Apartheid - a few notes on the use of this word

‘Richard’ says he doesn’t understand my ‘lack of acceptance of the analogy with apartheid S[outh A[frica]' adding that he 'would have thought that there were many points of similarity between the two situations. Perhaps I just don't know enough about either.’

 

Well, it’s gracious of him to accept that he may not know enough about either.

 

But here’s a checklist to help him and others decide.

 

Grand Apartheid, as put into force by a series of National Party governments in South Africa after 1948 (and eventually dismantled by stages in the 1980s) legally classified citizens of South Africa according to the colour of their skin.

 

Treatment of those in the ‘White ‘classification was legally different from that of other colours.

It formally restricted entry into certain parts of major cities, especially by night, restricted employment opportunities, educational opportunities, access to state employment in privileged positions and of course the right to vote. It also governed, by law,  which part of the train you sat in, which buses you rode in, which hotels, restaurants, beaches, park benches, public lavatories etc., which you were permitted to use. The whole thing was based on an openly-avowed belief that there were different ‘races’ and that they deserved different sorts of treatment.

 

No laws of this kind exist, or ever have existed,  in Israel. Nor is there any such belief. Zionism, which was transformed from a minor and insignificant thing into an important current of thought by the Kishinyev pogroms of 1903 and 1905,  but took on the scale of an international movement after the National Socialist anti-Jewish persecutions began in Germany in 1933, was a reluctant admission by assimilated European Jews that they could never attain acceptance. It was absolutely not a religious movement (and is opposed to this day by many religious Jews, in Israel and outside it). It is based, if you like, on the racial bigotry of those who hate Jews, and who have insisted on a distinction many Jews would prefer not to make. It might be summed up as ‘You say we’re different, and don’t belong in your nation. Very well then, we’ll have a nation of our own’. Ultimately, the definition of who is a Jew in these circumstances can be summed up as ‘someone someone else thinks is a Jew, and might at some point want to persecute for it’.  As many Germans and other Europeans found out between 1933 and 1945, it didn’t matter whether they thought they were Jews or not, or whether they followed Jewish religious practices or not. This was taken to its ultimate conclusion in the seizure from her Dutch convent in 1942, and subsequent murder in Auschwitz,  of the Roman Catholic theologian and Carmelite nun, Edith Stein.  If the German state thought they were Jews, then they were first made miserable, then murdered.

 

This defensive and reluctant self-classification as a people needing special refuge from future persecution (based on hard experience of past persecution) is in my view very different from the assumed and imposed superiority of the South African white minority.

 

 

Arab citizens of Israel face no formal, legal bars to work, housing, public buildings, beaches, or any other public facilities. Informal systems of discrimination certainly exist, largely because most Arabs do not serve in the Israeli armed forces and thus are disqualified from many jobs and opportunities open to those who do. But similar exclusions operate against Christian Arabs in the territories governed by the Palestinian Authority. They are severely discriminated against, especially in the legal system, and rarely if ever are given jobs in the police or other important and powerful state bodies.  Jews also face legal discrimination in Syria, where they must carry special identity documents. I am not sure of the current law, but I believe that for some years Jews were not even allowed to live in Jordan, and I doubt if the intended Palestinian State will encourage Jewish residents.  In  many Arab countries, the remaining Jews were violently expelled after 1948, but if they remained they would have faced all kinds of informal discrimination, as Christian Arabs currently do, and as Christians face in Turkey.  

 

The only real parallel with the South African system was the open and legally enforced segregation which existed in the Southern states of the USA before Civil Rights. But, as in post-apartheid South Africa, racial discrimination also continues to exist in post-segregation America. Most cities, very much including Washington DC,  still maintain an informal boundary between white and black housing. Schools remain largely segregated in fact, if not by law. 

 

The boundary can be crossed by money. The same is true in post-Apartheid South Africa. I might say that prosperous, religiously-relaxed Israeli Arabs also live alongside Israeli Jews in certain areas of Tel Aviv.  The apartheid state specifically forbade this sort of mixing.

 

The great majority of South African blacks remain impoverished, badly-educated, stuck in badly-paid employment or jobless, and badly housed. The main difference now is that wealthy black citizens can climb over the barrier, when previously they could not do so.

 

Laws governing the movement and employment of citizens of the West Bank have become oppressive in the last 30 years, though they were originally much less so. The reason for this (and I believe it is a reason, not a pretext), is an attempt to reduce the repeated attacks on Israeli cities by Arabs with concealed weapons and bombs. It is not any kind of Israeli desire to segregate for its own sake, such as the South African state had. In fact, I think it true to say that until the original Arab ‘intifada’ (uprising), which followed after the decisive defeat of Arab armies in 1973, travel and contact between Arab and Jew in Israel and the West Bank was free and unhindered, and large numbers of Arabs worked in Israel.

 

The final point is this. The Apartheid system, though it allowed a measure of press freedom and parliamentary criticism, was fundamentally intolerant of opposition and lacked constitutional protections. Parliament was entirely white-skinned, as was the Judiciary.  This is simply not true of Israel.

 

If you are going to describe the Israeli system (which is of course faulty in many ways, as my previous article pointed out in some detail) as ‘apartheid’, then you will find that, in all justice, you have to apply the same term to many other societies which, for one reason or another, practise informal discrimination either intentionally, or as a by-product of another policy which may or may not have a disguised intention to discriminate. If you aren’t prepared to do that, then I have to ask again why your criticisms are reserved for the world’s only Jewish state.  I think a level-headed debate would avoid such propaganda.