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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
74 October-November 2024
Los opimism: Dvid Ben Gurion reding he Declrion of he Esblishmen
of he Se of Isrel he Tel Aviv Museum on 14 My 1948
Israel derailed
After initial good intentions Israel
has long been an apartheid state
By Peadar King
Formalised (like Israel’s) in
1948, the seeds of South
Africa’s apartheid were
sown 42 years earlier
I
n 2022, Amnesty International
published a comprehensive report,
‘Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians:
Cruel System of Domination and Crime
against Humanity’. That was before
October 7 2023, before the subsequent
yearlong apparent genocide in Gaza killed
42,000, injured 100,000, displaced 90% of
the population, damaged 60% of the
buildings and generated (according to a
UN-backed commission) “intentional and
targeted starvation”; and it was before the
September 2024 strafing of all-comers in
Lebanon, killing over a thousand and the
repercussive sending of hundreds of ballistics
into Israel by Iran,
It focused on Israel itself, setting out how
massive seizures of Palestinian land and
property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer,
drastic movement restrictions, and the denial
of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians
are all components of a system which
amounts to Apartheid under international law.
This system is maintained by violations which
Amnesty International found to constitute
apartheid as a crime against humanity, as
Parliament in 1990 that South Africa was
underpinned by an “insane and murderous
racist ideology”. Israel is worse.
Israel’s Apartheid state was established in
the same year as South Africa’s. Formalised
in 1948, the seeds of South Africa’s Apartheid
were sown 42 years earlier when, after seeing
a group of Boer (white) children playing in the
gutter with a gang of coloured children, then
Prime Minister Daniel Malan told South
Africa’s House of Assembly:
“It was thus that the seeds of Apartheid
were planted in my mind”. Mixed play
prompted his plan to “keep the Kaffir in his
place” — a “visionary ideal”, he said. With a
belief that God was on his side, the former
pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church pursued
that vision with unflinching determination.
A Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in
April 1951 laid down the theory: “It is
scriptural principle that there should be a
definite authoritarian relationship...between
man and wife, employer and worker, authority
and subject...The Christian calling lies in
acceptance of the place which God has given”.
The contrast with reality of the State of
Israel was sharp. Reading the Declaration of
the Establishment of the State of Israel at the
Tel Aviv Museum on 14 May 1948, Israel’s first
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion stated:
“The State of Israel will be open for Jewish
immigration and for the ingathering of the
Exiles; it will foster the development of the
country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it
will be based on free justice and peace as
envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will
ensure complete equality of social and
INTERNATIONAL
defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid
Convention.
The ruling of the United Nations’ highest
court, on 19 July 2024, in its case about the
occupied territories and East Jerusalem, that
Israel is an Apartheid state elevates that
assertion beyond reactionary doubt. Israel is
an Apartheid state. Not that the Arab people
of Palestine needed confirmation.
Nonetheless by any yardstick that
International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling was
quite extraordinary.
Speaking at the ICJ hearing in on 12 Januar y
2024, the ambassador of the Republic of
South Africa to the Netherlands Vusimuzi
Madonsela told the ICJ that Israel’s is an even
more extreme version of apartheid against
Palestinians in the West Bank than South
Africa’s against Blacks before 1994:
“We as South Africans sense, see, hear,
and feel to our core the inhumane
discriminatory policies and practices of the
Israeli régime as an even more extreme form
of the apartheid that was institutionalized
against black people in my country”.
Nelson Mandela told the European
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October-November 2024 75
Israel derailed
and no one is safe. Overcrowding is increasing
the risk diarrheal and respiratory diseases
and skin infections, and nowhere is safe. The
situation is impossible to describe, with
hospital corridors crammed with the injured,
the sick and the dying, morgues overflowing,
and surgical procedures conducted without
anaesthesia”.
In his summary of the advisory opinion of
the International Court of Justice on 19 July
2024, Nawaf Salam, Lebanese diplomat and
president of the court found that “Israel’s...
continued presence in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory is illegal. The State of
Israel is under the obligation to bring an end
to its unlawful presence in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”.
