Apartheid

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country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is
powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is
God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government
was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini,
Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in
the end they bit the dust. Injustice and oppression will never
prevail. 738
These condemnations by the international community, by representatives of the
overwhelming, but in world politics comparatively underrepresented, majority of the world’s
population, do show the isolation of the state of Israel, and that only its reliance on military
might and the powerful ally are artificially keeping its system of gross human rights abuses
alive. Still, those condemnations (except Tutu’s) are perhaps too focused on the Israeli state,
which has relegated many apartheid functions to parastatal agencies, especially the religious
authorities. It thus becomes easier for Israeli Jewish civilians, as well as for foreign
beneficiaries, to avoid being charged with or even facing the reality of their own systematic
oppression of the indigenous. That also goes for South African Whites, in the past and the
present, though not to the same extent as in Israel.
The strong statements issued by the international community – minus the USA and its
bullied dependants – have also supported the growing resistance towards Israeli apartheid
within Israel. Hundreds of conscientious objectors are now refusing to serve in Israel’s
conscription troops and legalized death squads. They prefer being jailed for refusing to do so.
The Israeli army, on the other hand, will not admit nor release numbers on the growing
number of conscientious objectors and draft dodgers. Some of the former contested the
legality of their imprisonment in Israel’s Supreme Court with reference to international law.
Their case was not only that they should have a right to object to and refuse to do what their
personal conscience abhors. They were taking the issue one step further. By arguing that
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories on the West Bank and Gaza is illegal, they also
argued that they have a duty not to take part in an illegal enterprise. By June 2003, their
number was estimated at over 1,100. 739
738 Tutu: Apartheid in the Holy Land, 2002. In a mainstream opinion article, ‘Build Moral Pressure to End the
Occupation: An International Campaign’, 2002, Tutu went further and bravely urged economic divestment
against Israel in the USA and elsewhere, as this had proved successful against apartheid South Africa, claiming
again that apartheid conditions were present on Israeli-held territory. In a reaction, the Los Angeles-based Simon
Wiesenthal Center, a major US Jewish lobby group, called Tutu’s comparison ‘both disingenuous and a
distortion of the truth’. N.N: US Jewish Group Hits S.Africa’s Tutu on Divestment, June 20, 2002
739 Soueif 2003: 185; Camiel: Israeli Soldiers Say ‘Hell No, We Won’t Go’, 2001; N.N: Israeli Teens Refuse to
Serve in Army of ‘Terror’, September 5, 2001. Peretz Kidron, a member of the 20-year-old Israeli grassroots
group, Yesh Gvul, which opposes Israeli military occupation of Palestinian areas, said in January 2002 that more
than 400 Israeli soldiers had thus far refused to serve in the occupied territories since October 2000. A group of
52 combat reservists, some of whom were officers who had served in the Israeli army for over 10 years,
published a statement in January 2002 saying ‘We will not continue to fight beyond the Green Line [the pre-
1967 borders] in order to rule, to expel, to destroy, to blockade, to assassinate, to starve, and to humiliate an
entire people’. The soldiers said that they would follow orders for ‘any assignment that serves the defense of the
state of Israel’ but that ‘the assignment of occupation and oppression does not serve this cause, and we will have
no part in it.’ Lazarof: Reservists Refuse to Serve in “War for Peace of Settlements”, 2002. On February 2, the
group had mushroomed, with over a hundred signatories, also mentioning ranks and units, to a repeat of the
original statement published in the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot. Now, Prime Minister Sharon and
Shaul Mofaz, the army’s chief of staff, started responding to questions, threatening their critics in the army with
court martials for sedition. The army also began to relieve dissenting officers of their commands. Curtius: Israeli
Reservists Refuse West Bank, Gaza Duty, 2002. By October, there were 491 signatories, several of whom were
already serving prison sentences for refusing to carry out the Israeli regimes’ dirtiest work. The Israeli army has
since admitted that only a third of its reservists turned up for duty during 2001, although most of the missing two
thirds of the soldiers found medical or other excuses for failing to appear. See Steele: ‘I Couldn’t Believe I Was
Doing This’, 2002; Bronner: An Open Letter to the General, 2002.