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The documents collected below show the horrifying similarities between
Israeli and Apartheid South African policies and the tremendous speed
with which Israel is realizing the last step of Zionist Apartheid
ideology the south African regime never reached – final expulsion and
destruction of the native population.
They further highlight the experience of the International
Anti-Apartheid Movement and the growing call to Isolate Israel until it
ends the Occupation and its apartheid policies.
Apartheid literally means separation, but this universally accepted
term, which is often referred to as “colonialism of a special type,”
embodies within it the major components of displacement through
colonization, including its changing policies and measures in which
expansionism and racism subjugate and eradicate a people. Apartheid was
officially made a universal term by the United Nations in the 1976
“International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime
of Apartheid.” Apartheid began and is rooted in the very establishment
of the colonial Israeli regime, set up as a state for Jews only, both in
law (de jure) and in the implementation of its goals on various levels
(de facto). This includes those mechanisms that are used to justify its
practices to avoid its legalization. Apartheid is characterized by
forcible transfer of populations, land control, labor exploitation,
humiliation, and mass murder.
1976 United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and
Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
“Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the
population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and
ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of
mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, [and] the
expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups
or to members thereof.”
[MORE]
“Colonialism of a Special Type” (From the
Statement of the Lisbon Conference), March 1997
“The South African National Liberation Movement, the ANC and its allies,
characterize the South African social formation as a system of 'internal
colonialism' or 'colonialism of a special type.' What is ‘special' or
different about the colonial system as it obtains in South Africa is
that there is no spatial separation between the colonizing power (the
white minority state) and the colonized black people. But in every
respect, the features of classic colonialism are the hallmark of the
relations that obtain between the black majority and white minority.”
[MORE]
Apartheid According to the Webster Dictionary
"We note how the Israeli state rests on overt repression, a system of
structural violence and institutionalized discrimination that
dehumanizes one group to the advantage of another. Apartheid Israel has
developed an elaborate system of racial discrimination, embedded in its
legal system--even surpassing Apartheid South Africa’s laws. These laws
include the Law of Entry, the Law of Return, Citizenship Law, legally
sanctioned discriminatory rabbinical rulings and the Military Service
Law. Palestinians are denied various welfare benefits, access to many
jobs, and the leasing of homes and land controlled by government
bodies.”
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The Apartheid system in South Africa officially began in 1948, but
white-colonial rule and domination have their roots in Southern Africa
from the 1600s. This section, which is in chronological order (and
includes some documents written in support of the apartheid system, for
historical background), has a few links from the period leading up to,
and part of the larger history of, Apartheid, but most of these
resources date from 1948-1991, up to the period just before the end of
the white-minority government in South Africa.
Map of the South African Bantustans
[MORE]
Map of South African Townships
[MORE]
Constitution of the South African Native
National Congress, September 1919
“The objects for which the Association is established [include]...to
unite, absorb, consolidate and preserve under its aegis existing
political and educational Associations, Vigilance Committees and other
public and private bodies whose aims are the promotion and safeguarding
of the interests of the aboriginal races.”
[MORE]
The Case for Apartheid, A. L. Geyer (speech
given before the Rotary Club of London, 1953)
“Let me turn to my subject, to that part of Africa south of the Sahara
which, historically, is not part of Black Africa at all - my own
country. Its position is unique in Africa as its racial problem is
unique in the world. South Africa is no more the original home of its
black Africans, the Bantu than it is of its white Africans. Both races
went there as colonists and, what is more, as practically contemporary
colonists. In some parts the Bantu arrived first, in other parts the
Europeans were the first comers. South Africa contains the only
independent white nation in all Africa; a South African nation which has
no other homeland to which it could retreat; a nation which has created
a highly developed modern state, and which occupies a position of
inestimable importance. […]”
[MORE]
The Defiance Campaign Recalled, M.P. Naicker
(1952)
“This year, June 26, will mark the twentieth anniversary of the
beginning of the ‘Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws,’ launched jointly
by the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congress.
This Campaign was first conceived towards the end of the most shameful
session of the South African Parliament in the middle of 1951. The
all-white Parliament had placed no less than seventy-five pieces of
apartheid legislation on the Statute Book during this single session.”
[MORE]
Umkhonto we Sizwe [Leaflet Issued by the
Command of Umkhonto we Sizwe] (December 1961)
“Umkhonto we Sizwe will be at the front line of the people's defense. It
will be the fighting arm of the people against the government and its
policies of race oppression. It will be the striking force of the people
for liberty, for rights and for their final liberation! Let the
government, its supporters who put it into power, and those whose
passive toleration of reaction keeps it in power, take note of where the
Nationalist government is leading the country!”
[MORE]
Nelson Mandela’s First Court Statement (1962)
“This case is a trial of the aspirations of the African people…”
[MORE]
Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950,
Jack and Ray Simons (1968)
“Southern Africans have taken up arms against white supremacists to
redress the balance. The freedom fighters are the vanguard of a people
preparing to rise for the recovery of lost liberties and for the right
to move freely on terms of equality with all men at home and abroad.
Their struggle is an old one. It began 300 years ago, when the brown men
of the Cape - the Nama who were called Hottentot and the Khoi who were
called Bushmen - fought the white invaders with bows, arrows and spears.
Bantu-speaking warriors - the Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Tswana and Venda -
continued the struggle, until each nation in turn was defeated and
absorbed in the white man's order. Wars of independence were succeeded
by a struggle from within the industrialized society for parliamentary
democracy, national liberation, or socialism.”
[MORE]
The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and
the Ideology and Practice of Apartheid, J. Verkuyl (1972)
“The first thing with which one is struck in analyzing [Apartheid South
African Prime Minister Hendrik] Verwoerd`s views is the extent to which
he proceeds from a nationalistic interpretation of history. "Why and for
what purpose", he asked, "were whites led to the southern part of Africa
300 years ago? Why have these small groups increased so in number and
spread over South Africa? Why have they passed through such a difficult
struggle and survived as a people? I believe that all of this has had a
purpose, namely, that we should become the anchor of Western
civilization in Africa". (uploaded)
[MORE]
Anti-Apartheid Year Leaflet, African National
Congress (1978)
“BROTHERS AND SISTERS! While the racist bosses get fat over their
Christmas turkeys, the working people of South Africa reel under
increasing burdens, bringing many of us to the point of despair. Our
militants are rotting in the racists' prisons. Throughout the land,
deaths, detentions, harassments, humiliations, unemployment and
starvation ruin for millions of us the so-called 'holiday season'. We
cannot bear this oppression any longer. Recent events have shaken the
fascists as never before, but it is vital that we step up our mass
resistance to the Apartheid state.1978 must go down in history books as
ANTI-APARTHEID YEAR!
[MORE]
Statements by South African Political Prisoners
(1981)
“This collection of statements made during political trials since 1960
testifies to the high courage, determination and humanity which
distinguish the struggle for liberation and for a just society in South
Africa and Namibia. The earliest of the statements in the collection is
by Robert Sobukwe, late leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress. It
expresses a theme running through all the statements: ‘The history of
the human race has been a struggle for the removal of oppression, and we
would have failed had we not made our contribution. We are glad we made
it.’"
