74 October-November 2024
Losī˜š opī˜šimism: Dī˜˜vid Ben Gurion reī˜˜ding ī˜šhe Declī˜˜rī˜˜ī˜šion of ī˜šhe Esī˜šī˜˜blishmenī˜š
of ī˜šhe Sī˜šī˜˜ī˜še of Isrī˜˜el ī˜˜ī˜š ī˜šhe Tel Aviv Museum on 14 Mī˜˜y 1948
Israel derailed
After initial good intentions Israel
has long been an apartheid state
By Peadar King
Formalised (like Israelā€™s) in
1948, the seeds of South
Africaā€™s apartheid were
sown 42 years earlier
I
n 2022, Amnesty International
published a comprehensive report,
ā€˜Israelā€™s Apartheid against Palestinians:
Cruel System of Domination and Crime
against Humanityā€™. 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) ā€œintentional and
targeted starvationā€; and it was before the
September 2024 straļ¬ng 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 ā€œinsane and murderous
racist ideologyā€. Israel is worse.
Israelā€™s Apartheid state was established in
the same year as South Africaā€™s. Formalised
in 1948, the seeds of South Africaā€™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
Africaā€™s House of Assembly:
ā€œIt was thus that the seeds of Apartheid
were planted in my mindā€. Mixed play
prompted his plan to ā€œkeep the Kaļ¬ƒr in his
placeā€ ā€” a ā€œvisionary idealā€, he said. With a
belief that God was on his side, the former
pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church pursued
that vision with unļ¬‚inching determination.
A Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in
April 1951 laid down the theory: ā€œIt is
scriptural principle that there should be a
deļ¬nite authoritarian relationship...between
man and wife, employer and worker, authority
and subject...The Christian calling lies in
acceptance of the place which God has givenā€.
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, Israelā€™s ļ¬rst
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion stated:
ā€œThe 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 beneļ¬t 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
deļ¬ned in the Rome Statute and Apartheid
Convention.
The ruling of the United Nationsā€™ 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 conļ¬rmation.
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 Israelā€™s is an even
more extreme version of apartheid against
Palestinians in the West Bank than South
Africaā€™s against Blacks before 1994:
ā€œWe as South Africans sense, see, hear,
and feel to our core the inhumane
discriminatory policies and practices of the
Israeli rƩgime as an even more extreme form
of the apartheid that was institutionalized
against black people in my countryā€.
Nelson Mandela told the European
VillageOctNov24.indb 74 03/10/2024 14:27