Comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa is all the rage
again. A United Nations agency recently published (and the United Nations
secretary general rejected) a report accusing the Jewish state of having
“established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a
whole.” Campuses around the world are currently marking Israel Apartheid Week to “raise awareness of Israel’s apartheid
system.”
The question of whether today’s Israel is akin to the old South
Africa was forcefully rejected by former anti-apartheid activist Benjamin
Pogrund in an op-ed in The New York Times last week, once more triggering passionate discussion over
the question.
The African National Congress, Nelson Mandela’s revolutionary
movement currently rules the country, endorses the Israel-apartheid comparison.
In 2012, ANC chairperson and former South African deputy president Baleka Mbete
accused the Jewish state of being “far worse than Apartheid South Africa.”
But in recent months, a growing number of young black
South Africans — including members of the ANC’s youth division — have visited
Israel and now forcefully reject the parallels drawn between the racist regime
under which their parents suffered and the current reality for Palestinian
Arabs — in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Prominent among them is Nkululeko
Nkosi, a 23-year-old member of the ANC Youth League.
“Precisely because we South Africans know intimately what
apartheid involved, we have a duty to question whether it is an appropriate
term to be used in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Nkosi
wrote in a recent article for a pamphlet published by “Africans
for Peace,” a group trying to change the narrative about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Put simply, because nobody knows the pain of
apartheid better than we do, we are able to guide the rest of the world on when
to describe a situation using that term and when to avoid doing so.”
Nkosi, who hails from Kathlehong township in
Johannesburg and recently obtained an undergraduate degree in law, went on to
argue that apartheid was about race, while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
encompasses both religious and territorial disputes.
Nkululeko Nkosi
/courtesy)
“On my last trip to Israel, I found that unlike
apartheid South Africa, there is no deliberate effort by the government to
segregate a specific group in Israel,” he wrote. “In day-to-day discussions
with ordinary Israeli citizens, I learned from Arabs and Jews, and I sensed
their burning desire to live together as harmonious neighbors. In apartheid
South Africa, Afrikaners disdained black South Africans, these sentiments are
still in evidence today.”
Nkosi ended his article with a plea to fellow South
Africans not to “steal” the term apartheid by inaccurately applying it to the
Middle East.
During Israel Apartheid Week at Columbia University, pro-Israel students countered anti-Israel displays with a 12-foot-high Pinocchio doll
meant to call attention to “lies about Israel,” March 1, 2016. (Courtesy
Students Supporting Israel – Columbia)
“For black South Africans, apartheid was more than
just systematic discrimination against our people. It was a project that aimed
to rob a specific race of its history, culture, dignity, and humanity,” he
wrote. “Those who apply the term ‘apartheid’ to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse
are guilty of perpetuating that same theft, by denying the uniqueness of the
racism and hatred that we faced.”
Israelis and Palestinians may feel that one group
hates the other, but this reality “is very different from the legally-blessed
racism, based on the discredited idea of white supremacy, that once reigned in
my country,” he posited.
Nkosi, who once hoped to run for national office for
the ANC but has been shunned by the party for his pro-Israel views, first learned
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2013, when a group of students
disrupted a performance by a famous Israeli pianist.
“For a while, I held the view that Israel was an
apartheid state and suspected that something was amiss when a couple of colleagues
visited Israel only to face backlash here at home,” he told The Times of Israel
in a recent interview. “I then also wanted to visit Israel for myself and
develop my own views on the matter. It was after my trip to Israel that I
started to question a lot of things and sought more information and made
comparisons between apartheid South Africa and Israel.”
Ironically, perhaps, it was the ANC’s encouragement
to think differently that impacted Nkosi. “My view differs from the ANC’s
because I have been taught by the ANC to discuss and question everything,” he
said.
“I used to
have hopes of ascending the ANC ranks,” Nkosi told The Times of Israel, but its
current politics “suggest that there may not be an ANC to inherit for young
people like myself.”
The disdain is mutual, as the party not only
officially discourages travel to Israel but also publicly shames members who
speak positively about the country.
‘What is clear is that my political career in the ANC and youth
structures is finished’ Last week, the ANC Youth League’s secretary-general
issued a statement condemning a “certain individual [who] is parading around,
on a pro-Israeli trip in the USA, claiming to be a youth leader of the ANC.” He
and “other foreign agents” who “advance the agenda of the imperialist Israeli
regime,” automatically lose their membership, according to the statement. Nkosi,
too, has been insulted and intimidated due to his pro-Israel activism, it seems
my trip to Israel and my subsequent views translate to the end of any
[political] ambition.”
And yet, Nkosi is optimistic regarding the future of
Israel-South Africa relations. While he acknowledged that the ANC, which is
closely affiliated with the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement, is
unlikely to engage in constructive political dialogue with Jerusalem, he hopes
that Pretoria’s current economic worries will lead to some sort of
rapprochement down the line.
