Isaeli Apartheid and Boycotts

> By Ronnie Kasrils and Victoria Brittain
>
> The Guardian
> 25 May 2005
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1491645,00.html
>
> Last October, 13-year-old Iman al-Hams was shot and wounded by an
Israeli army unit in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, despite
being identified as a little girl, and wearing a school uniform. Iman
was machine-gunned by the unit's commander. She had 17 bullets in her
body, and three in her head, a Palestinian doctor told the Guardian.
Iman is one of 654 Palestinian children to have been killed in the
occupied territories since September 2000. Several were killed as
they sat at their desks in class. Three and a half thousand children
have been wounded. Over 300 are in Israeli prisons.
>
> In South Africa's state of emergency of the mid-1980s, declared in
response to a nationwide campaign of protest, 312 children were
killed, over 1,000 wounded, 2,000 children under 16 were detained
without trial, thousands more arrested, hundreds fled into exile, and
a generation was marked for life. The Rev Desmond Tutu wrote about
one child, Johnny, whom he saw after some time in police custody: "I
wanted to cry, I was filled with a blazing anger against a system
that could do this to a child ... Johnny's case alone ought to be
enough to fill any decent person ... with revulsion and indignation."
>
> Iman's is such a case, 20 years on. Archbishop Tutu has described
the situation of the Palestinians under occupation as worse than
South Africa under apartheid. In July 2004, the international court
of justice ruled that Israel's 280 mile wall, the latest burden on
Palestinians, was illegal. But Israel, like the old South Africa
faced with international disapproval, simply ignored it.
>
> Twenty years ago, 496 British academics responded to an appeal from
the African National Congress leaders in exile after two academics
were served with banning orders. They signed a letter calling for an
academic boycott of South Africa. Today, some in the new generation
of British academics feel they cannot accept Israel's occupation of
East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the policies that brought the
wall, and a new generation of children suffering like those South
African children whose wounds of mind and body never healed.
>
> Iman and Johnny will never go to college. But some of the Israeli
soldiers implicated in crimes like the one that killed the little
girl are university lecturers who serve in the occupation army
reserve forces every year, and who otherwise go about their
academic "business as usual" for the rest of the year. No Israeli
academic institution has ever severed its organic ties with the
military-security establishment in protest. None has issued a public
statement condemning the grave violations of Palestinian human
rights. This is part of the reason why Palestinians have called upon
the world to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
>
> The volcanic political response to the decision by the Association
of University Teachers (AUT) in Britain to impose an academic boycott
on Israeli universities has dismissed the crucial comparison between
Israel and South Africa, which was the main motive behind the
Palestinians' call for boycott. Israeli universities are not being
targeted for boycott because of their ethnic or religious identity,
but solely because of their complicity in the Israeli system of
apartheid, which many see as sufficiently analogous to its defunct
predecessor in South Africa to warrant sanctions.
>
> In the occupied territories, Israel maintains a strict racial and
colonial segregation between Israeli Jewish settlers and the native
Palestinians (Muslims and Christians). The former group enjoys
economic benefits, special roads, heavily subsidised and more heavily
protected housing, and full political rights. Even under apartheid
there were never whites-only roads. There was never a comparable
prolonged siege, or curfews, that cut off black people from each
other. Palestinians, on the other hand, are under a military
occupation that kills and destroys, but also continuously
dispossesses them of their lands for the benefit of Jewish settlers.
>
> The desire for an ethnic-religious majority of Israeli Jews has
seeped across from the occupied territories to permeate the
Israeli "national" agenda, which increasingly views Palestinian
citizens of Israel as a "demographic threat", as former prime minster
Binyamin Netanyahu phrased it. The Palestinian minority in Israel has
for decades been denied basic equality in health, education, housing
and land possession, solely because it is not Jewish. The fact that
this minority is allowed to vote hardly redresses the rampant
injustice in all other basic human rights. They are excluded from the
very definition of the "Jewish state", and have virtually no
influence on the laws, or political, social and economic policies.
Hence their similarity to the black South Africans.
>
> In addition, and related to the demographic question, Israel
continues to deny Palestinian refugees, who were ethnically cleansed
during the 1948 war, their right to return to their lands and
properties. Israel bases its position, which is contrary to
fundamental human rights provisions and international law, on its
right to preserve its Jewish ethnic-religious supremacy. No other
country in the world today dares to claim any similar right.
>
> In response to all this, how many Israeli academic institutions
have criticised the racist and colonial policies of the state? How
many Israeli academics have conscientiously objected to military
service in the occupied territories? How many university lecturers
have publicly opposed the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian
land? Professors Ilan Pappe and Tanya Reinhart stand out, leading a
few Israeli academics in calling for support for the Palestinian
academics' call for selective academic boycott.
>
> The boycotts and sanctions ultimately helped liberate both blacks
and whites in South Africa. Palestinians and Israelis will similarly
benefit from this non-violent campaign that Palestinians are calling
for.
>
>
> Ronnie Kasrils is minister for intelligence in the South African
government and a former commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe, military wing
of the African National Congress. He is writing in his personal
capacity. Victoria brittain is a journalist.