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experienced in its final years. 725 Furthermore, the Jews no longer have an Arab majority
within Israel to exploit. It is likely that there are now more unemployed and poor Jews in
Israel than there were poor Whites in apartheid South Africa or poor Europeans in Graeco-
Roman Egypt, simply because of these demographic facts. 726 The reserve laborer army of
third country nationals is being mobilized by Israel, though rather late in comparison with
South Africa. Ideological considerations, i.e. especially the need to fall within the US category
of ‘democratic states’, as well as its ‘success’ with ethnic cleansing seem to have necessitated
a relatively large Jewish underclass for Israel. Nonetheless, the great number of illegal and
legal Palestinian migrant workers from the Occupied Territories, and the migrant workers of
other nationalities within Israel, not to mention the historically unparalleled aid that Israel
receives from the USA, have on the whole kept profit margins very comfortable indeed for
Israeli businesses.
South Africa is in a way the human success story among my three apartheid examples.
The oppressed majority was able to rise up and cast off the yoke, to a large extent of its own
accord, only in South Africa. 727 Yet the legacy of apartheid in South Africa remains, and it
725 Although very little and very late, the EU decision in 2004 to slap punitive taxes on Israeli-made products
imported to EU member states from the Israeli-occupied territories could signal the beginning of such a trend.
Goods worth around $200 million are exported from the illegal Jewish settlements every year, but they enjoyed
preferential tariff terms since they are labeled ‘Made in Israel’. In this way the EU has lost nearly $10 million in
income each year, and, more importantly, Israeli occupation and repopulation of the Palestinian territories gain
indirect respectability. See N.N: EU to Warn Importers over Israel Settlement Exports, November 22, 2001;
N.N.: EU Gives Israel Last Chance on Settlement Exports, October 18, 2002; Chalmers: EU Raises Pressure on
Israel in Sensitive Trade Row, 2002; N.N.: Israel Gives Ground to EU in Sensitive Trade Row, November 24,
2003. On August 5, 2004, a compromise was reached whereby Israel is allowed to call its illegal settlements
‘Israel’ whereas the EU will charge tariffs on all settlement exports provided Israelis declare them honestly.
N.N.: EU, Israel Settle Trade Dispute over Settlements, August 5, 2004. One might conclude that money is more
important than human rights to the EU. There is also an initiative by the Belgian aid group, Oxfam
Wereldwinkels, along with the country’s Green Party, to boycott agricultural products from all of Israel, at least
until a Palestinian state has been founded. The initiative also involves seeking preferential treatment for
Palestinian products. See Crols: Belgian Groups Seek Boycott of Israeli Produce, 2002. In April 2002, moreover,
after repeated refusals by Israel to withdraw its military forces from occupied territories previously under the
Palestinian Authority, the European Parliament called on the EU to suspend the six-year-old Association Treaty
under which Israel enjoyed preferential trade terms with the then 15-nation bloc. No action was seriously
considered, but it was at least potentially harmful to business confidence in Israel, whose main trading partner is
the EU. See Chalmers: EU’s Empty Sanction Threat Could Still Hurt Israel, 2002. The Palestinians themselves,
like the South Africans resisting apartheid, have consistently called for and practiced boycotts. See N.N.: Facts
on Boycotting Israeli Goods, June 25, 2002. In August 2004, finally, the 115-member Non-Aligned Movement,
consisting of developing countries, announced it would ban Israeli settlers from visiting their countries and
boycott firms involved in building the illegal Apartheid Wall. Israeli commentators as well as outsiders drew
parallels with the international sanctions against South Africa towards the end of apartheid in that country. See
Heller, C.: Non-Aligned Boycott Stirs Sanctions Fears in Israel, 2004.
726 Chomsky: Prospects for Peace in the Middle East, 2001
727 According to Chomsky, South Africa would not have been liberated from apartheid without the reversal of
US policy towards it in the 1980s, and he believes that the same kind of reversal might have to occur for the
liberation of Palestinians from Israeli apartheid to become reality. See Chomsky March 4, 2001; Chomsky:
Neocolonial Invitation to a Tribal War, 2001. US approval may indeed be necessary at the beginning of the 21 st
century, yet it may still not be sufficient to prop up a violent and oppressive minority rule regime. Only a quarter
of a century ago, the Vietnamese people proved this, although the costs were horrific: an estimated three million
Vietnamese lives, along with another two million killed due to US interventions in the neighboring countries,
Cambodia and Laos, and over 60,000 American lives. US citizens nowadays, however, on an average believe
that only 100,000 Vietnamese were killed in the war, a stark reminder of the effectiveness of US propaganda.
See Chomsky 2002 (1991): 36f. The losses also included countless permanent disabilities, and widespread
environmental devastation, which is still taking its toll, for instance in the form of children stillborn or born with
gross deformities, unnaturally high rates of leukaemia and other kinds of cancer due to residues of chemical
weapons, such as napalm and Agent Orange. These most cowardly weapons were employed by the US army
during the war and are in some cases still active today. Moreover, explosions of ordnance from the Vietnam War,
the vast majority of it distributed by the US troops – some of it also forbidden under international law – still kill
and maim dozens of civilians each year. See Herman & Chomsky 1994 (1988): Chapters 5 and 6; Mikkelsen: