Apartheid

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can be observed as in the cases of Graeco-Roman Egypt and South Africa. As opposed to
Egypt we are dealing here with religion that is based on holy writs, in all three instances:
Judaism, Islam and Christianity. South Africa represents a middle instance – between Egypt
and Israel – with its chiefly Protestant Christian and traditional African faiths.
Israeli Jewish elites, including many Orthodox Jews as well as the military authorities,
support de-secularization of the Arab population in spite of the fact that they do not share their
faiths. Judaism was never chiefly a missionary religion. And it still is not, although it now
more missionary (again). According to Chomsky, the reason behind elite Jewish support for
Arab de-secularization is that, despite locally devastating Palestinian suicide attacks, in many
cases carried out with religious (Muslim) motivation, secularized (i.e. leftist and nationalist)
resistance is perceived (by these Israelis) as being even more dangerous to the ‘important’
Israeli interests than Muslim fundamentalism. 653 The suicide attacks on Jews do not target the
Israeli elites. They mainly target people who travel by bus or by foot, not by motorcade with
police or military escort. These victims (mainly Jews but also Israeli Arabs and foreigners) are
pawns in the Zionist elites’ game, which is one of territorial and demographic war. Moreover,
the calls for an Islamic Palestinian state, supported by the Muslim fundamentalist Hamas and
Islamic Jihad movements, the most important militant Palestinian groups today, are rejected
by the Palestinian mainstream, but they provide welcome ammunition for Israel’s
propagandistic attempts to depict Palestinians in general as cruel, anti-democratic and antimodern.
At the same time, of course, Israel denies millions of Palestinians the vote in Israeli
elections, and even tries to sabotage Palestinian municipal and national elections. 654 By
supporting de-secularization, Jews also hope to create wedges between the Muslim and
Christian Palestinian communities, as we have seen.
Furthermore, de-secularization through the evangelical Christian right-wing in the
USA has proven very beneficial for Jewish apartheid in Palestine. There are not only Jewish
653 Chomsky 2 1999: 152ff. This appears to rhyme well with the facts of the matter as well. See Hassan: Suicide
Bombers Driven More by Politics than Religious Fundamentalism, 2004. It is only since the 1990s that
fundamentalist Islamic groups have become a main security concern for the Israelis. The leftist organizations, the
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PFLP), are now headquartered outside of the Palestinian territories, whereas the Hamas and Islamic Jihad
movements are both still based and headquartered in Palestine, at least until 2004. See also Harel: Focus/Why
Doesn’t Israel Confront Hamas? 2002; N.N.: Factbox: Three Militant Palestinian Groups Unite for Attack, June
9, 2003. According to some Israeli sources, Israel even encouraged the formation of Hamas as a countervailing
force to the secular PLO. See Plitnick: Assassination, 2004. It remains to be seen whether the seemingly
secularizing twist of the spring of 2004, the Israeli military assassinations of two successive Hamas leaders,
Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, will lead to or be an aspect of a secularizing macro-trend such
as white people in South Africa becoming less religious during the last 80 years. I doubt it. The global macrotrend
that I am able to perceive since a decade and a half is one of increasing de-secularization. In Israel itself,
there are increasing signs as well, as I will attempt to argue below.
654 Johnston: Palestinians Say Israel Trying to Block Vote Drive, 2004; N.N.: Israel Shuts Palestinian Poll
Offices in Jerusalem, September 13, 2004; Ass’adi: Qurie Condemns Closure of Jerusalem Voter Centres, 2004.
The first article refers to attempts by armed Israeli plainclothes state agents to intimidate both Palestinian voters
and voter registration officials in east Jerusalem alone. In plain contradiction to international law, Israel claims
that east Jerusalem is part of Israel, and therefore, apparently, it sees attempts to democratic reform from within
as a threat. The second article refers to a shutdown of polling offices and the police detention of nine Palestinian
election officials, including four women, for ‘carrying out illegal polling activities’. Two and a half months later,
Israel had promised the international community and the Palestinians that it would help to facilitate presidential
elections following the death of President Arafat. But reality was different. Five days into a week-long voter
registration period, the Israelis had still not allowed Palestinians to open voter registration centers in east
Jerusalem. Eventually, only 5,300 (out of a couple of hundred thousand) Palestinians were allowed to vote in
Jerusalem by Israel. Tens of thousands of Jerusalemites were forced to vote outside the city. Many of them
feared Israeli interventions that could lead to loss of Jerusalem residence permits, and some decided not to vote
for that reason. Johnston: Palestinians Face Obstacles over Jerusalem Vote, 2004; MacAskill & Urquhart:
Divided People Enjoys a Taste of Freedom, 2005. Palestinians living in Jerusalem were permitted to take part in
the first Palestinian presidential and legislative elections in 1996 held under interim peace deals with Israel, but
since then the very limited democracy allowed Palestinians has deteriorated.