The new Amnesty International (AI) report calling Israel an apartheid state has been heavily criticised around the world, but a small group of South Africans think it’s marvellous.
So much so, they officially launched the report at the Senate Hall at the University of Pretoria on 24 February where the special advisor to the South African minister of international relations, Zane Dangor, told the approximately 40 people in the audience, “As a government, we welcome the Amnesty report.”
He described the report as “groundbreaking”, saying, “It complements many other reports over the past few decades – reports from Al-Haq and several other Palestine NGOs [nongovernmental organisations].”
Said Dangor, “All of the reports make a compelling case that the situation in Palestine is in breach of the convention of suppression and punishment of the crime of apartheid.”
He said he believed South Africa and other states should shift from “political solidarity to legal duty under international law”.
Self-described “human-rights activist” Saleh Hijazi, and former anti-apartheid activist Ronnie Kasrils spoke glowingly about the AI report during the launch.
Kasrils, the former minister of intelligence services who is known for his anti-Israel stance, dubbed the report “an absolutely outstanding, significant milestone of a document”. He said he believed it should be distributed far and wide, and translated into South Africa’s indigenous languages.
Sara Gon of the Institute for Race Relations commented on the report, saying, “Categorising Israel as ‘committing the crime of apartheid’ creates the presumption that AI is trying to assist the United Nations to haul Israel to the International Criminal Court.”
While Hijazi believes this report was the impetus for countries to now “dismantle apartheid against Palestinians and bring those responsible to justice”, others believed the report was only good enough to be binned.
The International Legal Forum called on people to throw the report into “the dustbin of antisemitic history”. This pro-Israel group believes the report is “tantamount to a blood libel against the Jewish state”.
Israel’s diaspora affairs minister, Dr Nachman Shai, said, “To say that the state of Israel is an apartheid state is detached from reality and antisemitic in every respect.”
Moreover, Mansour Abbas, the leader of the United Arab List, an Arab political party which is part of the coalition of parties that forms the current cabinet of Israel, said he wouldn’t use the word “apartheid” to describe relations between Jews and Arabs within the country. “I prefer to describe the reality in objective ways,” he said.
Kasrils claimed Israel was “one of the most racist states in the world, and racist in the apartheid sense of legislation and law”.
“It’s reinforced by legislation, by law, by the Law of Return keeping refugees away, and the passing of the law that Israel is the state of Jewish people and not the citizens who live there.”
Kasrils, who wants “Palestine to be safe for all its people without discrimination”, claimed Israel has been an apartheid state since 1948.
Gon said taking account of history only since that year, as the report does, amounts to “blatant one-sidedness”. “It’s astonishing that the history as revealed is literally only good Palestinian victims and aggressive, cruel Jews,” she said. “There’s no context about the period preceding 1948, and no mention at all of Britain and mandate Palestine.”
NGO Monitor, a globally recognised research institute promoting democratic values and good governance, and the South African Friends of Israel (SAFI) said South Africans who had suffered under and fought against apartheid South Africa should be insulted by those who compare that era to life in Israel today.
Jews, Arabs in Israel, and anyone who visits the country know that “Israel’s democracy is the absolute antithesis to apartheid”, said Pamela Ngubane, SAFI general manager. “The rule of law in Israel is sacred and universal, it’s justly and fairly applied, and doesn’t rest upon racial lines.”
To Kasril’s mind, massacres of Palestinians occur “over and over again”. Conversely, World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said the Palestinian acts of terrorism and Israel’s obligation to defend its citizens couldn’t be ignored, as the AI report does.
