Apartheid

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edge of the sword’ (ibid: 6:21). They continued with the city of Ai, of which we learn that the
people of Israel ‘smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape’ (ibid: 8:22). The
slaughter went on, as the Israelites won ‘battle’ after ‘battle’. Only the inhabitants of one
town, Gibeon, survived. By pretending to be visiting foreigners, the Gibeonites cunningly
tricked the Israelites into swearing an oath not to kill them. In return, Joshua, good enough to
keep a promise, made sure that the Gibeonites would be ‘bondmen, and hewers of wood and
drawers of water for the house of…God’ (ibid: 9:21ff). This is the passage that became the
ridiculously far-fetched justification for Afrikaners to impose slavery, exploitation and
oppression on the indigenous population in South Africa, and not just for the ‘House of God’,
as we saw in the previous chapter.
In the following passages of the Book of Joshua, other indigenous inhabitants of
Palestine, or ‘Cana’an’ as it is called here, were slain without mercy, even as they fled (ibid:
10:10). A few, however, were spared in the fringes of what was now to become Jewish land,
according to the Torah, in Gaza and east of the river Jordan (ibid: 11ff), and the Jebusites, in
Jerusalem, whom the Israelites, for unknown reasons, were unable to drive out of the city
(ibid: 15:63; God, by the way, is not quite clear on why the indigenous people had to be killed
or driven out). This, then, is the book, referred to by Noam Chomsky as one of the most
genocidal books ever written, which the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, ordained for
more meticulous study by Israeli schoolchildren (see Chapter II.7.3; on other kinds of ethics in
the Torah, see next chapter).
Archaeologists have dismissed the biblical story of Joshua’s invasion of Cana’an as a
vastly exaggerated account of a largely peaceful migration that really took place to a much
smaller territory, namely, the central Palestinian highlands. But this chapter is not about
whether Joshua invaded Cana’an and committed genocide or not. It does not even care about
whether he existed or not. It is about the role that the biblical story has played and is playing
in the world today. 638
It is a chilling but sobering thought that the implementation of megalomaniac ideas of
a Greater Israel 639 might eventually lay claim to large chunks of Egypt, Jordan, Turkey,
Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, basing the Jewish right to that land on the quoted biblical passages.
Indeed, Israeli occupations and forays into Jordan and Egypt (1967), and especially Syria
(since 1973), Lebanon (1982 until the present) and the UN-granted Palestinian Territories
(since 1949 and 1967, respectively) appear to be attempts along that line of action. Israel, we
must remember, is the only country in the world today without declared borders. As the fifth
(or so) strongest military power in the world at present (see Chapter II.1.3) and with the
almost automatic backing (or prodding) by the US for each of its expansionist moves, Israel
would certainly be able to enforce such a claim militarily, although the costs for both Israel
and the USA would certainly also be very high. Another biblical passage, though, is more
specific and limited in its claim.
I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God
Almighty... I also established my covenant with them to give them the
land of Canaan where they lived as aliens. (Exodus 6:18)
However, although Judaism was never a missionary religion until now (see Section
II.2), many, if not most of today’s Jews cannot even begin to justify their historical – as
638 Leeman: Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholarship, 2004. This book also argues that many ancient Jews
originated in Western Arabia. See also Whitelam: The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian
History, 1996. See also Karon: Toasting God’s Terrorism and Other Passover Themes, 2006, in which the
author, a South African Jew, recalls his own Passovers in apartheid South Africa, with black servants, and
celebrations of the end of slavery for Jews in Egypt, but not the end of slavery in general, where divine terrorism
against non-Jews in Egypt was feted, and Jewish racism against Palestinians finds some of its many roots.
639 Saleh 2002 (see footnote 301).