[MORE]
Armed Struggle and Umkhonto (1987)
“In 1960, under conditions of a state of emergency and a harsh crackdown
on the ANC, a number of our leaders were sent abroad to establish an
external mission under the then Deputy President-General of the ANC,
Oliver Tambo. Faced with the regime's reign of terror and the closing of
all avenues of legal protest and organization, the ANC decided to form
an army of liberation. In 1961 the ANC, together with the South African
Communist Party, formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a people's army, with
Nelson Mandela as the first Commander-in-Chief. Large numbers of cadres
left the country for military training.”
[MORE]
On Negotiations, African National Congress
(1987)
“The racist regime has raised the issue of negotiations to achieve two
major objectives. The first of these is to defuse the struggle inside
our country by holding out false hopes of a just political settlement
which the Pretoria regime has every intention to block. Secondly, this
regime hopes to defeat the continuing campaign for comprehensive and
mandatory sanctions by sending out bogus signals that it is ready to
talk seriously to the' genuine representatives of our people.”
[MORE]
Nelson Mandela’s Statement at a Meeting with
F.W. de Klerk (1990)
“It is of crucial importance that the government should understand that
our people, the families of the thousands who have been and are being
killed, the communities that have been and are being terrorized, are all
pointing their finger at the government for failing to stop this
horrendous crime against the people. The simple point is made that such
carnage would never have been allowed if the victims were white.”
[MORE]
The Apartheid State in Crisis: Political
Transformation in South Africa 1975-1990, Robert M. Price (1991)
“In the history of apartheid, the decade of the 1950s was marked by the
elaboration of policies to control the physical movement and social life
of black South Africans, and with the creation of the centralized
bureaucratic means for the implementation of these strictures. The 1960s
saw the unfolding of apartheid's ‘grand political design,’ the policy of
separate development. This evolution in the apartheid project
represented the Afrikaner elite's response to the domestic and
international security ‘threats’ that characterized the post-war
environment.” (From Chapter One, “The Instruments of Apartheid: Dealing
with the ‘Black Threat’”) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)
[MORE]
Negotiations: A Strategic Perspective, African
National Congress (1992)
“The liberation movement enjoyed many advantages over the regime, both
internally and internationally. All the pillars of the struggle had
grown from strength to strength: a very high level of mass mobilization
and mass defiance had rendered apartheid unworkable; the building of the
underground had laid a basis for exercising political leadership and was
laying a basis for an intensification of the armed struggle; the world
was united against apartheid.”
[MORE]
Apartheid Legislation in South Africa
“What makes South Africa's apartheid era different from segregation and
racial hatred that have occurred in other countries is the systematic
way in which the National Party, which came into power in 1948,
formalized it through the law. The main laws are described below.”
[MORE]
Selections from “Apartheid as an International
Crime,” African National Congress
The following year, in resolution 31/6 I of 9 November 1976, the
Assembly reaffirmed ‘the legitimacy of the struggle of the oppressed
people of South Africa and their liberation movements, by all possible
means, for the seizure of power by the people and the exercise of their
inalienable right to self-determination.’ Apartheid legislation and
practice, in many of its aspects, would already be in breach of the
rules laid down in the Genocide Convention. As with this Convention, the
1973 Convention imputes individual criminal responsibility irrespective
of the motive involved, to individuals, members of organisations and
institutions and representatives of the State, whether residing in the
territory of the State in which the acts are perpetrated or in some
other State” and such responsibility is incurred for the commission,
participation, conspiring or incitement of the acts or the aiding,
abetting, encouragement or co-operation in the commission of the crime
of apartheid.” [From Kader Asmal, “International Law and the Liquidation
of Apartheid”]
[MORE]
Extracts from Declarations of the United
Nations General Assembly and the Security Council
“The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and
exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is
contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to
the promotion of world peace and co-operation.”
[MORE]
UN Documents
“The documents available here include resolutions of the United Nations
General Assembly and the Security Council, statements by the Presidents
of the General Assembly and the Security Council, reports of the
Secretary-General and United Nations bodies, letters to and from the
Secretary-General, communications from United Nations Member States and
other communications.”
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The partnership between these two
apartheid regimes was extensive and based on the determination of
both to continue their criminal policies and actions without having
to face any consequences. This was in addition to each
affectionately seeing the other as a “laboratory” for the
implementation of racist colonial policies, since those which were
“successful” in one would be nurtured in the other. The term
“Apartheid” was introduced in 1948, the same year as the Palestinian
Nakba, This was not just a historical coincidence: even though that
decade was supposed to mark the end of colonization and the victory
of peoples’ liberation struggles, it also saw the establishment of
greater colonization in Palestine and South Africa. Israel and
Apartheid South Africa expressed their affinity for each other from
the start, but it was particularly in the 1980's, at the same time
as a worldwide movement was calling for divestment, sanctions, and
boycotts against Apartheid South Africa, that Israel pursued
increasingly more extensive economic and military ties with South
Africa.
“The Israeli-South African-U.S. Alliance,” Jane
Hunter, The Link (Vol 19, No 1), March/April 1986
“A pivotal event was the April 1976 visit to Israel
by South African Prime Minister John Vorster, resulting in a comprehensive
bilateral agreement. Essentially, the two nations pledged themselves to each
other’s survival and freedom from foreign interference. Over the years the
relationship has taken on a symbiotic quality: from Israel South African gets
advanced engineering, including military technology unobtainable elsewhere due
to sanctions and embargoes; from South Africa Israel receives strategic raw
materials and capital for a variety of purposes.”
[MORE]
Israeli Foreign Policy, Jane Hunter (1987)
“It has also been said that those arms sales [from Israel to Apartheid
South Africa] are understandable, given the striking similarities
between the two countries in their day-to-day abuse and repression of
their subject populations, South African blacks and Palestinians under
Israeli rule; in their operating philosophies of apartheid and Zionism;
and in their similar objective situations: ‘the only two Western nations
to have established themselves in a predominantly non-white part of the
world,’ as a South African Broadcasting Corporation editorial put it.
That understanding, however, is somewhat superficial, and the focus on
similarities of political behaviour has somewhat obscured the view of
the breadth and depth of the totality of Israeli-South African relations
and their implications.” (Boston: South End Press, 1987)
[MORE]
“Israel and South Africa: A Natural Alliance,”
Robert B. Ashmore, The Link (Vol 21, No 4), October-November 1988
In May 1988 Israel and South Africa celebrated a fortieth anniversary.
Jews in Israel and abroad commemorated forty years of Zionist control over land
seized from Palestinians and proclaimed as a ‘Jewish state’ on May 14, 1948. In
South Africa the Afrikaners celebrated coming to power in the May 26, 1948
elections on an apartheid platform that has guided the course of National Party
politics for the last four decades.”
[MORE]
Apartheid Déjà Vu, Miriam Mahlow, Al-Ahram
Weekly, June 2002
“[Mercia Andrews, head of the South African
Palestine Solidarity Group (PSG)] said that, for South Africans, the Palestinian
struggle is a fight against the repetition of apartheid oppression and imperial
power. More generally, she said, it is a struggle for human rights. The
organization, which is growing rapidly, draws members from all ranks and
religions: lawyers, academics, trade unionists, Muslims, Christians and Jews.
Besides organizing protests in front of the South African Parliament and the
Israeli Embassy, the PSG aims to target Israeli products and stores. "We simply
do not want to engage in any activity that could support the repression of
Palestinians," Andrews said.”
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This section looks at articles
written about Apartheid in Palestine by Palestinian and Arab writers
in English-language publications available on the Internet. The
amount of material addressing Apartheid in Palestine is of course
abundantly greater, both in terms of resources that are not
available online, and also materials available in Arabic and other
languages. Note that the majority of these contributions are from
the past five years, during and after the period of the so-called
Oslo “Peace” Accords, when writings describing the clearly worsening
reality and Bantustanization of the Palestinians residential areas
increased. The links below discuss Apartheid in Palestine from
various angles, highlighting the point that Apartheid can and must
be used throughout the discussion on the colonization, oppression,
displacement, subjugation, and struggle of the Palestinian people.
“The New Israeli Apartheid,” Azmi Bishara,
Palestine Report, January 1998
“It is possible to give this Palestinian entity a
choice - Sharon has no objections to it being called a state - between large
geographically disconnected areas or small but geographically contiguous areas.
And, another new element is Sharon's ability to claim, after the improvement in
his personal relationships with Jordan, that the presence of the Israeli army
along the Jordan Valley to separate Jordan from the Palestinian state is not
only an Israeli security need but is also in Jordan's security and strategic
interests. […] The Israeli debate surrounding redeployment must not pull the wool
over the eyes of Arabs and Palestinians, hiding from them the Israeli consensus
on final status, which is similar to an Israeli-Palestinian apartheid…”
[MORE]
“Israel’s Pragmatic Expansionists and the
‘Peace Process’” Nur Masalha, Redress Information and Analysis, October
2000
“The basic thinking with regard to the territorial
issue behind the negotiation strategy of Barak is ‘the Allon Plan Plus’ of
assuring the maximum land and the minimum number of Arabs - or an overwhelmingly
Jewish state from the demographic point of view- and this remains essentially
the fundamental position of the Labour Party. It was the relatively moderate
ex-president of Israel and a leading Labour politician, Yitzhak Navon, who
declared during the 1984 general election campaign: ‘the very point of Labor's
Zionist program is to have as much land as possible and as few Arabs as
possible!’”
[MORE]
Azmi Bishara, “Apartheid Consciousness and the
Question of Palestine,” Between the Lines, March 2001
“The structure is apartheid, but apartheid is not
only a structure: it is an ideology, a mentality, an approach, and a system of
belief. The Palestinians in the Bantustan of the PA do not think they live in a
Bantustan but rather that they are a national liberation movement on their way
towards an independent state. The Israelis also do not think that that the PA
areas are Bantustans but rather that they [the Israelis] 'gave the Arabs more
than they deserve', and that 'the Arabs are guilty for the fact that they do not
get their rights.' The culmination of these contradictions is found in Left
Zionism, rather than in Right Zionism because the Left needs more justification
mechanisms as their values are closer to liberal values.”
[MORE]
“Did You Say Failure? The Success of the Durban
NGO Forum,” Marwan Bishara, Palestine Center Information Brief No. 82,
September 2001
“If the Palestinian cause is to gain momentum and
gain international support, it must continue from where Durban has left off, by
relocating from the back door of the White House into the center of the American
and international solidarity and human rights movement. Already, preparations
are underway to strategize with the Dalits, the anti-apartheid, the civil
rights, and the human rights movements. Only popular international pressure
could urge the U.S. to put an end to Israel’s impunity and allow for a just
solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Palestinians do not have to
reinvent the wheel on this one.”
[MORE]
“Inside Israeli Apartheid,” Jonathan Kuttab and
Jim Wallis, Sojourners, Vol 30, No. 5, September 2001
“Everyone thought that the Oslo process, despite
its goblins, would lead to a Palestinian state—a two-state solution. The
reality, however, was the opposite. The Oslo process created an alternative to
international law, to the mechanisms of the United Nations, to international
solidarity, and to a genuine struggle for justice. It created a crazy
partnership between the Palestinian leadership and the Israeli occupation
forces…”
[MORE]
“Bantustans of the West Bank”, Khaled Amayreh,
Al-Ahram Weekly, May 2002
“Israel this week divided the West Bank into eight
areas that are cut off from each other and virtually isolated from the rest of
the outside world. The areas center around each of Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah,
Jericho, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem and Qalqiliya. […] The immediate purpose of the
measures appears to make daily life even more difficult for the Palestinian
population. However, the ultimate goal of dividing the West Bank into veritable
Bantustans seems to effect what one Israeli official recently termed ‘a quiet
transfer,’ or mass exodus by Palestinians from their homeland by making life for
them so unbearable that they want to leave.”
[MORE]
“New Laws Legalize Apartheid in Israel,” Jamal
Zahalka, Palestine Center, June 2002
“To ensure that the Jewish nature of Israel remains
intact, the Israeli government has recently passed five laws that aim to
decrease the quality of life and the number of Arab citizens in Israel.
According to Jamal Zahalka, general director of the Ahali Center for Community
Development in Nazareth, Israel is suffering a demographic phobia and the new
laws are a reflection of the current political atmosphere controlling the
country.”
[MORE]
“Beyond Belief,” Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly,
July 2002
“It is not a reform of the "reform process" that is
needed, but rather a strategy for resistance and for creating the institutions
needed for that end. It is to be doubted whether this is possible by changing
the PA's job description, or by enlisting its employees to in-house training
courses to provide them with struggle-against-occupation skills. There will
always be a need for effective institutions to tend to the daily affairs of the
people, and these institutions are in no doubt in need of reform. However,
remedying the current Palestinian crisis needs something more: it needs the
reconstruction of the Palestinian resistance movement as a movement resolutely
set against Israeli colonialist apartheid and the blatant separatism and racism
it embodies.”
[MORE]
“Post-Oslo Solidarity,” Joseph Massad, Al-Ahram
Weekly, February 2003
“While much of the world supported the dismantling
of Israel as a racist settler colony, evidenced by the 1975 UN Resolution that
identified Zionism as ‘a form of racism and racial discrimination,’ in 1991,
much of the world repealed that very same resolution. While much of the world
was then decided on isolating Israel diplomatically as one of three pariah
states (Apartheid South Africa and Taiwan being the others), now most of them
have established diplomatic relations with it.”
[MORE]
“Palestine: A Road Map to Apartheid,” Ahmed
Nimr, Green Left Review, May 2003
“Before the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and
British governments made it clear that they were planning for an immediate
resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and a rapid implementation of the
U.S. ‘road map to ‘peace’ following the end of the war. They presented this call
as evidence of their commitment to the ultimate goal of an end to violence in
the region. In reality, the road map is a blueprint for an apartheid state
through the cantonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
[MORE]
“Why is it an Oslo Stan and not a Bantustan?”
Adel Samara, Kana’an Bulletin, July 2003
“What interested us in this paper is that the mere
idea of cantonizing the WBG means that the Bantustans are in the WBG, not in the
occupied part of Palestine 1948. The cantonization is, at the same time,
politically/ideologically a defensive as well an offensive plan... It is
defensive because it indirectly contains the pretence that the occupied part of
Palestine in 1948 is not for discussion and that it is according to the Jewish
myth, the ‘land of Israel.’ It is also offensive because it keeps the
settlements inside the WBG with the purpose of expanding them for the long run
until the eviction all the Palestinians to the Shatat is accomplished.”
