1948 a significant year for South Africa and for Israel. Either history books or experience reminds us that this year heralded the introduction of legislative apartheid in our country.
But fewer recall that, 7000km north of us, 1948 was the year of Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence Day, marking the declaration of the independent state of Israel.
1948 a significant year for South Africa and for Israel. Either history books or experience reminds us that this year heralded the introduction of legislative apartheid in our country.
But fewer recall that, 7000km north of us, 1948 was the year of Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence Day, marking the declaration of the independent state of Israel.
Sometimes referred to as “a land without a people, for a people without a land,” Israel was to be the solution for a history of persecution which culminated in the Holocaust.
But Israel was not a land without people it was Palestine, home to both Jews and Muslims. For Palestinians this day was Yawm al-nakba, Catastrophe Day, the beginning of an apartheid which continues to exist.
Evidence of Israel’s implementation of apartheid becomes more manifest every day – and there is no better example than Israel’s ‘protection wall’.
This concrete monolith, which will be 703 kilometres in length when complete, cordons off the majority of the west bank. Purportedly it protects Israel from suicide bombers.
Yet statistics show that Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism has killed more Palestinian civilians than Israelis killed by Palestinian attacks.
No match for Israel’s defence force, poorer, stateless Palestinians tend to favour rock-throwing. So why the wall? The wall is apartheid made obvious a physical segregation confining those on the other side to a virtual prison.
Used to annex prime agricultural land and water sources for the Israeli state it is another step in a process of ethnic cleansing that began in 1948.
The homes of Israel’s colonising settler communities rise on the olive groves and bulldozed homes of Palestinian farmers. Denied citizenship and living under military occupation, Palestinians are without a democratic voice.
Protest is quelled by bullets, beatings and teargas as they continue to live as second-class citizens on a vast minority of the land, ghettoised in the refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank, separated from employment, education, healthcare and forced to carry passes that regulate their movement.
Is there any question that this is a system of apartheid? One in which Palestinians seeking change are forced to choose between violence or silence.
