Israel and Apartheid

06Feb06

Guardian (UK) is running a three part series on the criticism of Israeli treatment of Palestinians as apartheid, comparing the situation in Palestine/Israel with South Africa. The first part is linked to below. It is fairly meticulous and provides data, anecdotes and quotes to illuminate the issue.

As Noam Chomsky has pointed out multiple times, it is worthwhile to note that criticism of Israel within the country itself is well and alive (as it should be in any nation that claims to be a democracy) in contrast to the blind faith or apologism/defense of all Israeli action within the US, by the administrations and by many Jewish organizations, and even otherwise liberal Jews (multimedia). [Also see: Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah].

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Worlds apart
[…]

Some Jewish South Africans and Israelis who lived with apartheid – including politicians, Holocaust survivors and men once condemned as terrorists – describe aspects of modern Israel as disturbingly reminiscent of the old South Africa. Some see the parallels in a matrix of discriminatory practices and controls, and what they describe as naked greed for land seized by the fledgling Israeli state from fleeing Arabs and later from the Palestinians for the ever expanding West Bank settlements. “Apartheid was an extension of the colonial project to dispossess people of their land,” said the Jewish South African cabinet minister and former ANC guerrilla, Ronnie Kasrils, on a visit to Jerusalem. “That is exactly what has happened in Israel and the occupied territories; the use of force and the law to take the land. That is what apartheid and Israel have in common.”

Others see the common ground in the scale of the suffering if not its causes. “If we take the magnitude of the injustice done to the Palestinians by the state of Israel, there is a basis for comparison with apartheid,” said the former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Alon Liel. “If we take the magnitude of suffering, we are in the same league. Of course apartheid was a very different philosophy from what we do, most of which stems from security considerations. But from the point of view of outcome, we are in the same league.”

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