Reply #19: Your list of apartheid regimes does keep expanding, doesnt it?

[shaayecanaan]

I see Lebanon has been added to your list. I can only presume within a few months or so just about every country in the world will be an apartheid country, except for Israel.

The Palestinians were indeed friends with the African National Congress, as they were with national liberation movements the world over, including Irish republicans, the Zapatistas, and the Sandinistas. Mostly this was because of the natural sympathy between liberation movements, who saw themselves as part of a common struggle against their respective oppressors.

Likewise, apartheid-era South Africa and Israel felt a great deal in common. South Africa was a small, isolated white enclave on the edge of a continent that they perceived to be overwhelmingly hostile. They felt themselves to be under diplomatic siege on the world stage, and tended to be dismissive, even masochistic, in dealing with foreign criticism.

As such, it was only natural that the apartheid South Africa and Israel would have such a close friendship, that extended to co-operation on nuclear arms programs, weapons, vaccines, desalination plants and a whole host of other projects.

Mandela himself said: "Israel worked very closely with the apartheid regime. I say: I've made peace with many men who slaughtered our people like animals. Israel cooperated with the apartheid regime, but it did not participate in any atrocities."

In the last week or so, pro-Israel figures have been highlighting the apartheid background of Richard Goldstone, and essentially comparing him to some kind of Nazi apologist. Of course, more intelligent bloggers saw the dangers inherent in this:-

“I don’t want to exaggerate, but these are the same explanations we heard in Nazi Germany after World War II,” Ayalon said. “That is not an explanation that justifies his actions."

I would like to exaggerate, but instead, let me spell this out:

* Plenty of people (Israel and others) have made the case that Goldstone's report on the Gaza war is, mostly, specious.

* Personal attacks are not going to make it more specious.

* Comparisons to the Nazis always, always bite back. Israel sold arms to, traded with, in some instances allied with Apartheid South Africa. At the time, when pressed on the matter, Israeli diplomats always boiled it down to "we take whatever friends we can get." (And I don't remember budding diplomat Danny Ayalon sticking his neck out to say any different.)

Think of what this does: If Goldstone was a "good German" what does that make Israel? Fascist Italy?

http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2010/05/06/2394709/dont-mention-the-war

Of course, other, stupider people such as yourself tend not to see such dangers and instead plunged headlong into histrionic screeds making out Goldstone to be worse than Hitler.

The obvious question was going to come up: if Goldstone's minor role within the apartheid regime deserves such criticism, what of Israel's much more significant support of apartheid over many years?