[MORE]
[MORE],Part 2
[MORE],Part 3
“The Sons of the Land,” Interview with Muhammad
Kanaane, Prensa Obrera, July 2003
“The Palestinian children are forced to study the
same programs as the Jewish children. They must learn Hebrew language and
literature, Hebrew history, geography with Hebrew names. For years it has been
taught to our children that Yoni (Jonathan) Netanyahu, brother of the ex-Prime
Minister from the Likud, was a ‘hero’ and a ‘martyr’ for his participation in
Entebbe Operation, and that the Palestinian fighters are ‘terrorists.’
Palestinian literature and history are excluded from the schools for Palestinian
children. The entire educational system is an attempt to rob our children of
their conscience and identity. The teachers of the Palestinian children are
appointed, not by the Education Ministry, but by the security services of the
Zionist state (Shabak).”
[MORE]
“Palestine: Between Racism and Weakness,” Maher
Othman, Al-Hayat, July 2003
“The Palestinian people and government should not
expect any good will from the Israelis, for they never considered the
Palestinians as an equal opponent. It is easy to observe that Israel treats the
Palestinians as if they were rebels within its own geographic area, ‘Eretz
Israel,’ and thus, it is imprisoning and arresting many of them with or without
trial, and it sets the conditions for releasing them, and not because they are
citizens of another country that should have been established according to the
resolution of dividing Palestine in 1948 like Israel.”
[MORE]
“The End of the Two-State Solution?” Ahmad
Samih Khalidi, The Guardian, July 2003
“For Palestinians, the fight may have to shift from
a national-territorial focus to a struggle based on mutuality, equality and
fundamental political and human rights. This is likely to be no less arduous or
intense than the fight against apartheid in South Africa. For Israelis, the
congruence between the separation wall and apartheid will entail a radical
review of the nature of the Jewish state and its purpose.”
[MORE]
“Israel’s ‘Land Laws’ As a Legal-Political
Tool: Confiscating and Taking Over Palestinian Arab Lands, and Creating
Physical & Legal Barriers to Prevent Future Property Restitution,” Usama
Halabi, Paper for the Badil Expert Seminar, Geneva, October 2003
“The main task of this paper is to review the
Israeli legal methods used by Israeli governments aiming at achieving
state/Jewish control over most of the land of historic Palestine, by creating
physical barriers (i.e. establishing Jewish settlements), and creating legal
barriers (i.e. enacting laws and regulations additional to existing Mandatory
Laws to ensure that ‘redeemed’ lands stay in Jewish hands) preventing by this
any real possibility for future property restitution that might be claimed by
Palestinian Refugees, Absentees or even displaced Arab citizens living within
Israel.”
[MORE]
“From Marginalized Identity to Resisting
Colonization: The Palestinians of the Inside,” Ibrahim Makkawi, Paper
presented at the “Third North American Student Conference on the
Palestine Solidarity Movement,” Rutgers University, October 2003
“It must be clear to all of us, that speaking about
the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian refugees’ Right of Return,
without placing it within the appropriate context of the conflict is misleading
and simplifying. The real conflict is between the Imperialist-Zionist camp on
one hand, and the Arab nation on the other, where Palestine is only the focal
point of the conflict. It is becoming more obvious than ever before, that our
main struggle is with the capitalist center and its expansionist imperial policy
throughout its various forms: starting with colonialism, imperialism and now
globalization.”
[MORE]
“The New Israeli Geography Erasing History of
Villages,” Saeda Hamad, Al-Hayat, November 2003
“According to the new Israeli geography, the
village of Azoon Atmeh in the district of Qalqiliya is no longer part of the
occupied Palestinian West Bank. The separation wall has 'moved' it westward,
locking it between an iron gate and the fictional Green Line. And yet, according
to Israel's plan, the village itself and its 3,000 inhabitants will not be part
of the state of Israel.”
[MORE]
“One Democratic State Might Be the Solution,”
Rifat Odeh Kassis, Electronic Intifada, December 2003
“Mr. Avnery is different only in one way. He wants
soft-Zionism, not the Sharon variety. Me? I want no Zionism at all. Nor do I
want fundamentalism in Islam or Christianity or in any form anywhere in any
political spectrum. I don’t want to see any fanatic ideology in the world.
Zionism is in the lead of such ideologies and should be fought against. This is
what is expected from Mr. Uri Avnery and others.”
[MORE]
“Palestinians in Need of Their Own Awakening,”
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, December 2003
“The old guards of Zionism are in urgent need of a
‘Palestinian side’ that validates their exclusivist vision of a Jewish state;
the Geneva Accords and cornering a powerful segment within the Palestinian
leadership to recognize Israel as a ‘state for the Jewish people,’ are all an
attempt to achieve a speedy reconciliation of a fading Zionist dream with a
qualified two-state solution that has become, according to Labor leader Shimon
Peres, the ‘paramount Zionist interest.’ The Palestinian leadership must
redefine its priority and cease its playing into the hands of Israel’s
Apartheid-like solutions, merely designed to herd the bulk of Palestinians in
isolated cantons so that Israel can remain predominantly Jewish.”
[MORE]
“Relative Humanity: The Fundamental Obstacle to
a One State Solution,” Omar Barghouti, ZNet, December 2003
“I define Relative Humanity as the belief, and
Relative Humanization as the practice based on that belief, that certain human
beings, to the extent that they share a common religious, ethnic, cultural or
other similarly substantial identity attribute, lack one or more of the
necessary attributes of being human, and are therefore human only in the
relative sense, not absolutely, and not unequivocally. Accordingly, such
relative humans are entitled to only a subset of the otherwise inalienable
rights that are due to ‘full’ humans.”
[MORE]
“A Short History of Apartheid”, Azmi Bishara,
Al-Ahram Weekly, January 2004
“Zionist colonialism inhabits the space between two
extinct models -- those provided by South Africa and French practice in Algeria.
It is not a blend of the two, but rather a distillation of the worst in each.
[…] This unique type of colonialism does not seek to ‘develop’ the inhabitants,
as other colonialists once did in homage to the ‘white man's burden.’ This
colonialism displaces people, confiscates their land or bypasses them (the term,
often applied to roads, is pertinent).”
[MORE]
“The ‘International Community’ and the
Apartheid Wall,” Samer Alatrash, Z Magazine, February 2004
“As with the anti-apartheid struggle in South
Africa, the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation and apartheid in
the territories has to be seen as a political struggle, which depends for its
success on internationally isolating the occupation, and forcing on the Israeli
government a political price for its presence in the territories that it will be
unable to shoulder.”
[MORE]
“By Any Means Necessary,” Ghada Karmi, The
Guardian, March 2004
“The truth is that the problem for Zionism was
always how to keep Palestine without the Palestinians. And hence today's Israeli
anxieties about the so-called Palestinian ‘demographic threat.’ As the Intifada
continues, despite draconian suppression, there is a near panic over a
‘demographic spillover’ that might dilute Israel's ‘Jewish character.’”
[MORE]
“Isn’t the Struggle Originally Against Racism?”
Azmi Bishara, Al-Hayat, June 2004
“In fact, we are talking about racism and there is
no other meaning for demographic motives. We are dealing with a colonial racial
segregation for there is no other meaning to the Israeli wall, which does not
draw political boundaries between two sovereign states but deliberately leads to
a Palestinian authority bound behind a wall in the West Bank and a fence in
Gaza. Its only task would be the administration of the trapped Palestinians'
affairs so they don't expose Israel's security to any danger.”
