Apartheid

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‘Palestinians’, Israel has been successful in making sure that Jews and members of the
international community call them ‘Israeli Arabs’ and therefore will consciously or
unconsciously consider them either as anomalies or as generously tolerated guests in the selfproclaimed
‘Jewish state’, but certainly not as people who belong to the country, or to whom
the country belongs. 173
In South Africa, moreover, Dutch colonialists exploited existing rifts between
Khoikhoi groups on the one hand, and favored Asian and mixed-race slaves and their
descendants over Blacks on the other. The apartheid (in the narrow sense) government further
entrenched this color hierarchy, manufactured by Whites, and exacerbated it by means of
forced spatial segregation, including even the allotment of different residential areas to
different African ethnicities. The townships and Homelands or Bantustans – in practice:
detention centers and slow death traps for the indigenous masses who had been denied
citizenship – were strategically placed to minimize potential organization and to make unity of
resistance impossible or nearly so. Israel apparently picked up on the idea of Bantustans or
Homelands from this strategic angle. In Palestine, and even more so in Lebanon, the Israelis
also utilized, amplified and brought about differences and conflicts that had already existed to
some extent between Christians and Muslims, or at least they tried to do so. 174
Often, the practice of dividing resistance entails the provocation and creation of
violence between the indigenous groups. For instance, a so-called ‘Third Force’ of clandestine
apartheid regime defenders from 1990 to 1994 engineered and created the greatest loss of life
within the borders of South Africa during the 46 apartheid years in the narrow sense. That
violence was mainly carried out in ‘Black-on-Black’ fighting between supporters of the ANC,
many of whom were native Xhosa-speakers, and the Inkhatha Freedom Party, a
predominantly ethnic Zulu party, which had several leaders with close ties to leaders at the
highest levels within the white regime. 175
The division of resistance also usually involves the immediate neighbors of the
oppressed people. Israel and its main ally, the USA, have for long divided Arab and Muslim
countries in ways very similar to how South Africa and its NATO allies (along with Rhodesia)
actively divided African countries, especially Angola and Mozambique, with regard to
apartheid. In similar ways, South Africa and Israel developed techniques to ‘export’ their
apartheid violence, Israel to Lebanon and Iraq.
Finally, all apartheid societies are strongly patriarchal. This is quite possibly the most
used and useful form of dividing the victimized indigenous majority within itself, although it
is at the same time probably the least conscious form of dividing the primary victims.
Resistance is thus split right down the middle. Every single family is affected. Of course, both
radical and not-so-radical gender theory holds this to be true for all human societies. 176
Nevertheless, the high degree of sexism in apartheid is remarkable. It is a weapon that is
173
In South Africa, some of the Zulu and Xhosa kings who were loyal, or who were perceived to be loyal
towards the Whites, kept their titles and some of their power, though the Whites had effective veto power. See
Mandela 1995 (1994): 6f. For Israel, see Bishara, A.: The Israeli Democracy!! 2001; Chomsky 2 1999: 544; Said
December 17, 2000.
174
N.N.: Vandals Destroy Crosses at Beit Jala Cemeteries, December 4, 2000; Miftah: Statement: Israel
Attempts to Provoke Religious Discrimination Between Palestinian Christians and Muslims, 2000. The latter
source quotes the daily Israeli newspaper, Jerusalem Post, which published an article on October 25, 2000 in
which it is quoted as stating ‘since the outbreak of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, hundreds of
Christian Arab families have left with the assistance of the [Israeli] Foreign Ministry and foreign embassies, such
as those of England, Canada, and Cyprus.’ The article continued by falsely asserting that Palestinian Christian
families felt threatened after a Muslim preacher in Gaza allegedly made hostile remarks against the Christian
community there. In response, all three embassies subsequently stated that they were concerned solely with the
fact that any person of their citizenship living in Israel or the Occupied Territories is their responsibility, whether
Muslim, Jewish, or Christian. The embassies carried out their protocol procedure of publicly announcing to their
citizens the arrangements for evacuation, should they wish to leave.
175
Mandela 1995 (1994): 587ff; Barber 1999: 288ff.
176
Chapman 1995: 96ff