Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Z-Word has published an important essay well worth a close read: Franchising "Apartheid": Why South Africans Push the Analogy
According to the folks at Z-Word:
...This isn't a standard rebuttal of the apartheid analogy; it's a powerful piece by two black South African writers on why the analogy has come into play within South Africa's domestic politics. Centrally, they make the point that those who suffered directly from apartheid don't buy into the analogy with Israel.
Rhoda Kadalie, the main author, is a former anti-apartheid activist who now works as a newspaper columnist and as director of a non-profit organization in Cape Town...
The second author, Julia Bertelsmann, is the Harvard student who wrote the excellent essay linked here: Are critics of Israel persecuted at Harvard?
There's too much to bother to excerpt in this new article. Interested readers should read the whole thing.
To pick up on one point, you will frequently encountered critics of Israel who hold out Israel's "relationship" with apartheid South Africa as further proof of the Jewish State's existential evil -- thus finding yet another realm to hold the Israelis to a standard higher than almost any other (many states had relationships on some level with old South Africa). It's a neat trick which I look at as another aspect of the "Jewish Flypaper Strategy." It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation of the haters' creation.
In this case, you first isolate Israel with boycotts and demonization, then condemn it for failing to hold to a standard of trade and diplomatic purity matched by almost no one, and certainly no one in their circumstances (circumstances you helped create by narrowing their choices) -- as though Israel is supposed to be holier than the Pope, and anything else is worthy of nothing but condemnation.
Another example of the tactic: You launch attacks from a territory against the State. When that State sends in the troops to defend its citizens, you scream about the "illegal occupation" which, you claim, justifies acts that the rational man would consider acts of terrorism. Yet when said State begins to withdraw its troops and cease cooperation and support for the local infrastructure, you cry that they are failing to fulfill their obligations as the occupying power under International Law.
It's a fundamentally unfair, anti-intellectual, no-win situation and it's crafted that way with intent. It's a flypaper tactic to serve a war of attrition whose end goal isn't peace, it's destruction.
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Maybe I'm wrong here, and I don't have time to research this, but I was under the impression that Israel's trade relations with SA didn't amount to very much.
lso, the USSR had a kind of diamond cartel with South Africa, in which SA firms handled tens of billions of dollars worth of sales in Soviet diamonds. Not to mention the trade with black African states. And, in the 1980s, the British and Canadian governments opposed the boycott.
I don't know who else broke the boycott of South Africa, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had a lot of holes in it. I don't think trade with Israel did much to prop up the apartheid regime.
Joanne,
If you see this please research the arms agreements of the French (manufacture of Mirage fighter jets, helicopters, armoured cars etc.), Belgians (manufacture of small arms, automatic weapons of most sizes and calibers), Swiss etc
Just as today Israel is the only country accused of human rights abuses so It was virtually the only country accused of trading with SA.
In comparison to the European's trade with SA, Israel's was minuscule.
Just a thought; maybe this article should be sent to ex-South African law professor John Dugard who holds with the "Apartheid Israel." accusation as dictated by his boss the UN.
You could have chosen the following as well, for the record.
From Page 3:
Not only has the ANC begun to distort the history of its relations with Israel, but several former anti-apartheid activists in the party have joined a cottage industry that exploits the Israel-apartheid analogy for personal and political gain. Troublingly, their anti-Israel diatribes are sometimes barely distinguishable from antisemitism. Foremost among these prophets of apartheid is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has energetically supported the campaign to demonize Israel as an apartheid state.
But then his behaviour is typical of Anglican clergy in general. And while he invokes God freely he is not averse to "creating" facts as Mbeki discovered.
Cynic, I'm curious: What problems did Mbeki have with Tutu?
On page 4 there is a bit about one spat between the two.
Tutu uses the position he held in the church to promote himself while politically he is no better than the corrupted hypocrites whose behaviour he deems to admonish.
If he was truly for helping the poor, impoverished and hard done byes he would not be worried about pushing Apartheid Israel internationally but standing up to the massive abuse of his own kind in the new South Africa.
Tutu's behaviour falls into place alongside that of Dugard as hypocritical and insincere while hiding behind his mitre and the facade of Mandela.
There is something disgraceful in the behaviour of Dugard, for example who as professor of law in SA at the time of Apartheid knows much better than to espouse UN disinformation but protests that his "contract" with the UN is only to examine the Israelis for "human rights abuses" etc.
So we hear that he is "Only Following Orders"! Ja Ja!
How could a person of his supposed standing accept such a slimy position?
Tutu behaves in the same fashion preferring a political agenda to the truth and facts.
Just as those church leaders who ran arms for the PLO from Lebanon into the West Bank in the 70s at the very time the PLO was slaughtering Lebanese Christians in their hundreds (e.g. the Town of Damour in 1976) when their morality was riding in the septic tank, so Tutu is riding lies and disinformation about Israel and Jews while tut tutting and crying crocodile tears about the fate of a sick society instead of applying himself to the fate of his own countrymen.