[MORE]
“Separation Spells Racism,” Azmi Bishara,
Al-Ahram Weekly, July 2004
“Israel's political projects must be seen in the
context of the prevailing political culture that supports them -- a culture that
is indisputably racist. For Arabs and Palestinians to acknowledge and accede to
the demands and conditions founded on this logic is not only of no benefit to
Arabs and Palestinians, it confers legitimacy on a racism that has no legitimacy
in any of those civilized nations Arabs are so keen to please. Israeli racism is
not a tangential issue. It is not an incidental phenomenon or a symptom of
conflict and confrontation. It is integral and structural, and the national
struggle should deal with it as a central issue if it seeks to be democratic in
nature.…Ultimately, if our struggle has not been against racism and occupation,
what was the point and for what purpose have we made so many sacrifices?”
[MORE]
“Vanishing the Palestinians,” Ghada Karmi,
CounterPunch, July 2004
“When the Zionists decided in 1897 to establish a
Jewish state in Palestine, the Jews of Vienna despatched a delegation to examine
the country for its suitability. The delegation reported back as follows: ‘the
bride is beautiful but she is married to another man.’ They had found that
Palestine to their dismay was already inhabited by another people. And this has
been Zionism's central problem ever since.”
“On the Principle of Self-Determination,” Azmi
Bishara “Israel never relied on the principle of
self-determination to justify its existence, precisely because this principle is
articulated in a modern and universal language of rights. Its modernity pulls
the rug out from under the historical-religious political theology of
dispossession, and its universalism applies also to the Palestinian people. On
the other hand, the Palestinians cannot even begin to deal with the assumed
historical rights of the Jews in Palestine, not only because it turns out to be
an impossible competition with Israeli official state archeology, and not only
because it retroactively imposes nation and nationality and the language of
rights on ancient history, but also because it negates their very existence in
history and in the present.”
[MORE]
“New Forms of Apartheid,” Azmi Bishara
“At the same time an official policy of annexation,
leading to the formation of a formal legal system of APARTHEID, is never
declared. Israel strains to escape this dilemma by imposing a system of
self-rule on the population that it considers a permanent peace settlement,
conditional on the ending of the conflict. However, limited self-rule in a Bantu
state is a compromise between Israel’s inability (due to international
constraints) to establish a formal Apartheid system, and its refusal to accept
the conditions of a just peace, through recognizing the unconditional right of
the Palestinian people to independence — this is the new form of Apartheid that
exists in the historical Palestine.”
[MORE]
TOP
The South African perspective looks
back on an Anti-Apartheid struggle that has made enormous steps
towards justice, freedom and equality. This perspective is thus
particularly important for its support and the lessons that can be
learned.
“International Anti-Apartheid Movement against
Israel Is Launched in South Africa” (Durban, South Africa), August 2001
“Today is a birthday of a new movement. We took
part in an official kick-off of the International Anti-Apartheid Movement
against Israel, launched by the South Africans who won the fight against
Apartheid in their own country.”
[MORE]
“Israel Better Compared to Apartheid-Era South
Africa”, Firoz Osman, August 2001
“In the late 1970's, hoping to forestall the end of
white rule, South Africa began to create ‘Bantustans.’ These were nominally
‘independent’ homelands to which all of South Africa's blacks were eventually
supposed to be transferred. The end result, so the apartheid rulers hoped, would
be a strong white South Africa with few or no black citizens, surrounded by a
constellation of poor, weak black states which it could easily control and
exploit as a source of cheap labor. Recognizing that this was merely an effort
to continue apartheid in another form, the ANC and the entire international
community refused to recognize the four Bantustans that South Africa created.
These ‘independent states’ were abolished when South Africa moved towards
democracy.”
[MORE]
Interview with Na’eem Jeenah, Vancouver
Indymedia, October 2002
“There are a number of similarities. One of the
important ones, is the way in which black South Africans had their citizenship
removed by the Apartheid state, and were then dumped into bantustan states,
under the homeland system. A similar kind of thing has occurred in the
Palestinian context, except that in the Palestinian context those Palestinians
that are now refugees from the 1948 area, have no right to exercise any kind of
citizenship — in Israel or in any other place. So their citizenship simply
doesn’t exist. Another big similarity would be the repressive tactics of both
Israel and the South African apartheid regime.”
[MORE]
“Address to Palestine Solidarity Conference,”
Ronnie Kasrils, London, November 2002
“There are other things we South Africans recognize
in the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination and human rights.
Human beings when oppressed tend, sooner or later, to struggle for freedom.
Repression of that just struggle leads to resistance. Often the more brutal the
repression the more intense the resistance. The repressed are demonised as
terrorists to justify ever-greater violations of their rights. We have the
absurdity that the victims are blamed for the violence meted out against them.
Both Apartheid and Israel are prime examples of terrorist states blaming the
victims!”
[MORE]
“Apartheid Israel: A South African’s
Perspective,” Na’eem Jeenah, Ummah Wake Up! July 2003
“Acclaimed Palestinian scholar Edward Said has
recently and repeatedly called for a linking of the struggles of the Palestinian
and South African peoples and for a declaration by the people of the world that
Israel is an apartheid state. I respond to that call and argue that, while there
are many differences between apartheid South Africa and Israel, Israel is, in
fact, an apartheid state comparable in many respects to South African apartheid.
And, I suggest, similar problems within similar contexts can use similar
solutions.”
[MORE]
“Israel’s Apartheid Wall: A Prison for
Palestinians,” Suraya Dadoo, MRN, August 2003
“Now, Ariel Sharon has devised an even more miserly
deal: the Palestinians can have a state on 42 percent of the 80 percent of the
22 percent of 100 percent of their original homeland! The most tragic part is
that this isn't a joke. Sharon is deadly serious, and the proof can be found in
concrete and barbed wire.”
[MORE]
“’Geneva Accords’ Endows Spurious Legitimacy to
a ‘Bantustan’ Palestine,” Iqbal Jassat, MediaMonitors, December 2003
“Hence it is imperative that South Africa reaffirms
the inviolability of all outstanding UN Resolutions which compels Israel to
comply. In solidarity with Palestine we must be guided by values which rejected
the notion of apartheid inspired Bantustans and join the teeming masses of
Palestinians in renouncing the ‘Geneva Accords’ as yet another sham.”
[MORE]
“Declaration by South Africans on Apartheid
Israel,” Palestine Solidarity Committee of South Africa, May 2004
"We, South Africans who lived for decades under
rulers with a colonial mentality see Israeli occupation as a strange survival of
colonialism in the 21st century. Only in Israel do we hear of ‘settlements’ and
‘settlers.’ Only in Israel do soldiers and armed civilian groups take over
hilltops, demolish homes, uproot trees and destroy crops, shell schools,
churches and mosques, plunder water reserves, and block access to an indigenous
population’s freedom of movement and right to earn a living. These human rights
violations were unacceptable in apartheid South Africa and are an affront to us
in apartheid Israel."
[MORE]
TOP
Recognizing the
intrinsically anti-colonialist character of the Palestinian struggle
as well as the racist nature of Zionism and its creation, the state
of Israel, many authors from the anti-colonial movements world wide
have highlighted the particularity of Israel as the last apartheid
state and giving the Palestinian struggle a global dimension.