He said Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza
Strip in 2005 did not bring Israel’s occupation
of that area to an end because it still exercises
effective control over it.
The court also said Israel should evacuate
all of its settlers from the West Bank and East
political rights to all its inhabitants
irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will
guarantee freedom of religion, conscience,
language, education and culture; it will
safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and
it will be faithful to the principles of the
Charter of the United Nations”.
Noble aspirations. A solemn pledge made
to the nations of the world. One that the state
of Israel has singularly dishonoured.
The United Nations has documented what
has flowed from this, as I outline below.
Since the UN’s Human Rights Commission
was created in 2006, it has resolved almost
as many resolutions condemning Israel alone
as condemning the rest of the countries in the
world combined.
The United Nations General Assembly
Resolution 194 was adopted near the end of
the 1947–1949 Palestine war, following the
creation of Israel and its invasion by its
neighbours. 700,000 Palestinians fled or
were expelled. The Resolution defines
principles for reaching a final settlement and
returning Palestine refugees to their homes.
It is the grounding resolution for Israel in
Palestine and has never been implemented.
General Assembly Resolution 78/78 on
Israeli practices and settlement activities
affecting the rights of the Palestinian people
and other Arabs of the occupied territories:
“Reaffirms that the Israeli settlements in the
Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East
Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan
are illegal and an obstacle to peace and
economic and social development”.
A UNESCO Decision of 2015 (39 COM
7A.27) “expressed deep concern at the
persistence of the Israeli illegal excavations
and works conducted by the Israeli Occupation
authorities and the extreme settler groups in
the Old City of Jerusalem, regrets the damage
caused by the Israeli security forces on 30
October 2014 to the historic Gates and
windows of the Qibli Mosque inside Al-Aqsa
Mosque/ Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which is a
Muslim holy site of worship and an integral
part of a World Heritage Site”.
In 2004 the United Nations Human Rights
Council demanded (A/HRC/55/L.30):
“That Israel, the occupying power, end its
occupation of the Palestinian territory
occupied since 1967, including East
Jerusalem; also demands that Israel
immediately lift its blockade on the Gaza Strip
and all other forms of collective punishment”.
The president of the International Labour
Conference, Alexei Buzu, said the following in
June this year:
“This has been the hardest year for
Palestinian workers since 1967. Never before
has the situation been this bleak. Let me
recall in this context the ILC resolution
underlying my annual report. It was adopted
in 1980. The resolution expressed deep
concern about the intensification of Israeli
settlement policy. It emphasized the
economic and social consequences of the
settlements and the detrimental effects on
labour rights and employment of workers of
the occupied Arab territories. At the time, 44
years ago, there were about 100,000 Israeli
settlers scattered around the occupied
territories. Today, the West Bank is host to an
estimated 700,000 settlers. People have
been denied access to the basics for human
survival. Most workers and employers have
been displaced, often multiple times. Most
are now homeless. Most workplaces are
destroyed”.
In a briefing to the UN Security Council, of
10 November 2023, Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World
Health Organisation (WHO) described the
situation in Gaza as follows:
“One child is killed every 10 minutes. Some
1.5 million people now are displaced and
looking for shelter anywhere, but nowhere
The Declaration of the Establishment of
the State of Israel said it would “ensure
complete equality of social and political
rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of
religion, race or sex”
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76 October-November 2024
Jerusalem and pay reparations to Palestinians
for damages caused by the occupation.
Israel has built about 160 settlements
housing some 700,000 Jews in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem since 1967. The court said
the settlements were illegal. Israel has
consistently disputed that they are against
international law.
The ICJ said Israel’s “policies and practices
amount to annexation of large parts of the
Occupied Palestinian Territory”, which it said
was against international law, adding that
Israel was “not entitled to sovereignty” over
any part of the occupied territories.
Salam wrote:
“Israel’s discriminator y laws and measures
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
demonstrating that they are tantamount to
the crime of apartheid. Israel has committed
numerous inhumane acts in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory, which the Opinion
unambiguously identifies, as part of an
institutionalized regime of systematic
oppression and domination of one racial
group over another”.
