Gideon Polya, “Israel Apartheid. South African Apartheid & Israel Compared”, MWC News, 3 March 2007, not cached by Google.
Israeli Apartheid. South African Apartheid & Israel Compared
Both Apartheid South Africa and Israel derived from racist colonialism. Indeed racist British colonialism in South Africa and Racist Zionist colonialism in Palestine were both advocated at the height of racist, genocidal European colonialism in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific in the 19th century.
Below is a set of comparisons between the racist Apartheid régime in South Africa of 14 years ago [with the Apartheid Israel comparison in square brackets].
Before reading this list you should remember that the racist, Apartheid South Africa régime had Anglo-American backing, its leadership had explicit Nazi connections and the Apartheid South African nuclear bomb (dispensed with after the fall of Apartheid) was developed with its great ally Israel.
Further you should consider that about half the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) are Children and about three quarters Women and Children. It should go without saying (but unfortunately needs to be said in a racist, violent Bush-ite world heavily informed by Bush-ite and Racist Zionist-sympathetic Mainstream media) that anyone who knowingly ignores, denies, excuses, minimizes, obfuscates, supports, advocates or is otherwise complicit in gross abuse of Women and Children – or indeed of anyone, and whether by racism, colonial occupation, Apartheid-style laws, violation of International human rights convention, mass murder, wrongful imprisonment, mass murder, ethnic cleansing or genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention – has crossed the line between decent humanity and proto-Nazi barbarism.
A brief list of Apartheid South Africa and Apartheid Israel comparisons:
1. ultimately deriving from Dutch and thence “Afrikaaner” colonialism (17th – 20 th century) and British colonialism (after formal “acquisition” in 1814 after the Napoleonic Wars; the annexation of Natal, 1843; British importation of Indian and Chinese “5-year slavery” indentured labour, from 1860; and the Boer War 1899-1902) [deriving from racist political Zionism in the 19th-21st centuries; massive Zionist colonialism after the 1916 Anglo-French betrayal of the Arabs, 1916 and the further British betrayal of the Arabs by the Balfour Declaration, 1917 – which nevertheless insisted on no detriment to the Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants];
2. the race-based, Whites-only ethnocracy [ditto Israel; e.g. the offensive and racist use of the name “Israel” rather than, for example, the racially and religiously neutral “West Palestine”; the identification of the Jewish name “Israel” with a racist Apartheid Racist Zionist State is profoundly offensive to decent, non-racist Jews; not even Apartheid South Africa went so far as to use a name such as “New Europe” or “New Holland” (although the latter was applied initially to Australia before it was invaded and colonized by the racist British colonialists with attendant horrendous genocide of the indigenous Inhabitants];
3. Indigenous Africans and non-Europeans were excluded from democracy [Jewish Israelis rule all of the Holy Land; OPT Palestinians have no say – indeed their own democratically-elected “local” government is rejected by the US, UK and Israel; Arab Israelis, perhaps 20% of the population of Israel, can vote but have virtually no participation in Government];
4. non-Europeans were forcibly expelled from their lands (subject to passive and active genocide, from dispossession and disease at the Cape in the 17th century to outright dispossession in the 19th century and Bantustan confinements in the 20th century) [Palestinians ditto; 6 million refugees; 4 million registered with the UN; 80,000 flee each year; 85% of Christian Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed] (see MWC News: 1 and 2 );
5. racist genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention (Article II sections a-d: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group) [ditto for Palestinians; ethnic cleansing variously through violence, expulsion, dispossession and appalling imposed “open concentration camp” conditions; 6 million refugees; 4 million refugees registered with the UN; 80,000 flee each year; 85% of Christian Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed] (see: 3 );
6. non-Europeans forcibly confined to Bantustans or non-White urban areas [Palestinians ditto];
7. non-European movement highly constrained [ditto Israel in the OPT; race-based compulsory carriage ID as in the “pass system” of Apartheid South Africa and Nazi-occupied Europe; road blocks and road use constraints];
8. non-Europeans racially identified by ID [compulsory ID identifying non-Jewish Palestinians; akin to Nazi insistence on racial ID of Jews etc];
9. profoundly offensive constraints on inter-marriage [Israeli marriage to Palestinians effectively prohibited because co-habitation in Israel “proper” is prohibited - utterly disgusting and unforgivably offensive racist laws in both Apartheid South Africa and Apartheid Israel);
10. horrendous differential deaths [post-invasion excess deaths - avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen - in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million – evidence of gross contravention of the Geneva Conventions that insist that Occupiers do everything in their power to preserve the lives of their conquered subjects].