“After the Peace of the Weak,” Eqbal Ahmad,
Al-Ahram Weekly, November 1998
“In the Middle East, ironies abound. But none is
more replete with them than the recent history of Palestine. The era of
decolonization began in August 1947 with the independence of India and Pakistan.
Less than a year later, Palestine was colonized by a movement which aimed to
establish an early form -- settler colonialism -- which had caused the
destruction of great civilizations and peoples in the western hemisphere. The
Mayas, Incas, Aztecs and the Indian peoples of the western hemisphere were
victims of barely recognized holocausts.”
[MORE]
“Israel’s Killing Fields,” Aijaz Ahmad,
Frontline, November 2000
“Israel has been able during this period [of the
Oslo Accords] to double the number of settlers in 10 years, to enlarge the
settlements, to continue its discriminatory policy of cutting back water quotas
for three million Palestinians, to prevent Palestinian development in most of
the are a of the West Bank, and to seal an entire nation into restricted areas,
imprisoned in a network of bypass roads meant only for Jews. During these days
of strict internal restriction of movement in the West Bank, one can see how
carefully each road was planned: so that 200,000 Jews have freedom of movement,
while about three million Palestinians are locked into their Bantustans ...
Israel is quite possibly the most savage of the existing nation-states, and
surely the one where ‘nation’ is so very thoroughly identified with race and
religion. . . . Yet it is very difficult to be believed if one says - and
documents - that Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for some half a
century what the various ethnic militias in the former Yugoslavia have learned
to do only within the last decade.”
[MORE]
“Apartheid in the Holy Land: Racism in the
Zionist State of Israel,” Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Paper Prepared for the
United Nations Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, South Africa, September 2001
“The above documentation establishes beyond doubt
that the Zionist State of Israel is an apartheid regime that is responsible for
systematically discriminating against the indigenous Palestinian population
solely because they are Palestinian. […] It also seems clear that the roots of
Israeli apartheid lie in the regime’s Zionist ideology which views the
indigenous population as a collection of insignificant obstacles to the task of
consolidating and expanding the State of Israel which aims to be, ideally, an
exclusively Jewish State.”
[MORE]
TOP
We have listed here
some select writing that give insights from various perspectives
about the nature and effects of Israeli Apartheid and discuss ways
forward to overcome colonialism, racism, dispossession, and
expulsion.
● Jane Adas, “American Attorney Examines
Israel’s ‘Separate and Unequal’ Legal Systems,” Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs.
[MORE]
● Praful Bidwai, “Palestine: Apartheid in
Practice,” Axis of Logic/The New International, June 2004.
[MORE]
● Simon Butler, “Israel: Apartheid State,” Resistance Magazine, Feb/Mar 2004.
[MORE]
● Jonathan Cook, “Unwelcome Citizens of a Racist State,” Al Ahram Weekly, October 2002.
[MORE]
● Jonathan Cook, “Unwanted Citizens,” Al Ahram Weekly, January 2002.
[MORE]
● Jonathan Cook, “Democratic Racism,” Al
Ahram Weekly, July 2004.
[MORE]
● Benjamin Counsell, “Bypass Roadmap,” Al
Ahram Weekly, June 2003.
[MORE]
● Larry Derfner, “Sounding the Alarm about
Israel’s Demographic Crisis,” Forward, January 2004.
[MORE]
● Suzanne Goldenberg, “Palestinians Feel
the Heat as Police Enforce Beach Apartheid,” The Guardian, June 3, 2000.
[MORE]
● Gershom Gorenberg, "Road Map to Grand
Apartheid?" The American Prospect vol. 14 no. 7, July 3, 2003.
[MORE]
● Edward S. Herman, “Israeli Apartheid And
Terrorism: Part 1 The Reality,” Z Magazine, May 1994.
[MORE]
● Isabelle Humphries, “Changing the
Boundaries,” Islam Online, November 2003.
[MORE]
● Joanne Mariner, “Israel’s Apartheid
Marriage Law,” CounterPunch, August 2003.
[MORE]
● Todd May, “Israel’s New Eugenics,” Al
Ahram Weekly, August 2003.
[MORE]
● Liz McGregor, “Israel Should Learn from
the Boers,” The Guardian, May 2001.
[MORE]
● Maureen Meehan, “The Jewish National Fund
and the World Zionist Organization: The Hidden Faces of Israeli Racism,”
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1999.
[MORE]
● Maureen Meehan, “Israeli Textbooks and
Children’s Literature Promote Racism and Hatred Toward Palestinians and
Arabs,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1999.
[MORE]
● Aaron Michael Love, “Israel and White
Supremacy,” CounterPunch, October 2002.
[MORE]
● Mika Minio-Paluello, “Disengaging
Resistance,” Z Magazine, June 2004.
[MORE]
● National Lawyer’s Guild, “The Al-Aqsa
Intifada and Israel’s Intifada: The U.S. Military and Economic Role in
the Violation of Palestinian Human Rights,” New York, January 2001.
[MORE]
● John Petrovato, “Controlling the Gate,”
Al Ahram Weekly, August 2003.
[MORE]
● Jason D. Soderblom, “A State of
Aggression: The UN Partition Plan of 1947,” The Palestine Chronicle,
January 2004.
[MORE]
● Ian Urbina, “The Analogy to Apartheid,”
Middle East Report 223, MERIP, Summer 2002.
[MORE]
● Graham Usher, “One Land, One People,” Al
Ahram Weekly, April 2000.
[MORE]
● Alain Epp Weaver, “Planned Obsolescence:
The Slow Death of the Two-State Solution,” The Christian Century, May
2003.
[MORE]
TOP
This section, an
interactive work in progress, is dedicated to the declarations and
writings produced by activists and solidarity groups. It aims
eventually not only to reflect the elaboration inside these
solidarity groups, but also to inspire innovative new ways in which
the analytical concept of Israeli Apartheid can become a tool of
awareness raising, mobilization, and activism. (To send your
contribution to the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, send
an email to: Mobilize@StopTheWall.org)
Cairo Declaration Against Racism, July 22, 2001
“The international community is called upon to bear
its responsibility to liquidate the last stronghold of racism and apartheid
consecrated by Israel as was the case with removing the before-the-last stain of
dishonor in South Africa. This requires taking serious measures to oblige the
apartheid system in Israel to concede to resolutions of the international
legitimacy and give the Arab Palestinian people its rights. In this context, the
EU states are to take effective measure in accordance with article 2 of the
Israeli-European Partnership agreement that considers as a condition Israel’s
respect for human rights.”
[MORE]
World Conference against Racism, NGO Forum
Declaration, Durban, South Africa, September 3, 2001
“Call upon the international community to impose a
policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state as in the
case of South Africa which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive
sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic,
social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel.
Call upon the Government of South Africa to take the lead in this policy of
isolation, bearing in mind its own historical success in countering the
undermining policy of ‘constructive engagement’ with its own past Apartheid
regime.”
[MORE]
1st Cairo Conference Against U.S. Hegemony and
War on Iraq and In Solidarity with Palestine
“The suffering of the Arab people and U.S.
unwavering support of the system of apartheid imposed on the Palestinian people,
will undoubtedly fuel conflict and lead to the escalation of violence in one of
the most sensitive areas of the world.”
