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| APARTHEID'S ACCIDENTAL PROPHECY |
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| zyad |
| 05/26/02 at 09:15:36 |
| APARTHEID'S ACCIDENTAL PROPHECY By Susan Abulhawa May 23, 2002 THE APARTHEID government of South Africa came to power in 1948, the same year that the state of Israel was created in Palestine. Having lived and witnessed the legacy of Zionism, I wonder sometimes if this shared birth year was not some accidental prophecy. Both governments were born on the miserable premise of entitlement for a select group of people. This entitlement, to land rights and resources, spawned laws and societies that measured human worth by human irrelevancies. In the case of South Africa, it was skin colour. In the case of Israel, it is religion. In both lands, the privilege accorded to the chosen group came at the expense and detriment of the natives — the “unchosen”. As if we were children of a lesser God, we were uprooted from our ancestral homes and piled like garbage into wretched refugee camps or exiled into drifting oblivion. As if they were not human, black souls of South Africa were dumped in abject ghettos. In the Holy Land, where religion has no physical features, everyone carries colour-coded ID cards and drives cars with colour-coded plates. That is how oppression discriminates there. During the gist of apartheid's cruelty, Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu went to the land of my mothers. He stood in Jerusalem on Christmas day of 1989 and said before an audience: “I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa.” Last month, Tutu gave a lecture in Boston, where he affirmed Israel's right to security, but added: “What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it does to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very distressed during my visits to the Holy Land; it reminds me so much of what happened to us, black people, in South Africa during the apartheid rule.” Many have long pointed to the tragic parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa where one people cruelly controls the lives and fate of another. In Hebron, where 600 Uzi-toting Jewish settlers live among 240,000 Palestinians, 85 per cent of the water is diverted to the few Jewish settlers. The remainder is rationed among Palestinians. The reality is a cruel contrast between a people with swimming pools amidst green lawns and a people who must share bathing water. The shared values of Zionism and apartheid spurred the nostalgic reflection in Henry Katzew's book, `South Africa: A Country Without Friends', in which he said: “What is the difference between the way in which the Jewish people struggles to remain what it is in the midst of a non-Jewish population, and the way the Afrikaners try to stay what they are?” (Die Transvaler, quoted by R. Stevens in Zionism, South Africa and Apartheid.) Most people no longer recall that Israel remained a close ally of South Africa when the world embarked on a global boycott against it. Few remember that the state of Israel supplied the weapons used to mow down young boys in Soweto. And long after the injustice of apartheid fell to its knees, Ehud Barak made an offer for a Palestinian state in the style of apartheid's bantustans. He was widely hailed as “brave” and his offer as “far reaching”. But to those of us who saw the map or witnessed the reality, the “97 per cent concession” was clearly apartheid, cleverly repackaged and renamed. His offer was a patchwork of isolated islands hemmed on all fronts by Jewish-only settlements and Jewish- only roads. Author Breyten Breytenbach was dispatched in March to the occupied territories as part of a delegation from the International Parliament of Writers. Upon his return he wrote: “I recently visited the occupied territories for the first time. And yes, I'm afraid they can reasonably be described as resembling Bantustans, reminiscent of the ghettos and controlled camps of misery one knew in South Africa.” Breytenbach, too, is familiar with apartheid. He spent seven years in prison under the “Terrorism Act” in South Africa — the same act under which Mandela was imprisoned. Yet a brutal Israeli occupation endures long after apartheid collapsed and it builds tall barriers throughout the land, long after the world understood the wickedness of the Berlin wall. Israel's ironic denial of Palestine's right to life (repeated again this month by its ruling party) spurs the hearts that fought apartheid like few others. In an open letter to Ariel Sharon, Breyten wrote: “There can be no peace through the annihilation of the other, just as there is no paradise for the `martyr'; you have not broken the spirit of the Palestinian people.” Tutu uttered the questions that baffle us all. “My heart aches,” he said. “Why are our memories so short? 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? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?” It makes my heart ache, too. The anger and helplessness I felt in Jenin and Ramallah subside now to a constant ache. But I keep looking at the final similarity between Zionism and apartheid: the fruition of that accidental prophecy. The subjugation of my people will end when the institution of religious exclusivity will crumble in Palestine and Israel like apartheid did in South Africa. ---------- This article was published in Jordan Times Thursday, May 23, 2002, and also by "Dissident Voice", a semi-regular newsletter dedicated to challenging the lies of the corporate press and the privileged classes it serves. Editor: Sunil K. Sharma, e-mail: dissidentvoice@earthlink.net Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian freelance writer living in Pennsylvania and founder of Playgrounds For Palestine, Inc. — a charity that builds playgrounds for children in occupied Palestine. She contributed this article to The Jordan Times. To find out more about this vital project, visit: http://www.playgroundsforpalestine.org/ Susan can be contacted at: JABROLE@aol.com |
| Re: APARTHEID'S ACCIDENTAL PROPHECY |
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| mwishka |
| 05/26/02 at 11:31:14 |
| zyad, thanks for posting this article. it's really good. Most people no longer recall that Israel remained a close ally of South Africa when the world embarked on a global boycott against it. Few remember that the state of Israel supplied the weapons used to mow down young boys in Soweto. in a twisted kind of way, it isn't that people don't remember this at all - in fact, the two are such a parallel that many, many americans fought these fights simultaneously for years. and now it's gotten to be "years AND years", but somehow many of those who were fighting these injustices sort of disappeared from the radar of the fight after apartheid was broken in one instance, and seemed to start having thinking difficulties, forgetting the absolute parallels, having mental lapses, and undergoing conversions to "the other side". i'm ALWAYS surprised when people are suprised that palestine is my greatest torment in this world now, and eats away at me constantly. after all, i'm american. america is doing a LOT of bad things in the world (as always), but to me this is the most unbearable. i've had muslim and arab friends say to me "but why do you care so much about the palestinians? you're not arab." or "you're not muslim." the question itself surprises me. i think there are two answers i could give, the most general one being "because i am human" and the american one being "south africa". mwishka |
| Re: APARTHEID'S ACCIDENTAL PROPHECY |
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| muqaddar |
| 05/29/02 at 11:14:59 |
| [slm] Most people forget that the Jews in occupied Palestine were busy creating Biological weapons to help South Africa reduce it's Black people until Clinton worried about white people ( who had black genes but didn't know it) who would die |
| Re: APARTHEID'S ACCIDENTAL PROPHECY |
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| Kashif |
| 05/29/02 at 11:34:31 |
| wa alaikum us-salaam What is the source for that muqaddar? Kashif Wa Salaam |
| NS |
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