Iqbal Jassat (South African writer) (2016): “Shrewd, smart and brilliant is how I describe Coetzee's soft spoken demolition of Israeli Hasbara (a highly resourced propaganda outfit designed to spin its policies). In a single sentence, after explaining the construct of apartheid as it existed in South Africa, he made the following observation, which unsurprisingly met with a thunderous applause: "To speak of Jerusalem and the West Bank, we see a system of enforced segregation based on religion and ethnicity put in place by an exclusive self-defined group to consolidate a colonial conquest, in particular to maintain, and indeed extend, its hold on the land and its natural resources." There you have it. Apartheid in Jerusalem and the Occupied West Bank is built on the same foundations of apartheid in South Africa:
• Enforced segregation;
• Exclusive self-defined group;
• Colonial conquest;
• Maintain hold of land and natural resources.
In his brief remarks, Coetzee affirmed the power of words over the might of power in an appropriate setting amongst international literary stars” (Iqbal Jassat, “Apartheid Israel: JM Coetzee delivers a devastating blow”, Politicsweb, 29 May 2016: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/apartheid-israel-jm-coetzee-delivers-a-devastating ).