[MORE]
2nd Cairo Conference With the Palestinian and
Iraqi Resistance - Against Capitalist Globalization and US Hegemony
“Participants in the second Cairo conference
acknowledge that the cause of the Palestinian people started with the issuance
of the Belfor declaration in 1917 and the seizure of Arab Palestinian land in
1984 by means of a racist settlement and replacement colonialism led by the
Zionist movement. This was completed in 1967 by an occupation of the remaining
Palestinian land and parts of other Arab countries, as an extension of the
continuous Zionist aggression on the Arab nation.”
[MORE]
Global Anti-War Strategy Meeting, Beirut,
September 17-19, 2004
Against the Zionist onslaught of the Palestinian
people through the colonization of their land, the Conference has called for a
“Movement against Israeli Apartheid” as a concrete means of supporting the
Palestinian struggle for Justice and Liberation with its core the call for
comprehensive boycott, divestment and sanctions.
[MORE]
Indian Anti-War Assembly in Hyderabad, December
17-19, 2004
While elaborating and responding to current
developments on the ground in Palestine, the Assembly also showed continuity
with the process of global discussion and coordination begun in previous
meetings. the Assembly concluded with a list of demands and denunciations
related to Israeli Apartheid and Occupation calling for international boycott
and sanctions against Israel and demanding from the Government of India that it
implement this policy of boycott and sanctions until Israel vacates all the
occupied territories.
[MORE]
Anti-War Movements Assembly, V WSF, Porto
Alegre, January 26-31, 2005
“We call upon the international community and
governments to impose political and economic sanctions on Israel, including an
embargo on armaments. We call upon the social movements to mobilize also for
divestment and boycotts. These efforts aim to force Israel to implement
international resolutions, and the advisory opinion of the International Court
of Justice, to stop and take down the illegal wall and end all occupation and
apartheid policies.” Link as soon as I have the article on our website ready.
[MORE]
“The New Anti-Apartheid Movement: The Campaign
to Divest from Israel,” Will Youmans, CounterPunch, October 2002
“What do you get if you take the Palestinian
uprising, add the socially responsible investment principles of globalization's
critics, and mix in the memory of the last major successful social struggle -
the movement to end Apartheid in Israel? The end result is the most dynamic
organizational framework activists working for Palestinian rights have seen in
this country.”
[MORE]
“The Palestine Solidarity Movement: Unity and
Struggle,” Charlotte L. Kates (New Jersey Solidarity Activists for the
Liberation of Palestine), November 7, 2003
“Apartheid in Palestine did not begin with the
construction of the wall that is currently rapaciously tearing through
Palestinian land; it is merely another brutal expression of the continuing
apartheid of the past 55 years. As we demand the wall be torn down, in alliance
with the Palestinian people, we must refuse to accept this as anything other
than a pure right - the Palestinian people have a right to tear down the wall;
the Palestinian people have a right to end the occupation; the Palestinian
people have a right to return. None of these rights need be "compromised" or
"negotiated" as a basis for peace.”
[MORE]
Israeli Apartheid: The South African
Comparison,” Global Exchange, December 2003
”The South Africans' experience with apartheid
makes them sensitive to the Palestinian plight. They recognize the same patterns
in the South African and Palestinian experience: limited or no citizenship
rights, segregation, arbitrary detentions, collective punishment, and other
injustices based on race, nationality, ethnicity, or religion.”
[MORE]
“Apartheid Israel: A Critical Reading of the
Draft Permanent Agreement, known as the ‘Geneva Accords’” Uri Davis,
December 2003
“Having attempted over many decades unreasonable
courses of action, all predicated on the misguided assumption that it was
justified to exempt the Governments of the State of Israel from compliance to
the terms of UN Charter, UN resolutions and the standards of international law
-- the international community, having tried everything else and failed, may now
wish to consider the reasonable course of action: a solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict that conforms to the terms of all UN resolutions on
the question of Palestine, including UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947
and 194 of 1948.”
[MORE]
USAID - Lifeblood of the Occupation,” Matt
Bowles (SUSTAIN), March/April 2004
“Israel has maintained an illegal occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip (Palestinian territories) for 35 years, entrenching an
apartheid regime that looks remarkably like the former South African regime
Palestinians into small, non-contiguous Bantustans, imposing closures and curfews
to control where they go and when, while maintaining control over the natural
resources, exploiting Palestinian labor, and prohibiting indigenous economic
development.”
[MORE]
“The Two-State Solution is Official Apartheid!”
(Palestine Solidarity Group - Vancouver)
“First, a Truth and Conciliation Committee must be
set up, just as it was in South Africa when its apartheid regime was dismantled.
The immoral manner in which Israel was founded must be honestly addressed.
White, European countries of the UN gave away Arab land that was NOT theirs to
give away in the first place to Eastern European Zionist Jews who began a
violent ethnic cleansing campaign beginning the day that Israel, a Zionist
Jewish supremacist state, was thus founded in May, 1948.”
[MORE]
TOP
The political and
historical legacy of the international movement against Apartheid
should be taken up and built upon in our struggle to overcome the
new apartheid in Palestine. We provide here an initial list of
documents from this mass effort that might help contribute a renewed
international movement against Israeli Apartheid.
“Anti-Apartheid Movements in Western Europe,”
Kader and Louise Asmal, March 1974
“As the struggle against apartheid and racial
discrimination has developed, so the calls to cease collaboration with the white
minority governments have become more specific. The anti-apartheid movements,
the liberation movements themselves, and the various organs of the United
Nations, have all contributed to detailed analyses of the international aspects
of the situation and the formulation of precise courses for action in support of
those struggling for freedom in southern Africa.”
[MORE]
“The Christian Churches and Racism,” Father
Austin Flannery, May 1974
“Racial discrimination and racial exploitation are
totally at variance with Christianity. Christians, however, have been the most
persistent and ruthless offenders in recent centuries. The main reason for this
chilling anomaly is that since the commencement of European colonial expansion
to the Americas and to Africa the countries of Christian Europe have been faced
with massive opportunities for the exploitation of peoples less powerful and
technically less advanced than themselves; and they grasped their
opportunities.”
[MORE]
“The Achievements and the Challenge,” British
Anti-Apartheid Movement (Speech at the Conference of the BAAM 20th
Anniversary, London), 1979
“The Special Committee and the
Anti-Apartheid Movement have both been established in response to the
needs and requests of the national liberation movement. They have both
recognized that the primary role in the struggle for liberation belongs
to the national liberation movement, and that their own work is
supportive. They have both tried to build broadest support to the
liberation struggle - irrespective of differences on any other issues.
[MORE]
“The International Impact of the South African
Struggle for Liberation,” George Houser, January 1982
"Who among us can keep reading day after day the
little news items from South Africa without a feeling of dismay? There is
something degrading to humanity about these stories of Negroes being arrested -
thirty, fifty, a hundred at a time - fined, jailed and now flogged... outsiders
are watching the whole proceedings with a growing sense of dread, as well as
disgust... a solution (to the problem of South Africa) that is based on pure
racism, on the theory of perennial and innate superiority of one race over
another, is false, immoral and repugnant."
[MORE]
“Some Reflection on Irish Solidarity with the
Struggle Against Apartheid,” Rafique Mottiar, October 1997
“In Ireland, the struggle for the oppressed
majority in South Africa captured the imagination of the people in all parts of
the country in a way that few other causes have done. This was to a large extent
a result of the dogged work of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) which
was founded in 1964 with the sole and only purpose of helping to end apartheid.
