on mixed marriages and the creations of the Bantustan "Homelands"; all designed to segregate and dispossess.
- Restriction of movement: The hated pass laws determined to restrict and control the movement of the black population.
- Suppression of organizing: The suppression of freedom of speech and congregation by the banning of people and organizations.
- Removal of leadership: The removal of leadership by the imprisonment of activist who were often labelled "communist agitators".
- Violent repression: Tanks in townships, assassinations, warfare in neighbouring countries and daily legalized violence.
This was the meticulously legalized insanity of the system. I grew up under that system. I, however, am its beneficiary not its victim. And yet surrounded by this in my youth I did not see it. I grew up, like many Israeli friends of mine do today, with a disturbing sense of normalcy. But things were far from normal.
ISRAEL AND APARTHEID
The concept of Israel as an apartheid state is gaining international currency. The power of language and its correct use is not to be underestimated. Language frames a debate and shapes our thinking in ways we are unaware of. The illustration of Israel's perpetration of the "crime of apartheid" is important, factually, morally and tacitly. However, it is a term that should be used judiciously.
Legally and factually speaking
The "crime of apartheid" is defined under international law in the "International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid" past by the UN General Assembly in 1973. It is also made analagorous to crimes against humanity in the "Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court" under certain conditions. That a specific definition exists under international law is in itself important.
The term apartheid is often used indiscriminately to apply to all actions of Israel committed in its brutal occupation of the Palestinians of the occupied territories as well as to the disposition and discrimination suffered by the Palestinian citizens of Israel. The indiscriminate use of this term is unwise and inaccurate. The dispossession and discrimination faced daily by Palestinian Israelis of Haifa, Yaffo or Sakhnin is insidious and cleverly designed to pacify a group that is systematically denied the full rights that all should enjoy under democracy. But it is not necessarily apartheid. Just as other systems of racial segregation and discrimination, for example that which existed in America after the abolition of slavery, is not necessarily apartheid. Of course there are some policies, laws and practices within the pre-67 borders of what is today Israel which bear a disturbing resemblance. The restriction of land purchase (contested in recent years in the Israeli Supreme Court), the differential funding of school education (Jewish students receive on average twice as much funding as Arab children), and the distinction made between Jews and others on Israeli identity cards, are just some examples. And yet, despite the indignity and discrimination these policies cause, they may not amount to apartheid.
I make this point because for the term to retain its power it must not be reduced to the lowest common denominator and be used as a substitute for all policies of racial or ethnic discrimination. If we do this then we lose the power to use the term effectively in other aspects of the struggle.
Israel as a Democracy?
Is Israel then a democracy? We have all heard ad nauseum the proclamations by apologists for Israeli policies of oppression that Israel is the "only democracy in the Middle East". When considering the entire territory Israel controls (i.e. pre-1967 Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories) such a claim is laughable. Over four million Palestinians are denied the right to vote in the elections of the country that controls the territory in which they live. If we are to consider only pre-1967 Israel (and presumably through a bizarre leap of logic include Jewish settlers in the West Bank) then Shlomo Sands, in his interesting book: "The Invention of the Jewish People" notes an instructive point. He defines Israel as an ethnocracy; it is not a state "for its citizens" but a state for a particular religious or ethnic group that is currently scattered throughout the world. This is a view also outlined in the document "The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel" placing Israel in the category as Turkey, Srilanka, Latvia and Estonia as a technocratic not democratic state. The Israeli Declaration of Independence makes this point explicit, recounting the Zionist settler narrative and reaffirming Israel as a Jewish state.
Modern democracy is premised on the idea of a state being governed by and representing all of its citizens. Israel does not do this. The twenty four percent of the population (according to the 2009 census) who are not Jewish are not represented in this way. Leaving aside the active discrimination mentioned above, there is an institutional framework that prioritizes ethnicity not citizenship.
Many point to the Arab elected politicians in the Knesset (parliament) as proof of Israel's democratic credentials. However, the very symbols of that body and the country - the flag, emblem and anthem - represent only four fifths of the population. Israeli law also prohibits political parties from participating in elections if their goals include "a denial of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people". The Law of Return, the right of any Jew to citizenship, again gives priority to a particular ethic group and not the country's citizens.
The very idea of a democratic Jewish state is an oxymoron. Israel is currently a state for Jewish, not Israeli, people.
Apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
In the Occupied Palestinian Territories we witness the daily imposition of a brutal injustice that fits both the spirit and definition of apartheid. In many ways what is endured daily by Palestinians is worse than what black South African's suffered[1][1].
