Apartheid

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villages by Israeli invaders, who then renamed and restructured the Palestinian physical and
cultural landscape, again beyond recognition, also warrant being considered crimes against
humanity. Those Palestinians who were left behind in Israel were then forced to become
Israeli citizens, compelled to learn and use the Hebrew language and to assimilate with Jewish
culture, even to the point where they are now themselves adopting Hebrew names. At this
stage, it obviously becomes impossible, at least in practice, to determine which apartheid
system was the cruellest, the most oppressive, the most destructive, or even, the more
genocidal one. 16
Nevertheless, it is mostly the Palestinians who are restraining Israeli attempts at ethnic
cleansing, and they are the ones keeping Historic Palestine in a state of apartheid rather than
genocide plus expulsion, which are the Zionist ‘solutions’ to the conflict. This does not mean
that Palestinians are collectively upholding systematic oppression. They are merely trying to
prevent it from getting worse. If the Palestinian refugees were to accept citizenship in third
countries, and abandon their refugee camps and UN refugee status, then Zionism, the ideology
of judaizing Palestine, will have won, apartheid will be over, and the de facto genocide of the
Palestinian people an inescapable fact.
Sovereignty, independence, denial of citizenship, and physical violence are not the
whole story when it comes to separating apartheid from genocide and colonialism. The
economy of an apartheid country also differs greatly from that of a colony. Whereas a colony
is generally dependent on a single or very few export commodities (usually raw materials), an
independent and sovereign apartheid country will exhibit a varied economy with a high degree
of diversification of both production and international trade and with vast resources set aside
for science and technology, especially war technology. An apartheid economy is usually
isolated within its immediate region. The typical apartheid state is surrounded by countries
that host refugees and freedom fighters in exile (and their descendants) due to its privileged
minority’s invasion, and it is often or even constantly at war with these countries. Moreover,
there are commonly cultural, kinship and other strong ties between the victims of apartheid
and the indigenous people in the neighboring countries. All of this precludes or hinders shortdistance
international trade between the neighbors and the apartheid country, which is often
further stymied by sanctions and boycotts, and the economy therefore usually has to be selfsufficient,
or nearly so, in order for the apartheid state to survive economically. Nonetheless,
international trade is commonly kept vigorous by the powerful mother countries of the
invading minorities and their many allies, for Egypt during late antiquity by Greece and
Rome, for apartheid South Africa by Britain and western Europe, and, towards the end of its
sway, increasingly by the USA, Israel, and Taiwan, and for Israel itself by the USA, Europe,
and some other strategic allies and trading partners, including apartheid South Africa until its
demise in 1994.
16 Cilliers: On Derrida and Apartheid, 1998: “Slaughter and brutality is not measured on a scale so that one can
talk about ‘bad’ brutality, ‘worse’ brutality and ‘ultimate’ brutality. Nor is racism.” (85) Yet, obviously,
murdering one child is not as bad as murdering ten thousand children, especially if the same motivation applies
in both crimes. Crimes against humanity may not be easily measured, but there are in my opinion no compelling
reasons for them to be declared totally incommensurable, or incommensurable in principle, either. As
Fredrickson proposes, part of the problem could perhaps be solved with a distinction between two
incommensurable concepts of ethnicism, an ethnicism of exploitation and one of extermination. See Fredrickson
2002: 9 (who uses ‘racism’ rather than ‘ethnicism’), and footnote 188, below. Corpses, money, taxes, workhours,
expropriated land, etc., are things that can be quantified rather easily, at least in principle. There are,
however, possible problems with Fredrickson’s distinction, as well. Even in the Nazi death camps, the corpses of
exterminated victims were exploited for gold tooth fillings, hair, and skin, among other things. Cultured land and
animals, as well as houses and other artifacts, not to mention money and other kinds of abstract property, were
stolen and taken over by racist murderers throughout history. Thus, in the vast majority of cases, one might not
be able to make the distinction between exterminative and exploitative racism or ethnicism other than in abstract
theory, i.e. it might be of little or no use to the empirical study of concrete cases, and therefore also of little or no
use to the administration of law and justice.