Apartheid
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Apartheid

Apartheid Apartheid

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32 democracy – amazingly similar to the South African model – has been construed with the aid of ethnic cleansing, making Jews an 80 per cent majority in the state of Israel, while almost twice as many Palestinians are scattered around the world or locked inside ‘autonomous areas’ under Israeli military occupation and emergency rule, with no possibility of voting against the ‘security forces’ which are, most of the time, involved in a variety of activities that are apparently aimed at decimating the number of Palestinians in Palestine on a daily basis. Only an exceptionally high Palestinian birthrate is providing an antidote at this moment in time. Jewish settlers in those same areas, however, do have the vote as well as a whole range of rights and privileges – including their being supplied with weapons and ammunition by the Israeli army – on account of their ethnicity alone. All of these rights and privileges are denied Palestinians, who have lived there much longer. The illusion of a functioning and even dynamic democracy is further enhanced by Israel’s frequent changes of government between cabinets led by the mainstream Labor and Likud parties. On the surface, these parties resemble a western-style couple of liberal/social democrat and conservative parties, yet they are crucially united, not only in coalition governments, but more importantly in their central and overall Zionist policy of continued apartheid, of continued, systematic gross human rights violations. 22 The addition of the Kadima party to the fold of ‘mainstream’ parties in 2006 changed nothing in this regard. Kadima, formed by the former Likud prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has situated itself between Likud and Labor, especially with regard to policies directed against the Palestinians, in territorial terms: somewhere between the ambitions of a Greater Israel and a Much Greater Israel. South Africa, on the other hand, was ruled by a single party throughout its post-1948 apartheid period. The National Party was, however, also the winner of periodic, ‘democratic’ elections. In South Africa, all Blacks, up to three quarters of the total population, were excluded from such elections. They were not allowed to vote or run for public office at all. Indians and Coloureds were only given an inferior vote to their own separate parliamentary chamber in 1983. Similarly, a minority of Palestinians have been given the vote in Israel, namely those who are still, and despite continued discrimination and oppression, residents in the land conquered (and received from the ‘West’ and its reluctant servant, the ‘United Nations’) before 1967. Members of the Palestinian 19 per cent of the Israeli electorate are allowed to vote, to run for office and even to form political parties. They are barred, however, from forming political parties that ‘do not support the Jewish character of the state of Israel’. In effect, this rule may be used for charging people with calling for the introduction of democracy (in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories). Arab Israelis are also forced to carry identity cards that identify them as ‘Arabs’, they are practically unable to marry Jews or Palestinians from the territories occupied in 1967, they are excluded from practicing a whole range of professions (see Chapter II.5.3, below), and face many additional kinds of discrimination and oppressive segregation. 22 Hass: In Afrikaans, Separation is Called ‘Apartheid’, 2000. ‘[T]he Likud and the Labor governments…have different views only as regards the size of the Palestinian enclaves and the territorial continuity between them.’ (25) Amira Hass is the first and so far only Jewish journalist to live permanently in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She has lived in Gaza and in Ramallah on the West Bank. Her courageous and insightful reporting earned her among other things the distinction of becoming an International Press Institute ‘Press Freedom Hero’ in 2000, and of receiving the UNESCO/Guillermo Camo World Press Freedom Prize for 2003. See further Kudlak: IPI Report, 50 Press Freedom Heroes, 2000. On the essentially indistinguishable ethnicist and Zionist ideologies of Labor and Likud, see also N.N.: Interview With Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How To End The War Of 1948, November 8, 2002, and Levy: Tell the Truth, Shimon, 2002, in which the author, a former aide of Nobel Peace laureate Shimon Peres’, accuses his former boss, at that time Labor Party foreign minister in prime minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud-led coalition government, of hypocrisy and legal complicity in war crimes and terrorist activities perpetrated by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians. On the armament of settlers by the Israeli army, see N.N.: Factbox: Jewish Settlements on Middle East Road Map, June 9, 2003, which cites the Israeli anti-settlement organizations, Peace Now and B’Tselem.