The system of checkpoints, closure, permit system, separate roads, curfews, siege and the separation barrier currently in place restricts Palestinian freedom of movement to an unprecedented degree. According to a June 2009 UN OCHA report there were 613 closure obstacles within West Bank territory - this does not include checkpoints along the green line, i.e. between the West Bank and Israel proper - which restrict internal Palestinian movement. Of these 68 were permanent checkpoints, 522 unstaffed barriers - roadblocks, earthmounds, earth walls, road barriers, road gates and trenches - and 23 "partial checkpoints" staffed on an ad-hoc basis. Over and above this were 63 crossing points along the Barrier and an average of 70 random ("flying") checkpoints deployed each week since the start of 2009.
These barriers prevent Palestinians from accessing their agricultural land, jobs, medical treatment and educational institutions. Visiting relatives or friends becomes an administrative nightmare with a series of permits needed that do not guarantee access. Economic life has also been completely disrupted. The prolonged waiting and humiliating treatment Palestinians are subjected to at the checkpoints discourages many from even attempting to travel. All are seen as potential terrorists, a thoroughly dehumanizing process.
Separate roads have been created for Palestinians and Israelis within the West Bank and the separation barrier - which is built within not on the green line - will when complete (according to Palestine Monitor) effectively annex 45% of the West Bank. These various measures have split the West Bank into six parts. Together these facts expose the lie that these measures are for the security of the residents of Israel. The real aims are to seize arable land and water, incorporate huge settlement blocks into Israel, protect settlements and illegal outposts, and to control and subjugate the Palestinian population.
The case of Hebron is a particular perverse example of this sort of control. Between 2000 and 2003 the "Palestinian controlled" area of Hebron (H2) suffered 377 days of curfew with 182 of these non-stop, i.e. not being able to leave ones home day or night. Today, because of the closure of Shuhada Street, Hebron's once bustling market place is a ghost town. Many Palestinians have to leave their houses via their back windows and are terrorized by Jewish settlers daily. Life in Hebron is regulated by a foreign presence in almost every way.
The Pass Laws and Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa made the lives of black South African's intolerable but never was the system of control of movement so effective and restrictive as in the West Bank.
Forced removals, house demolitions and the restriction on building in Israel and the Occupied Territories is comparable to the Group Areas Act. In East Jerusalem alone B'Tselem reports 404 house demolitions in 2008 carried out under the pretext of "buildings without permits" when in reality these demolitions are carried out to displace the residents and make way for Jewish settlers (many homes have historically not been zoned and getting a permit today is virtually impossible). What distinguishes this from the Group Areas Act is the tacitly sanctioned terrorism - perpetuated by settlers against Palestinian residents - funded by right wing Zionist groups.
The siege on Gaza is in a category of its own. Gaza is the world's largest open-air prison. Israel controls entry into and exit from Gaza, the airspace and territorial waters, movement of goods into and out of Gaza and taxation.
As we should all be aware Operation Cast Lead left 1,393 Palestinians, 347 of them children, and thirteen Israelis, including three civilians dead. According to a December 2009 report issued by Amnesty International, Oxfam and others the destruction to civilian infrastructure is estimated at between US$659.3 million and US$891.8 million. 600,000 tons of rubble requiring an estimated 200,000 person-days of work to remove litters Gaza with over 15,000 homes sustaining sufficient damage to displace 100,000 people. The restriction imposed by Israel on importing construction materials makes rebuilding virtually impossible. In addition 700 businesses and 17% of Gaza's cultivated land was destroyed. Power and water and sanitation infrastructure - already on the verge of collapse - was in many areas destroyed. The denial of humanitarian aid both during and after the conflict is particularly perverse. The list goes on.
But even without Operation Cast Lead the siege preceding and following the war has been devastating. As just one example Ha'aretz reported that military operations between 2000 and 2006 caused an estimated loss of $42,846,895 in Gazan agricultural productivity, due to the destruction of land, trees, vegetables and greenhouses.
What of the more than 8,000 rockets that have fallen on Sderot since 2000? The real pain and trauma that has been caused to the residents of Sderot should not be ignored. At the same time it should be pointed out that by most estimates this is less than half the amount of weapons fired into Gaza in the first half of 2008. The sophistication and devastation wrought by Israeli weapons - including the illegal use of white phosphorous - dwarfs the Qassam rockets fired from Gaza. A number of medical studies concur that more than 50% of Gaza's children display symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder.