The Movement was launched at a rally to support the international call for the
release of Nelson Mandela and his colleagues. This was the beginning of the
campaign for breaking links between apartheid South Africa and Ireland.”
[MORE]
“The Anti-Apartheid Movement, Britain and South
Africa: Anti-Apartheid Protest vs Real Politik: A History of the AAM and
its Influence on the British Government's Policy towards South Africa in
1964,” Arianna Lissoni, September 2000
“In 1959 following a call for the boycott of South
African goods by the ANC, a Boycott Movement was started in London. In April of
the following year, as the emergency situation in South Africa intensified, the
Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) was formed to co-ordinate all the anti-apartheid
work and to keep South Africa's apartheid policy in the forefront of British
politics. […] From the onset, the Movement, which ‘operated […] as an instrument
of solidarity with the people of South Africa,’ was characterized by an
‘umbilical cord relationship with the [liberation] struggle.’ For the next forty
years the AAM campaigned for a sports, cultural, academic, consumer, arms and
economic boycott of South Africa to help bring apartheid to an end.”
[MORE]
“Certain Legal Aspects of the International
Campaign Against Apartheid,” Kader Asmal
“It is particularly pertinent to discuss the use of
law and lawyers in the struggle against apartheid inasmuch as one of the chief
mechanisms used by the apartheid regime to maintain its system of controls over
the black majority in South Africa has been a complex web of laws and a judicial
system that has served the dictates of exploitation rather than the rule of
law.”
[MORE]
Catalogue of the Anti-Apartheid Movement,
University of Oxford
“On 26 June 1959, South African Freedom Day, a
group of South African exiles and their British supporters met in London under
the umbrella of the Committee of African Organizations to organize a boycott of
goods imported from South Africa.” – short introduction and comprehensive list
of documents (not online)
[MORE]
TOP
Boycott, Sanctions and
Divestment Campaigns have been used in the past as successful
strategies by international movements for social justice. Above all,
these campaigns were used successfully against South African
Apartheid, and they have for a long time been promoted as tools for
fighting against Israeli Apartheid as well. Many campaigns against
Israel and Israeli goods are already under way and are beginning to
have important effects. The initial list of documents on the
experience and analysis of past efforts provided here can serve as a
resource for further initiatives and elaborations within the
worldwide movement against Israeli Apartheid.
"Make Accomplices of Apartheid Account for
their Conduct," Oliver Tambo (Statement at the Meeting of the United
Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, New York), March 12, 1964
“For another reason it is important to be clear as
to what makes apartheid possible and what guarantees its continuance. Reputed
leaders of our people - men of unquestionable integrity and uncompromising
enemies of any evil system practiced by man on man - are today standing in
danger of losing their lives, precisely because they are the men that they are.
It is true that for many years the whole world has warned the South African
Government of the unavoidable consequences of its conduct of affairs. But it is
equally true that for many more years the South African Government has received
all the financial and material encouragement it needed for continuing and
persisting in its policies and practices.”
[MORE]
“Need for New Level of International Action
against Apartheid,” Oliver Tambo (Statement at the Special Session of
the UN Special Committee against Apartheid, Stockholm), June 1968
“Our own struggle has given a new meaning, I think,
to the whole concept of pressures against apartheid. We feel that there should
be an upgrading of the method of attack, that we should recognize that what is
being done, which has been very good, Mr. Chairman, is not sufficient. It is
totally inadequate. It helps to maintain an attitude of disapproval of
apartheid, but it is not doing sufficient to destroy it. The armed struggle,
which has been started, means that the rest of the world can participate in the
fight against apartheid, by its sanctions, by increasing its own activities
against apartheid in proportion to the sacrifices which we are making already.”
[MORE]
“Role of Non-governmental Organizations in
Promoting Sanctions against South Africa,” International NGO Action
Conference for Sanctions against South Africa, 1980
“What can we expect from the Western States and the
peoples of those countries in this situation? Part of the answer must come from
the anti-apartheid movements and other non-governmental organizations. Sanctions
against South Africa are not a matter for governments alone or for the United
Nations alone. They are a matter for everyone committed to solidarity with the
struggle for liberation in southern Africa. Non-governmental organizations have
played an important role through consumer boycotts which develop public
consciousness.”
[MORE]
“Impose Comprehensive and Mandatory Sanctions
against South Africa,” Oliver Tambo (Statement at the International
Conference on Sanctions against South Africa, UNESCO House, Paris), May
21, 1981
“Sanctions are not to be seen as a way of reforming
apartheid, nor merely as a gesture of disapproval. Sanctions are a weapon that
the international community can and must use against the racist regime - a
weapon that can weaken Pretoria’s capacity to maintain its aggressive posture.
Sanctions are a way of cutting off support for racist South Africa, and denying
the regime the means through which it can sustain and perpetuate itself.
Sanctions will not and cannot be expected in themselves to bring down the
apartheid system. They are not an alternative to struggle by the South African
and Namibian people, but an important complement to it.”
[MORE]
”Mobilize the World for Sanctions against
Apartheid,” Oliver Tambo (Speech at the UN General Assembly), January
12, 1982
“Equally, we greatly welcome the decision
of the General Assembly to designate the year 1982 as the International
Year of Mobilization for Sanctions against South Africa. I would
therefore like to salute the coalescence that we find between 1982, the
International Year of Mobilization for Sanctions against South Africa,
and 1982, the Year of Unity in Action being in commemoration of the
seventieth anniversary of the formation of the ANC.”
[MORE]
“Appeal to the British People to Oppose the
Visit of P.W. Botha,” Trevor Huddleston/Anti-Apartheid Movement, Morning
Star, London, May 21, 1984
“On behalf of the ANC, and the people of South
Africa, I appeal to the people of Europe to make the maximum effort to oppose
this apartheid propaganda tour and thereby demonstrate for all the world to see
where they stand. The purpose of P.W. Botha's visit to several European
countries as head of the apartheid system - which has been declared by the
United Nations to be a crime against humanity - is to enable South Africa to
break out of its international isolation and to confer respectability on the
Pretoria regime.”
[MORE]
International Convention against Apartheid in
Sports (UN General Assembly), December 10, 1985
“States, Parties shall deny visas and/or entry to
representatives of sports bodies, teams and individual sportsmen representing a
country practicing apartheid.”
[MORE]
“Racism, Apartheid and a New World Order,”
Oliver Tambo (Speech in Acceptance of the Third World Prize on Behalf of
Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), May 5, 1986
“They support racism because it expresses the
imperative of the system they represent, namely, to dominate, and serves their
purposes as an instrument for the extreme exploitation of those who are
dominated. For these reasons, they spurn our appeals for comprehensive sanctions
against apartheid South Africa, which we repeat today and urge upon the world
community as the most effective means to bring about change in our country with
the minimum of violence and destruction.”
[MORE]
TOP
In this section are a
series of photos, posters and cartoons that give you not only an
idea about the reality of South African Apartheid, but also about
the great variety of ideas had been put together to make the ANC
call against the South African Apartheid regime heard. In addition,
this section provides links to pictures and cartoons regarding
Israeli Apartheid in Palestine.
Historical images of Apartheid in South Africa:
[MORE]
Anti-Apartheid Posters from The Netherlands:
[MORE]
Index of South Africa images:
[MORE]
Cuban posters:
[MORE]
Bendib:
[MORE]
Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign Photos:
[MORE]
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