Israeli apartheid and an unfinished business

Nelson Mandela was arguably the most high-profile and globally-respected supporter of the Palestinian cause. Despite this, Israel, of all countries, should have been wishing the Nobel Peace Prize winner the longest life possible because his death was bound to lead to recollections of its strong alliance with South Africa’s apartheid regime and a resurgence of comparisons between the plight of blacks then and Palestinians now.

However, the almost comical bungling by Israeli leaders of their reaction to Mandela’s passing has made an inevitably uncomfortable situation for them much worse, highlighting their convenient amnesia and blatant hypocrisy. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that when Mandela was released from prison, he said he received invitations to visit “from almost every country in the world except Israel”.

It was not the decision by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres to skip his funeral that attracted so much derision — their attendance would have been highly distasteful, given Israel’s support for the regime that jailed Mandela for 27 years. It was the excuse given: That it would be too costly. This from a country with one of the most developed economies in the world and the recipient of billions of dollars annually in US aid.

Then there were the hollow tributes paid to the former South African president. Netanyahu praised him as a “freedom fighter”, the irony of the treatment of Palestinian freedom fighters totally lost on the Prime Minister. His claim that Mandela “disavowed violence” was a “pointed jab at the Palestinians” and a “most shameless piece of historical revisionism”, wrote the Guardian’s multi-award-winning correspondent Chris McGreal, who has been posted in Johannesburg and occupied Jerusalem. Mandela never renounced the right to armed resistance, himself resorting to such methods against apartheid, and receiving military training and supplies from Arab states. Mandela “was a fighter for human rights, who left an indelible mark on the struggle against racism and discrimination”, said Peres, President of a country that ardently supported those abuses in South Africa and is determined to erase that mark when it comes to the Palestinians, whom Mandela described as his “compatriots”.

As defence minister in the 1970s, Peres signed military pacts with Pretoria that helped develop weapons used against black South Africans. He said at the time that the alliance was based “on the unshakeable foundations of our common hatred of injustice and our refusal to submit to it”.

Peres “played a major role in the security and economic ties which Israel established with the racist regime in South Africa and its pro-Nazi founders”, wrote Amira Hass, multi-award-winning correspondent for Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

McGreal recalls that when he asked Peres a few years ago about “his close dealings with the old South African regime, including two periods as prime minister during the 1980s, when Israel drew closest to the apartheid government”, his response was “to brush away history. ‘I never think back. Since I cannot change the past, why should I deal with it?’” How convenient.

Netanyahu described Mandela as “a man of vision” and “a moral leader of the highest order”. These compliments may have meant something had there been any expression of regret about how Israel helped sustain apartheid in South Africa. However, as Peres put it, the past is past, so why bother?

Because the past is not forgotten, and for the Palestinians it is very much their present and foreseeable future. Mandela’s death has re-energised historical comparisons between apartheid in South Africa and in Palestine. He himself said that “the histories of our two peoples ... correspond in such painful and poignant ways”.

While Israel vehemently rejects accusations that it practices apartheid, black South Africans are among those who make such accusations. Who would know better than those who endured it themselves? Among the most prominent is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was “very deeply distressed” by his visit to the Holy Land in 2002. “It reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa,” said the Nobel Peace laureate. “I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. Many South Africans are beginning to recognise the parallels to what we went through.” Tutu asked: “Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions?” He said Israel would “never get true security and safety through oppressing another people”.

Esmail Coovadia, South Africa’s ambassador to Israel until December 2012, wrote in June this year that what he witnessed in Israel was a “replication” of apartheid. South African activists on a trip to the Holy Land in 2008 — including members of the ruling African National Congress — went even further, concluding that what the Palestinians are going through is even worse. “Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. It is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid,” said Mondli Makhanya, former editor-in-chief of South Africa’s Sunday Times. “It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case. The whites did not want the blacks to disappear.”

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, former deputy defence minister and deputy health minister, agreed that “what I see here is worse than what we experienced — the absolute control of people’s lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw. Racist ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South Africa”.

John Dugard, a South African professor of international law, said during his tenure as UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories that the “apartheid regime” faced by the Palestinians is “worse than the one that existed” in his country.

Parallels have also been made by white South African politicians who served during the apartheid era, perhaps most notably prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd and defence minister Jacobus Johannes Fouche. Their acknowledgements, coming from leaders of white-supremacist rule, are damning.

Despite the fury from pro-Israel lobbyists at such assertions, even a majority of Israelis — 58 per cent — think that apartheid exists in their country, with 39 per cent saying it exists “in some ways,” and 19 per cent “in many ways”, according to a poll in October 2012. This view is shared and expressed across the country’s spectrum, from politicians to judges, journalists, academics, human rights groups and diplomats. As such, the debate — in Israel at least — seems to be not so much about whether apartheid exists, but whether it is justified. However, former environment minister Yossi Sarid points out that “all good reasons for apartheid are bad reasons; apartheid always has a reason, and it never has a justification”.

Denial that a state system of discrimination exists — not just in the Occupied Territories but also for Palestinian citizens of Israel — comes from fear of the resulting conclusion that many will draw and are drawing: that the methods used to secure the rights of black South Africans could work for the Palestinians. This idea gave birth to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has moved from the fringes to the mainstream, gaining so much traction in recent years that it is now viewed by Israel and its sympathisers as a potent, direct and growing challenge. It certainly poses a far greater threat than armed resistance, which — as in South Africa — failed due to overwhelming disparities in military strength. Furthermore, unlike armed resistance, BDS is a global campaign, it cannot be countered by accusations of terrorism, and it will be difficult — indeed hypocritical — for advocates of nonviolence to oppose it.

Given the parallels between his people’s plight and those of the Palestinians, the rampant cruelty of Israel’s policies, and Arab support for the South African anti-apartheid movement, it was inevitable that Mandela would embrace their cause. He condemned the “injustice and gross human rights violations” by a “terrorist state” that was “slaughtering defenceless and innocent Arabs in the Occupied Territories ... We don’t regard that as acceptable”.

He said that “all of us need to do more in supporting the struggle of the people of Palestine for self-determination”. Since his death, his most prevalent quote has been: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

As long as Mandela’s legacy endures — and it will through the ages — these powerful words will serve as a constant reminder to Israel and the world that although he achieved much more than many thought imaginable, he has unfinished business that needs tending to urgently.

Sharif Al Nashashibi is an award-winning journalist and analyst on Arab affairs.