11. horrendous differential infant deaths (the post-invasion under-5 infant deaths in the OPT total 0.2 million; "annual under-5 infant death rate" 0.47% in the OPT as compared to 0.1% in Israel- evidence of gross violation of Article 38, Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian persons in Time of War: "5. Children under fifteen years, pregnant women and mothers of children under seven years shall benefit by any preferential treatment to the same extent as the nationals of the State concerned."; see Articles 38, 55 and 56: ] (see: 4 , 5 and 6 )
12. gross violation of the UN Charter and Geneva, Rights of the Child, Genocide and Universal Human Rights Conventions as outlined above [ditto Apartheid Israel] (e.g. see: 3);
13. possession of nuclear weapons (developed with Israeli help and Anglo-American complicity to back Apartheid obscenity ; discarded after non-racist democracy attained in 1993) [ditto Israel; non-racist democracy has yet to be attained in Apartheid Israel];
14. lethal military, paramilitary police and racist settler attacks on non-European civilians [ditto Israel, on-going in Gaza and the West Bank];
15. huge violence against neighbouring African states (horrendous loss of life associated with Apartheid South African involvements in Namibia, Angola, the Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique plus armed interference in Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho and the Comoros) [1950-2005 excess deaths in neighbouring countries practically or completely occupied by Israel total 24 million; 1950-2005 excess deaths in countries actually militarily attacked by Israel total 43 million; for UN Population Division source data see: 7 );
16. illegal occupation of Namibia as well as de facto impositions on Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana [illegal Israeli occupation of parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the OPT; continuing illegal Israeli occupation of Syria and all of the OPT including the Old City of Jerusalem - an obscene and continuing violation of the Torah, and specifically of the Decalogue; abusive occupation of part or all of all of its neighbours over the last half century] (for Decalogue violations see: MWC News: 8 );
17. paranoid defence of violent, racist Apartheid by supposed threat from the majority Africans, Indians and part-Europeans (a threat that has not been realized after the advent of non-racist democracy; indeed the real post-1993 tragedy has been immense excess mortality due to HIV/AIDS and government incompetence) [objectively examining Holy Land homicides (as opposed to subjective “terrorism”) post-2000 the “average annual homicides” totalled 1240.1 in the Holy Land but from the perspective of VICTIMS 286.7 (23.1%) have been OF Israelis and 953.4 (76.9%) OF Palestinians – however in relation to PERPETRATORS, 1004.4 (81.0%) have been BY Israelis and 235.7 (19.0%) have been BY Palestinians i.e. in terms of “terror deaths” over 80% are due to Israelis and these mostly due to Israeli military or paramilitary killers] (see MWC News: 9 );
18. the current "annual murder rate" in South Africa is a shocking 496 per million (mostly of Africans, 10 times greater than the in the US or Israel) [the averagepost-2000 “annual homicide rate/million” for Palestinians is 261.2 (Palestinians by Israelis), 11.2 (Palestinians by Palestinians) and 272.4 (in total; as compared to 53.7 for the US and 44.8 for Israel i.e. large-scale racist killing by Israeli State Terrorism] (see MWC News: 9 );
19. endemic racism has been addressed by education, the Truth Commission and reconciliation processes (horrendous Israeli racism against Palestinians in word and deed whereas a remarkable 70% of Palestinians want a one-state solution for the Holy Land; as quoted by Professor Richard Dawkins in his book “The God Delusion” (pp254-257), Israeli psychologist George Tamarin’s survey of over 1,000 Israeli 8-14 year old kids survey revealed that 66% approved Joshua’s genocidal massacres of the Palestinians, 8% approved somewhat and only 26% disapproved, albeit some only because proto-Nazi Joshua also destroyed the houses and animals that the Hebrews could have used];
20. and FINALLY, Apartheid South Africa eventually (under considerable international pressure) finally negotiated a non-racist peace with equity, justice and reconciliation) [the racist Zionist (RZs) running Apartheid Israel with the full backing of racist Anglo-American US, Canadian, UK and Australian Bush-ites and US State Terrorism (USST) are committed to occupation, theft, ethnocracy, theocracy, racism and violence – and quite clearly in practice accept that a few hundred Israeli deaths each year from deliberate, Racist Zionism-provoked Palestinian violence is a price worth paying for continued illegal Occupation].
The PROBLEM in both Apartheid South Africa and Apartheid Israel was racist ideology (for an outstanding analysis see: Lindqvist, S. (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes (Granta Books, London, 2002) and racist colonialism followed by racist dispossession, disempowerment, displacement, deprivation and regional ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous Inhabitants.
The SOLUTION in South Africa was simply NON-RACISM and could also be so in the Holy Land when the Israelis (Jews and Arabs) get rid of their Racist Zionist political leadership that acutely threatens Israel and indeed threatens all Jews world-wide who are tarred with the brush of Racist Zionism and the horrendous human rights abuses of Apartheid Israel. Thus well-intentioned people have suggested eminently sensible proposals for a non-racist PEACE in the Holy Land with equity, justice and reconciliation (see MWC News: 10, 11 and 12 ).