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South African Critique of Israel's Apartheid State
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Francis Boyle - Nov 8, 2007
Middle East Policy XIV:3, Fall, 2007, pp 45-48
[Mr. Kasrils, minister of intelligence services of the Republic of South
Africa, has been a member of Parliament since 1994.]
SPEECH TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN PARLIAMENT ON
THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION
JUNE 6, 2007
by Ronnie Kasrils
Madam Speaker, Honorable members, this speech is dedicated to the
memory of David Rabkin, South African freedom fighter, who died in
Angola.
Forty years ago this week, Israel's military unleashed lightning
attacks against Egypt, Jordan and Syria, alleging provocations as
justification for its strikes. Within six days the Sinai Peninsula,
Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights had
been captured. Apart from the Sinai from which Israel withdrew in 1977,
the other areas remain under Israeli military occupation and control to
this day.
Whilst some justify Israel's actions on the grounds of pre-emptive
self-defense, the obverse was the truth. From the horse's mouth we
learn who the aggressor was. Israel's military Chief of Staff, Yitzhak
Rabin stated: "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two
divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 [1967] would not have been
enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew
it."1 Menachem Begin, later Israel's prime minister, reminisced that
the Egyptian army deployment in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was
about to attack Israel. "We must be honest," he explained. "We decided
to attack him."2
General Moshe Dayan explained that "many of the firefights with the
Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel." He said that the kibbutz
residents who pressed the government to take the Golan Heights "did so
less for the security than for the farmland."3 These are clearly
statements of an aggressor. Nevertheless, some claim that Israel is
justified and obligated, from its birth as a state in 1948 in fact, to
defend its land and people by force whenever necessary. But where is
the morality in this? Fortress Israel, a militarist aggressive state,
defends a stolen land that belonged to another people.
Moshe Dayan unabashedly explained:
"Before [the Palestinians'] very eyes we are possessing the land and
villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived .... We are the
generation of colonizers, and without the gun barrel we cannot plant a
tree and build a home."4
Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, stated in the 1950s:
"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would
never make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their
country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to
them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel. It's true, but two
thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been
anti-Semitism, the Nazis ... but was that their fault? They only see
one thing: we came here and stole their country."5
Such statements contextualize Israel's position and show it has not
been interested in real peace terms. In 1897, the founding father of
Zionism, Theodor Herzl, stated that once in power the aim would be to
"spirit the penniless population (the Palestinians) across the
borders."6
Therein lies the fundamental cause of the conflict, lest anyone remain
unclear. It stems from the Zionist worldview, its belief in a perpetual
antisemitism that requires that Jewish people around the world -- a
faith group -- have a national home of their own.
The biblical narrative was evoked to proclaim Palestine as the promised
land reserved exclusively for God's "chosen people" and their
civilizing mission. It sounds all too familiar as a vision the
Voortrekkers had in this country. It gives rise to racism, apartheid
and a total onslaught on those who stand in your way, whether blacks or
Arabs or red Indians.
Many Jews do not agree with this Zionist worldview and declare that
being anti-Zionist and critical of Israel does not equate with
antisemitism.
Far from being a land without people, as Zionist propaganda falsely
proclaimed to attract and justify colonial settlement, the fact was
that an indigenous people -- the Palestinians -- lived there and
developed agriculture and towns since the Canaanite Kingdom over 5,500
years ago. Indeed, a delegation of skeptical Vienna rabbis traveled to
the Holy Land in 1898 to *****s the Zionist vision and cabled home:
"The Bride is indeed beautiful but already married."7 This did not
deter the Zionists, who plotted to abduct the bride and murder or expel
the groom by whatever means necessary, and then defend what they had
stolen at all costs by creating a supremacist Fortress State.
That exactly sums up the bloody and tragic history that befell the
Palestinian people, and their Arab neighbors, at the hands of a
rapacious, expansionist Zionist project that has been the source of war
and untold suffering in the Near East for the past 60 years, and is the
root cause of the conflict that threatens the entire region and beyond.
With the adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan of November
1947, a Jewish homeland was accorded 56 percent of the territory,
although they owned only 7 percent and were one-third of the population
(most of whom had recently arrived as Holocaust refugees from Europe).
The Palestinian majority were given 44 percent and were never
consulted, nor had they anything to do with the abominable suffering of
the European Jews. The Zionists accepted partition with alacrity but
never intended to honor the decision.
According to the Zionists' strategy, which has become public record
with the declassification of do***ents, the intention was to roll out a
systematic reign of terror, massacres, dispossession and expulsion.
This drove out the Palestinian population in a horrific episode of
ethnic cleansing that saw over 750,000 -- two-thirds of the indigenous
people at that time -- become penniless refugees, as Herzl had
promised. By the 1949 Armistice, the Israeli state had expanded to 78
percent of the territory.
