Limited Knowledge PERHAPS in BEACON, NY USA TOO!!!!.....A thorough update of facts would eliminate lots of negative thinking....An Israeli and a Palestinian scathed by South Africa apartheid rhetoric
Steven Fodor
Published 10:55 04.05.12Latest update 10:55 04.05.12
An Israeli and a Palestinian scathed by South Africa
apartheid rhetoric
Despite their limited knowledge of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
South Africans have many prejudices that are being
fueled by anti-Israel
groups
By Benjamin Pogrund and Bassem Eid
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/an-israeli-and-a-palestinian-scathed-by-south-africa-apartheid-rhetoric-1.428234
The two of us, an Israeli and a Palestinian, went to
South Africa
recently to speak about the Middle East. For
understandable reasons,
South Africa is a major source for the "Israel is
apartheid" accusation;
it stems from the fact that many South Africans,
especially blacks,
relate Israel's treatment of Palestinians to their own
history of racial
discrimination.
And indeed, in the several dozen meetings we
addressed, we repeatedly
heard the apartheid accusation. No, we replied:
Apartheid does not exist
inside Israel; there's discrimination against Arabs
but it's not South
African apartheid. On the West Bank, there is military
occupation and
repression, but it is not apartheid. The apartheid
comparison is false
and confuses the real problems.
As we traveled around the country, it became clear to
us that South
Africans generally have limited knowledge about the
Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. But they hold many prejudices and these are
fed and
manipulated by organizations that are vehemently
anti-Israel - to the
extent of calling for destruction of the Jewish state,
as the
Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Judicial
Council and the
Russell Tribunal have done. Black trade unions join in
the attacks and
so do some people of Jewish origin.
Our host was the South African Jewish Board of
Deputies. During 10 days
we spoke on five university campuses, at several
public meetings and to
journalists, and were on radio programs, including one
aired by a Muslim
station.
We were shown an e-mail calling for protests against
our visit: It
seemed that the anti-Israel hard-liners were upset by
an Israeli and a
Palestinian speaking on the same platform and
promoting peace. But there
were no protests: The worst we experienced was a knot
of about six
people standing quietly outside one meeting. We were
also warned to
expect "tough questions," but we didn't hear any.
Instead, the large
audiences - people of all colors, and mainly non-Jews
- were attentive
and wanted information about the current state of play
in the conflict.
There were some hostile comments such as the silly
sneer that Israel is
"terrified of a few suicide bombers" and that it is
"hogwash" to call
Hamas a terrorist organization. In a more serious vein
were repeated
references to the Palestinian "right of return." It
cannot be said
whether those who spoke were genuinely responding to
the plight of the
refugees, or were cynically using it as a
reasonable-sounding slogan
although it in effect calls for elimination of the
Jewish state.
Nelson Mandela's words in support of Palestinian
freedom were flung at
us (and also appear in propaganda leaflets issued by
Palestinian-supporting organizations ). He was quoted
as saying: "But we
know too well that our freedom is incomplete without
the freedom of the
Palestinians." Mandela did indeed say that, on
December 9, 1997, on the
occasion of Palestinian Solidarity Day, and it still
resonates strongly
among South Africans. But it's actually half of what
he said in the
context of a call for freedom for all people. He also
explained the
greater context and the dishonesty of the
propagandists in singling out
Israel: "... without the resolution of conflicts in
East Timor, the
Sudan and other parts of the world."
Other falsities we heard were that only Jews are
allowed to own or rent
93 percent of the land in Israel, and that Israel's
restrictions on
marriage (which in actuality derive from Jewish,
Muslim and Christian
religious authorities ) are the same as apartheid
South Africa's
prohibition of marriage - or sex - across color lines.
There was also an earlier statement by the South
African Council of
Churches in support of Israel Apartheid Week in which
it claimed that
"Israel remained the single supporter of apartheid
when the rest of the
world implemented economic sanctions, boycotts and
divestment to force
change in South Africa." That, of course, is nonsense:
Israel did trade
with apartheid South Africa - but so did the entire
world, starting with
oil sales by Arab states, and including the United
States, United
Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Soviet Union and many in
Africa.
BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,
is noisily vocal
and gets publicity in South African media. While we
were there it ran
Israel Apartheid Week programs on several university
campuses. But the
movement did not garner wide support; some scheduled
speakers did not
even turn up. Its boast that more than 100
universities worldwide took
part in the week doesn't amount to much: Apartheid
weeks have been going
on for eight years and out of the 100 this year, 60
were held on
American campuses (out of 4,000 universities and
colleges in that
country ). Not much progress there.
We did not pre-plan what we were going to say. But a
consensus emerged:
First, we both spoke in bleak terms about peace
prospects in the near
future; second, we each castigated our own leaderships
for double-talk
and pretense, and for their lack of boldness and
vision, and we pointed
to the growth of Jewish settlements on the West Bank
as undermining the
chances for an agreement.
We stressed that we welcomed interest in our part of
the world - but
warned that some members of Palestinian solidarity
movements have never
visited the occupied territories, and they
damage the Palestinian cause
abroad because they act out of ignorance, and
foster division and hatred between Arabs and
Jews.
They do not help to bring peace.
Our strangest meeting was with scores of Congolese who
asked us to
explain why their conflict - ongoing since 1960 with a
toll of perhaps
more than 7 million people dead - receives less
attention in South
African and other media than does the
Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It
was painful listening to their recital of mass rapes
and murders. But it
was difficult to empathize with them when one speaker
blamed the Jews,
whom he said controlled the world and the media, and
when a former army
officer asked us for money to go and fight the
Congolese government.
Bassem Eid is director of the Palestinian Human Rights
Monitoring Group
and a former researcher for B'Tselem. Benjamin
Pogrund, South
African-born, was founder of Yakar's Center for Social
Concern in Jerusalem