In recognising the State of Palestine,
Ireland has, as it did in the past with apartheid
South Africa, done the world some service. In
1987, the Irish government was the first
western country government to instigate a
complete ban on the importation of goods
from Apartheid South Africa. It only did so
after sustained pressure initially from ten
young women and one young man, collectively
known as the Dunnes Stores strikers, and
initially led by Mary Manning who on 19 July
1984 refused to handle South African
grapefruit.
On his conferral with the Freedom of Dublin
in 1990, Nelson Mandela said that the strikers
demonstrated to South Africans that “ordinary
people far away from the crucible of Apartheid
cared for our freedom”.
Apartheid Israel now offers the Irish
government another opportunity to take a
stand against the current crucible of Apartheid
that is the state of Israel. The roadmap
towards that end, is very clear.
1. Boycott, Disinvestment and
Sanctions (BDS)
In 2005, Palestinian civil society
organisations called for boycotts,
divestment and sanctions (BDS) as a form
of non-violent pressure on Israel. Inspired
by the South African anti-apartheid
movement, the BDS movement was
launched by 170 Palestinian unions,
political parties, refugee networks,
women’s organisations, professional
associations, popular resistance
committees and other Palestinian civil
society bodies.
In 2018 the Occupied Territories bill was
tabled in Ireland’s Seanad by Senator
Frances Black, seeking to ban and
criminalise “trade with and economic
support for illegal settlements in territories
deemed occupied under international law”,
most notably Israeli-occupied territories. It
has become evident recently that Minister
Paschal Donohoe assured Israel of its
passage, invoking the possibility that the
governnment would scupper it by insisting
on the delaying “money message”
mechanism.
Another bill sponsored by Michael
McNamara, Thomas Pringle and Catherine
Connolly,The Restriction of Imports (States
in violation of obligations under the
Genocide Convention and Occupied
Territories) Bill 2024 is currently before Dáil
Éireann (at Second Stage).
There is a compelling case for the enactment
of these bills.
2. End the Shannon Stopover
Since 2001, an estimated 3 million US
troops have flown through Shannon Airport
on their way to various sites of war, most
particularly Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
A 2019 report in the Irish Times indicated
that “760,000 foreign troops travelled
through Irish airports or airspace in the
previous five years in civilian aircraft
chartered by foreign military. A total of
280,669 foreign troops landed at Irish
airports while a further 486,256 flew
overhead through Irish airspace in the
period”.
In May 2024, The Ditch website reported
that on 10 April a US Air Force C17
Globemaster landed in Shannon Airport on
its way to Tel Aviv. The plane was carrying
the US General and Commander of US
Central Command, Erik Kurilla. Irish
authorities didn’t search the plane — a
model used by the US military as its
“primary” means of transporting munitions
to Israel. They never do.
Kurilla was travelling to assist Israeli
defence minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli
military officials. The International Criminal
Court has requested an arrest warrant for
Gallant, claiming it has grounds to believe he
is criminally responsible for crimes against
humanity in Gaza.
Responding to a question from Deputy
Catherine Connolly on 16 April 2024, Tánaiste
and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence,
Micheál Martin, said he was satisfied US
planes flying through Shannon have not
carried munitions. After a hubristic initial
denial in the Dáil. that should be corrected, he
has had to concede that nine civilian aircraft,
destined for Israel, did enter Irish sovereign
airspace. carrying munitions this year, without
permission.
Genocide and apartheid have no place in
the international global order.
Ireland has taken its responsibilities
seriously but it needs to go substantially
further, to act as a model state, chastising
those whose supplies of armaments feed the
genocide; and it needs to treat Israel, the
genocidal apartheid state, as the pariah
South Africa was and it now is.
One child is killed every 10 minutes. Some
1.5 million people now are displaced and
looking for shelter anywhere, but nowhere
and no one is safe
Isrel’s ctions in Gz look like genocide
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