Apartheid

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be denied access to or be expelled from the city? A truly liberated Jerusalem should therefore
be accessible to all, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and without exception. 643 Similarly,
White families who have inhabited South Africa for three centuries or more could not
possibly be expected to feel that any other place is home. The Jews have an older recorded
relationship with Palestine than the Whites to South Africa, but it is cultural, not ethnic or
biological, and it cannot be respected as an exclusive claim by any reading of international
law or secular ethics informed by the concept of equal human rights. Furthermore, it is not an
unbroken relationship. In political and judicial regards, it is both ancient and very recent, but
with large gaps and discontinuities. Muslims, Christians, and others, need to be respected
equally for their special relationship to the land, to the ancient institutions, and to the symbols
of their faiths.
The descendants of the first white settlers in the Cape may, on the other hand, have
more ancestors born in South Africa than modern Israeli Jews who descend from ancient ones
have in Israel, modern and ancient, in relative as well as absolute numbers. Furthermore,
archaeoanthropologically speaking, all human beings have African heritage. In this sense, all
Whites who came to South Africa came home, whereas all Jews who came to Israel certainly
did not come home in any biological sense whatsoever.
Most importantly, however, the Zionists responsible for systematic gross human rights
violations in Palestine since 1948 cannot be exonerated on any form of historical or religious
grounds, since the Jews’ alleged exclusive right to the land is practically nullified by the
historical distance. The final loss of sovereignty by Jews over (some of) the land that other
Jews now occupy to the Romans over 2,000 years ago simply cannot be rectified, since the
Roman Empire no longer exists. For Jews to claim the land ‘back’ on historical grounds
would be akin to Mayans – assuming they had an independent homeland – today claiming
land back that they had lost to the Toltecs, long before any Spaniards, French or Austrians, the
next great waves of invaders, even knew about what is today Mexico, Honduras and
Guatemala. In the USA it would mean that 99 per cent of the population would have to leave,
and with better justification, since it was only invaded a quarter of the years ago compared
with the Jews, and since the same white ethnicity has held power and wealth in the USA ever
since; in Britain, about as many would have to hand over all their land to the Celts and the
Welsh. The historical claim to Israel by Jews and for Jews alone, therefore, is a preposterous
and extremely arrogant claim, not matched by any other people’s claims to land.
Attempts at Zionist justification usually pursues the same logic but in a different, more
secular way. It starts with the alleged need for a Jewish state, and then asks: where should we
put it? Since the Jewish claim on the rest of the world is even more tenuous, that leaves only
Palestine.
The Greeks’ relationship with Egypt prior to their de facto invasion was of yet another
kind: at times intense cultural interaction, trade and Greek mercenary services. Whether the
depth of that relationship can be compared at all with the depth of Jewish ties to historical
Palestine is hard, if not impossible, to determine. Obviously, the Greeks had had a more
intense relationship with Egypt during the centuries preceding invasion. But the Jews had had
a more intense relationship in the few decades preceding invasion of Palestine, most
conspicuously Zionist plans and activities (including terrorist activities against both
Palestinians and British colonialists) to bring about that invasion.
The Israeli ex-prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has described this secular view of
the nature of the relationship between Jews and the lands of Israel and Palestine as a kind of
eurocentric illusion, and, ultimately, an ‘Arab lie’:
Almost all European nations have had the experience of colonialism,
643 Cunin: This Year in Jerusalem, no date; Starhawk: Next Year in Mas’Ha, 2003. Jerusalem has of course also
been interpreted as a spiritual place. See Löwstedt: Jerusalem in My Heart, 2005.