Apartheid

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Moreover, if laws and decrees are immoral, then it is moral to break those laws and decrees.
The problem with Palestinian responsibility and accountability appears most obviously when
unequivocally civilian people are targeted by Palestinian freedom fighters. This may be seen
as not only criminal, but also as counterproductive to liberation. 744 In any event, if the
Palestinians had access to weapons like those which Israel uses, then there would be no
suicide attacks, and, in my opinion, probably no targeting of civilians by Palestinian fighters.
Since decades, Palestinian attacks on military targets have been extremely unsuccesful. In
many cases, it is enough for a Palestinian to get killed if s/he even looks at a military
installation or a soldier the wrong way.
The military superiority of the oppressor rules out a military victory in the case of
Palestinian liberation at least as strongly as it did in the South African struggle. Sticks and
stones have nothing on ABC weapons, neither do the bombs or firearms used by suicide
attackers, nor the firearms used by other Palestinians. It is crucial that apartheid victims – just
like victims of colonialism and even of genocide – are not only seen as victims, but also as
people who after all can shape their destiny to some extent, and that they can make and do
make mistakes.
When the MK, the militant wing of the ANC, was formed, a phased strategy of
violence was wisely agreed upon and then employed. Sabotage against state and corporate
property without any loss of life due to the attacks was the first phase (during which the first
MK commander, Nelson Mandela, was captured), guerrilla warfare the second. Terrorism and
open revolution only came up as the last strategic resorts. 745 I believe that terrorism was and is
neither morally nor strategically acceptable as a weapon against apartheid, neither in South
Africa, nor in Israel, nor anywhere else. Its employment against apartheid and civilians in both
South Africa and Israel, however, also tells us how bad things have actually become.
Terrorism is a crime against humanity, but it is also a symptom. Terrorism should in my
opinion always be condemned, prosecuted, avoided, and stopped, but the structural conditions
that prompt it should be ameliorated first, especially if those conditions include crimes against
humanity. In my opinion, apartheid in the three examined examples of Part II above is a
bigger crime against humanity than terrorism (other than state terrorism) is or ever was, so far.
Only when such a great crime as apartheid is removed does justice come into the picture. A
‘war against terror’, on the other hand, is and remains a contradiction in terms. It is a war
which cannot be won.
744 Dominick: Ambushing the Occupation, 2002. It may be argued that the strategic introduction of Palestinian
suicide attacks on Israeli civilians have raised the Jewish death tolls in relative terms from around 10 per cent in
the first Intifada to over 20 per cent in the second. In either case, however, the Palestinians are losing the battles
on the ground. There are slightly less than twice as many Palestinians as there are Israeli Jews. If the current
relative death tolls are extrapolated to the extreme, Israeli Jews will still be around long after the last Palestinian
has been killed. And (as far as we know) Israel has not yet started using its weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, Palestinians in general are losing battles in the propaganda war as long as (any) Palestinians employ
terrorist tactics, whereas, let us not forget, Jewish Israeli terrorists are not losing wars against Palestinians. The
Palestinians are also suffering much larger losses in absolute terms than in the previous Intifada, although the
Israeli army appeared even less concerned about human rights from the very beginning of the 2000 uprising, that
is, from well before the very first suicide attack in this phase of the conflict. For similar arguments (rejecting
suicide attacks on Israeli civilians) regarding these moral, strategic and propaganda issues, see Finkelstein, N.:
Personal Reflections On Palestine: Postscript To German Edition Of The Rise And Fall Of Palestine, 2003. See
also, however, footnotes 148 and 185, above, on the problematic civilian status of (any adult) Israeli Jews, and of
drawing a red line between civilian and other targets, in general. This observation must not be interpreted as an
invitation to discard the difference between civilians and others, nor as an apology for terrorism. It is just a fact
that a spectrum from civilian to non-civilian represents the difference(s) more accurately than strictly defining
criteria could. In the end, though, it is in my view always better to solve conflicts with words and the rule of laws
respecting human rights (especially international law) than with weapons.
745 Mandela 1995 (1994): 282-286