There are some additional features that Thompson overlooked in the quoted passage. Firstly, apartheid is not only carried out by the state, but to a large extent also by the (privileged minority) business community and beyond that, by (the privileged minority) ‘civil society’ at large. When not celebrated as ‘pioneers’, white South African farmers, both before and after 1948 – often heavily armed by the army and with many other paramilitary characteristics – were routinely referred to as ‘civilians’ by their government and closest allies, but in reality they were far from civil, and the adult males among them were better referred to as extensions and in many cases even as instruments of state power. The same applies to the Jewish settlers in Palestine today. But white civil society in apartheid South Africa and Jewish civil society in modern Israel kept voting apartheid regimes into office. Businesspeople kept up discrimination and even invented new kinds of discrimination to increase their profits from indigenous labor and natural resources and to keep the least needed natives more securely locked up. My theoretical move away from considering apartheid as an essentially state phenomenon is a close reflection of the recent development of political science. Originally an academic discipline to study state and government, its object of study has widened progressively since the 1950s. The subsequent arrivals in mainstream political science of new theoretical and research paradigms – such as behaviorism, rational choice theory, feminism, and discourse theory – have led to a progressive widening of the concept of politics, increasingly and now commonly seen as the field of power relationships, formal and informal, state-related and civilian. 23 Apartheid itself came about before the new kind(s) of political science, but that does not mean that it has to be understood within the old narrow perspective of a political science that is outdated today. On the contrary, it can in my opinion only be understood better by political scientists endorsing the internal advances of the discipline during the last half-century. Even more importantly, apartheid is about greed and exploitation. Unfair market competition is one of its hallmarks. The system will certainly not work without the active support from the overwhelming majority of the privileged minority, including many of the important private businessowners. A few corrupt and/or extorted members of the oppressed majority also seem to be needed to keep it running. The ethnicist immigration and citizenship policies, as well as the legal or practical bans on interethnic sexual relations and marriage – all of which were present in South Africa in one form or another before 1948 – were only implied by Thompson in this context. He also failed to mention the ethnicist hierarchy, that Coloureds and Indians were ranked above Africans and below Whites, which led to hostilities and divisions between these groups, again closely mirrored by equivalent situations in and around Graeco-Roman Egypt and modern Israel. Most importantly, he overlooked the most basic feature of apartheid, so obvious to him that it, apparently, became unconscious: Apartheid is founded on the military superiority of the invading minority and its self-defined and privileged members, and not only on the armaments but on the use of them, too. Thus, the proximity to and frequent overlaps with genocidal behavior by the privileged minorities is, in effect, downplayed by Thompson’s description of South African apartheid in the narrow sense. There is, however, another dimension to apartheid, which Thompson does point out succinctly. From the very beginning, apartheid was: ‘...an inconsistent, contradictory hybrid of two competing ideas. It set out complete economic segregation of Africans in their reserves as an ultimate goal but qualified it by stressing the need to satisfy white farming and manufacturing interests.’ 24 To that he might have added the white interest in black service 23 Stoker: Introduction, 1995:4ff. One of the main reasons behind this development is of course the relative loss of power of states and the relative growth of corporate power worldwide, especially since the 1970s. 24 Ibid: 185. A similar point is made with regard to Egypt under Greek rule in Huß: Ägypten in hellenistischer Zeit: 332-30 v. Chr., 2001: 217 33

32<br />

democracy – amazingly similar to the South African model – has been construed with the aid<br />

of ethnic cleansing, making Jews an 80 per cent majority in the state of Israel, while almost<br />

twice as many Palestinians are scattered around the world or locked inside ‘autonomous areas’<br />

under Israeli military occupation and emergency rule, with no possibility of voting against the<br />

‘security forces’ which are, most of the time, involved in a variety of activities that are<br />

apparently aimed at decimating the number of Palestinians in Palestine on a daily basis. Only<br />

an exceptionally high Palestinian birthrate is providing an antidote at this moment in time.<br />