Personal testimonies of Israeli soldiers speak of the needless destruction of Palestinian property, the killing of innocents, the humiliation of entire families and the use of civilians as human shields. The South African Defence Forces may have invaded our townships and shot at our children but the sophistication and scope of the Israeli war machine makes this look like child's play. The targeted assassinations, imprisonment of leaders and torture of inmates would compare with the crimes of any Vlakplaas operative. Finally, whilst black South African's were brutally oppressed and discriminated against in their homeland they were never expelled from the place of the birth and denied the right to return as millions of Palestinian are today.
Article II, sections 1, 3 and 4 of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid reads:
1. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
- By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
- By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
- By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
3. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
4. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
The label is apt.
Morally and Strategically Used
When used judiciously the term apartheid is not only factually accurate but morally and strategically powerful. It is a regime type that has been completely discredited. It is a label that proclaims its bearer as a pariah, an outcast, it is a description that shuns and isolates. It is obvious why the Israeli government and its apologist decry its use at every turn.
Mention of "Apartheid" also evocates immediate associations to the anti-apartheid movement and this is one of its strategic values. When embarking on a campaign against Israeli occupation, dispossession and injustice the example of the anti-apartheid movement is instructive.
THE ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENT
What can be Learnt?
There is much that can be learnt in this regard. The anti-Apartheid movement took and held the moral high ground. In any human rights struggle this should not be under estimated. It is a tactic I have seen work first hand in the campaign for the provision of life saving medication to HIV positive people in South Africa withheld for many years by a denialist government. In that campaign a line was drawn in the sand so to speak. In the eyes of the ordinary person what was right, what was just, was clear. The same is true for the South African anti-Apartheid movement. The aim for the full emancipation of the Palestinian must be projected in these terms. Unambiguously. This is not easy. In a region rife with competing narratives this is mystified by obfuscations. These narratives matter, but they also do not. No matter how hard defenders of Israel try, no distorted history (which ignores the planned forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1947/48 and 1967), or appeals to security or anything else make what the Israeli army and government is doing now right. And the real history of dispossession makes it doubly unjust.
The moral high ground must also be held tactically. Sadly, the official Palestinian leadership has not always managed to do so. Of course it must be remembered they have suffered at the hands of Israel and its allies, but nevertheless real criticism can be made of Palestinian leadership over past 50 years. Corruption, ineptitude, agreeing to "peace deals" not in the interests of their people, and poor tactical decisions are some of these failures. Today, the emergence and growth of a genuine non-violent movement is extremely important and positive. But non-violence is not only a tactical choice but a moral choice. Where at all possible life should be preserved.
Attacks against a civilian population are never justified and suicide bombings of this nature must be considered off-limits as must the overwhelming majority of Israeli Army actions as they target civilians. Where necessary in self-defense violence can be sanctioned. When a Palestinian is directly threatened, e.g. when soldiers break into their homes in the middle of the night they have a right to resist by force. Finally, armed struggle aimed at Israeli army military infrastructure (not personnel), which constitutes the presence of a foreign invader occupying Palestinian land, might have its place as a tactic of last resort. Experience has shown, however, that Israel will not be defeated by military means and non-violent resistance is both the moral and politically powerful tactic that activists are increasingly embracing.
The discourse of this resistance needs to be one of inclusion not exclusion. An inclusivism which embraces the possibility of living with the other. This is difficult for Palestinians who only meet Israelis at the other end of a rifle. Nevertheless, the humanity of the other must be remembered. Whilst the policies of Israel are inexcusable not all Israelis are evil or complicit. We must try to understand Israeli society as one living under the collective memory of the Holocaust and in a climate of fear. Both these aspects of Israeli life are directly exploited by its leaders to allow its population to justify the unjustifiable; nevertheless they are real. Just as the ANC tried to understand the psyche of white South Africans so must we understand the psyche of the Israeli - without excusing the resulting actions. At all times Israeli exclusivism must be met with Palestinian inclusivism.
The anti-apartheid movement took place on the streets of Soweto and the schools of Mitchell's plain, in the mines of the Witwatersrand and the halls of Khayelitsha. Likewise the Palestinian struggle is and will take place on hills of Bi'lin, the streets of al Khalīl, and the houses of Jerusalem. But I shall I leave that aside tonight and address an international audience predominately about an international campaign.
The global anti-apartheid movement also succeeded because of its strange mixture of centralism and local action. The ANC was, and sadly still is, a highly hierarchal movement. It gave strict leadership from the top. And the yet the global movement was also local. I recently met an elderly African American woman who was keen to engage me about South Africa. At one point in the conversation she told me proudly how she had made it her business to find out which products were South African and not to buy them. At the same time as she was doing this hundreds of thousands gathered on the streets of London.
The anti-apartheid movement not only achieved legitimacy morally but legally under international bodies such as the U.N. Rulings against the Israeli separation barrier in the ICC are important recent steps in this direction and must continually be built upon.
Of course apartheid fell for a host of practical reasons. The costs became too high, white capital realized an alternative was necessary. The three most important practical considerations do not apply to the Palestinian movement and this makes the struggle all the more difficult.
What is Different?
Earlier I said that Apartheid in South Africa was a system to maintain white privilege. The central aspect of this privilege was economic. And yet in South Africa the black majority held power over one aspect of the economy, and that was their labour. Their labour was needed by the biggest segments of white capital. And so the unions played a central role in the defeat of apartheid, especially in the 1980s. The Palestinians do not hold this power. Israel has replaced the workers they previously drew from the West Bank and Gaza Strip by foreign labour from the Philippines and elsewhere. Palestinians are not "necessary". And where Palestinians do work in Israel it is often illegally and they are denied the right and ability to organize.
This encapsulates another difference. It means that the economic elite of Israel have no incentive, right now, to seek a solution to the conflict. In the 1980s the ANC, particularly Thabo Mbeki, made strong overtures to white business elites and managed to allay at least some of their fears making them, if not allies, reluctantly acquiescent.
Because black South Africans were needed as a labour force they eventually formed the majority in major South African cities making their subjugation even more difficult. The policy of separation will never allow this to happen in the major cities of Israel.
The brutality of the South African Defense Force should not be underestimated but it cannot compare in sophistication, budget and international support to the IDF. Which brings us to the final key difference: geopolitics. Whilst the US did, for many years, see South Africa as a force against communism in Africa (a view later abandoned), South Africa did not hold, in later years, the strategic importance to the West that Israel does today. Israel, as we know, enjoys the support of both the tenacious Israel lobby and of the most economically and militarily powerful state on the planet - the US.
As Martin Luther King Jr, said:
The classic example of organised and institutionalised racism is the Union of South Africa. Its national policy and practice are the incarnation of the doctrine of white supremacy in the midst of a population which is overwhelmingly Black. But the tragedy of South Africa is virtually made possible by the economic policies of the United States and Great Britain, two countries which profess to be the moral bastions of our Western world.
All these reasons make the struggle for justice in Israel/Palestine different and more difficult. They also make the call for BDS - Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions - and the international isolation of Israel all the more important.
CONCLUSION
To continue with Dr King, he and then ANC President Albert Luthuli, in 1962 issued a call a section of which read:
The apartheid republic is a reality today only because the peoples and governments of the world have been unwilling to place her in quarantine.
Translate public opinion into public action
We, therefore, ask all men of goodwill to take action against apartheid in the following manner:
Hold meetings and demonstrations on December 10, Human Rights Day:
Urge your church, union, lodge, or club to observe this day as one of protest;
Urge your Government to support economic sanctions;
Write to your mission to the United Nations urging adoption of a resolution calling for international isolation of South Africa;
Don`t buy South Africa`s products;
Don`t trade or invest in South Africa;
Translate public opinion into public action by explaining facts to all peoples, to groups to which you belong, and to countries of which you are citizens until AN EFFECTIVE INTERNATIONAL QUARANTINE OF APARTHEID IS ESTABLISHED.
We say:
Don`t buy Israel's products;
Don`t trade or invest in Israel;
Translate public opinion into public action by explaining facts to all peoples, to groups to which you belong, and to countries of which you are citizens until AN EFFECTIVE INTERNATIONAL QUARANTINE OF APARTHEID IS ESTABLISHED.
Gilad Isaacs is a member of, and former employee, of the Treatment Action Campaign and is a founding member, and former co-convener, of the Social Justice Coalition. He is currently studying at New York University where he is an member of the NYU Students for Justice in Palestine and Open Shuhada Street campaign. This article is based on a speech delivered at "The Indigenous Struggle: A Call of the Boycott of Israel", Israel Apartheid Week, NYU, March 4 2010
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[1][1] In the original speech I delivered I quoted from a speech given by Zackie Achmat the week before at an event held in support of the Open Shuhada Street campaign. In this updated version I have expanded on these ideas with an emphasis on data.
