Juan Cole: Gaza and Soweto

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/25087-gaza-and-soweto

The repressive and trigger happy white minority regime had many resemblances to the current Likud government in Israel. and the same governments that actively supported Apartheid South Frica are supporting the Likud.

One tactic of the Apartheid South African regime was to consign black Africans to Bantustans, territories that were subordinate to Pretoria. In this way their citizenship could be revoked but they did not gain an actual new state. Gaza is very much like a Bantustan of Israel, surrounded by it and kept weak and disrupted. But in this way the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced there from their original homes in what is now southern Israel can be denied citizenship in Israel while also being kept stateless with regard to their “Palestine” Bantustan.


As in Apartheid South Africa, resistance to the Apartheid policies of Israel is met with extreme violence. In Israel “law and order” is maintained “at all costs” just as in Apartheid South Africa. If it is necessary to shoot down 700 students and youth for refusing to go along with the dictates of old white men, then so be it. The minority government “has nothing to apologize for.” Just as the sabotage and bombings of Umkhonte v Sizwe were termed mere terrorism and the ANC was demonized as a stalking horse for Stalinist dictatorship, so resistance organizations welling up from the slummy conditions imposed on Gaza are demonized and their very resistance to being denied the rights of human beings is used to justify further repression.

No wonder that today’s South Africa is calling on Israel to cease its ground offensive into Gaza.

Bishop Desmond Tutu defended John Kerry’s use of the term “Apartheid” for Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. He said that he saw a situation in Israel/Palestine that exactly mirrored the forms of discrimination, the pass system, etc., that characterized South Africa.

This is the reason that those who think restoration of the status quo ante is sufficient to end the fighting are fooling themselves. There is only one thing that could bring lasting peace is an end to Apartheid.

[malaise]

1. Jimmy Carter is the first person to describe Israeli policy towards the

Palestinians as Apartheid.

[eridani]

2. This is tne right analogy. Comparisons to Nazi Germany don't really work, IMO n/t

[KitSileya]

3. In the '90s, I read about how Arab Israelis couldn't buy land in Israel.

The article was written because there was a growing movement to change this (I can't remember whether it was against the law, or more like a Jim Crow mindset that made it practically impossible.) There were one set of rules for Jewish Israelis and one set of rule for Arab Israelis, with the Christian Israelis sometimes accepted as full citizens, and sometimes not. Ever since, I have regarded Israel as the new apartheid state. And that is besides what they were doing in Gaza and the West Bank, which is beyond the pale.