That was almost 60 years ago. The result of Israel's war of aggression
of 40 years ago this week, an extension of 1948, saw Israeli military
occupation of the remaining 22 percent of the land.
The people within the West Bank and Gaza are literally imprisoned under
the most unjust conditions, suffering hard****ps and methods of control
that are far worse than anything our people faced during the most
dreadful days of apartheid. In fact, any South African, visiting what
amount to enclosed prison-ghettoes -- imposed by a Jewish people that
tragically suffered the Nazi Holocaust -- will find similarity with
Apartheid immediately coming to mind, and even more shocking,
comparisons with some of the methods of collective punishment and
control devised under tyrannies elsewhere. An Israeli cabinet minister,
Aharon Cizling, stated in 1948, after the Deir Yassin massacre, "Now we
too have behaved like Nazis and my whole being is shaken."8
If anyone has any doubt what the 1948 and 1967 wars were about, listen
to Ben-Gurion who stated in 1938: "After we become a strong force, as
the result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and
expand into the whole of Palestine." And mark these words of Moshe
Dayan:
"Our fathers had reached the frontiers which were recognized in the UN
Partition Plan of 1947 [56 percent of the land]. Our generation reached
the frontiers of 1949 [78 percent of the land]. Now the Six-day
Generation [of 1967] has managed to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan
Heights. This is not the end."9
Indeed, the saga of agony for the Palestinians continues, inevitably
creating insecurity for Israelis as well; because as we know from our
own South African experience, injustice and repression generate
resistance. It is no good blaming the victims when they hit back.
The Palestinian people's fate clearly reflects that of South Africa's
indigenous majority during the colonial wars of dispossession of land
and property, and the harsh discrimination and suffering of the
apartheid period classified as a crime against humanity and violation
of international humanitarian law. Israel is as guilty as the Apartheid
regime.
Israel's conquest and occupation, with the latest land grab caused by
its monstrous Apartheid Wall and continued construction of the illegal
settlements, has reduced the West Bank into several disconnected
pockets amounting to 12 percent of former Palestine. No wonder that
Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Tutu and others compare the situation to
Apartheid and the infamous Bantustans -- which gave 13 percent of land
for South Africa's indigenous people.
This people's Parliament should be unanimous in calling for Israel's
immediate withdrawal from the occupied territories; lifting the
physical, economic and financial blockade and siege of Gaza and the
West Bank; removing the physical impediments to the freedom of movement
of Palestinians, including the Wall and over 500 checkpoints;
dismantling the illegal settlements; releasing 10,000 political
prisoners (113 women and children amongst them); negotiating a just
solution with the elected representatives of the Palestinian people;
and implementing the UN resolutions, including Resolution 194 of 1948,
concerning the Right of Return of the Refugees. These are necessary
steps to create lasting peace, justice and security for Palestinians
and Israelis alike, reinforced by international guarantees, so they may
live in harmony. Since 1988, when Chairman Yasser Arafat and the PLO
agreed to accept 22 percent of historic Palestine in the interests of
peace, they show they have been ready for negotiations.
Let us unanimously extend our solidarity and sup****t to the 42 members
of the Palestinian Legislative Council, including the Speakers of the
West Bank and Gaza, who together with ten ministers have been summarily
detained without trial, most for nearly a year, by the Israeli security
forces. This is a shocking illustration of Israel's disrespect for
parliamentary democracy, the law and basic human rights so reminiscent
of what we suffered under apartheid. We call for their immediate and
unconditional release, and that of all prisoners held by both sides.
In sup****t of these demands, let us join with the people of our country
and the international community in the solidarity marches, rallies and
demonstrations this week, the fortieth anniversary of Israel's unjust
occupation. And we make it clear to our Jewish community, these
peaceful and disciplined actions are aimed solely at that government.
The struggle for freedom and justice is against a system and not a
people.
Let me conclude with the words of President Mandela, who declared in
1998 during the visit to South Africa by Chairman Yasser Arafat: "We
know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the
Palestinians."10
End Notes
1. David Hirst, "The Gun and the Olive Branch" (Faber and Faber, 2003).
2. Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle; the United States, Israel, and
the Palestinians" (India Research Press, 2004).
3. The New York Times, May 11, 1977.
4. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History
of Zionism and Israel" (Interlink Publi****ng Group, 1998).
5. Nathan Goldman, "The Jewish Paradox" (Grosset & Dunlop, 1978).
6. "The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl," Vol. 1 (The Herzl Press,
1960), p. 86.
7. Avi Shlaim, "The Iron Wall" (The Penguin Books, 2001).
8. Tom Segev and Arlen N. Weinstein, "1949: The First Israelis" (Owl
Books, 1998).
9. The Times of London, June 25, 1969.
10. Speech by Nelson Mandela at the banquet in honor of President
Yasser Arafat of Palestine on August 11, 1998.
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