Jewish settlers in those same areas, however, do have the vote as well as a whole range of<br />

rights and privileges – including their being supplied with weapons and ammunition by the<br />

Israeli army – on account of their ethnicity alone. All of these rights and privileges are denied<br />

Palestinians, who have lived there much longer.<br />

The illusion of a functioning and even dynamic democracy is further enhanced by<br />

Israel’s frequent changes of government between cabinets led by the mainstream Labor and<br />

Likud parties. On the surface, these parties resemble a western-style couple of liberal/social<br />

democrat and conservative parties, yet they are crucially united, not only in coalition<br />

governments, but more importantly in their central and overall Zionist policy of continued<br />

apartheid, of continued, systematic gross human rights violations. 22 The addition of the<br />

Kadima party to the fold of ‘mainstream’ parties in 2006 changed nothing in this regard.<br />

Kadima, formed by the former Likud prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has situated itself between<br />

Likud and Labor, especially with regard to policies directed against the Palestinians, in<br />

territorial terms: somewhere between the ambitions of a Greater Israel and a Much Greater<br />

Israel.<br />

South Africa, on the other hand, was ruled by a single party throughout its post-1948<br />

apartheid period. The National Party was, however, also the winner of periodic, ‘democratic’<br />

elections. In South Africa, all Blacks, up to three quarters of the total population, were<br />

excluded from such elections. They were not allowed to vote or run for public office at all.<br />

Indians and Coloureds were only given an inferior vote to their own separate parliamentary<br />

chamber in 1983. Similarly, a minority of Palestinians have been given the vote in Israel,<br />

namely those who are still, and despite continued discrimination and oppression, residents in<br />

the land conquered (and received from the ‘West’ and its reluctant servant, the ‘United<br />

Nations’) before 1967. Members of the Palestinian 19 per cent of the Israeli electorate are<br />

allowed to vote, to run for office and even to form political parties. They are barred, however,<br />

from forming political parties that ‘do not support the Jewish character of the state of Israel’.<br />

In effect, this rule may be used for charging people with calling for the introduction of<br />

democracy (in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories). Arab Israelis are also forced to<br />

carry identity cards that identify them as ‘Arabs’, they are practically unable to marry Jews or<br />

Palestinians from the territories occupied in 1967, they are excluded from practicing a whole<br />

range of professions (see Chapter II.5.3, below), and face many additional kinds of<br />

discrimination and oppressive segregation.<br />

22 Hass: In Afrikaans, Separation is Called ‘<strong>Apartheid</strong>’, 2000. ‘[T]he Likud and the Labor governments…have<br />

different views only as regards the size of the Palestinian enclaves and the territorial continuity between them.’<br />

(25) Amira Hass is the first and so far only Jewish journalist to live permanently in the Occupied Palestinian<br />

Territories. She has lived in Gaza and in Ramallah on the West Bank. Her courageous and insightful reporting<br />

earned her among other things the distinction of becoming an International Press Institute ‘Press Freedom Hero’<br />

in 2000, and of receiving the UNESCO/Guillermo Camo World Press Freedom Prize for 2003. See further<br />

Kudlak: IPI Report, 50 Press Freedom Heroes, 2000. On the essentially indistinguishable ethnicist and Zionist<br />

ideologies of Labor and Likud, see also N.N.: Interview With Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How To End The<br />

War Of 1948, November 8, 2002, and Levy: Tell the Truth, Shimon, 2002, in which the author, a former aide of<br />

Nobel Peace laureate Shimon Peres’, accuses his former boss, at that time Labor Party foreign minister in prime<br />

minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud-led coalition government, of hypocrisy and legal complicity in war crimes and<br />

terrorist activities perpetrated by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians. On the armament of settlers by the<br />

Israeli army, see N.N.: Factbox: Jewish Settlements on Middle East Road Map, June 9, 2003, which cites the<br />

Israeli anti-settlement organizations, Peace Now and B’Tselem.

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