Denis Goldberg – fighting apartheid in South Africa and Israel – lessons from the front line
Last week the world lost one of the heroes of the South African anti-apartheid struggle when 87-year-old Denis Goldberg died.
I first became aware of Denis as a white face on a poster of South African political prisoners back in the 1970s (see poster)
He was sentenced to life in prison in 1964 at the end of the infamous Rivonia trial of activists accused of planning armed struggle to end white rule in apartheid South Africa. Denis was Defendant No 3 (Nelson Mandela was No 1 and Walter Sisulu No 2)
At 31 he was the youngest defendant and served 22 years in prison.
Details of the trial and Denis’s life are here
Denis is being remembered for his “unflinching commitment to the struggle against all forms of racism and Apartheid”.
In his later years he was very critical of the ANC and in a 2016 interview said “the members of the ANC need to renew the leadership from top to bottom”. Never a truer word said.
We must also remember what this courageous Jewish South African said about the brutal, racist state of Israel:
“Having lived through apartheid in South Africa. There’s no doubt in my mind that Israel is an apartheid state. I cannot allow in my name, the same kind of oppression to go on against the Palestinians. I have to speak out against it. And I have to try and speak out against it in a rational and calm voice when really I’m very angry about it […] when [Israeli] people say, well, you South Africans, you’re biased against us. We’re not. We’re talking international law…The pro-Israeli lobby, the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and SA Zionist Federation try to say that it [the Palestinian Israeli issue] is not a simple matter, [they say that] it’s complicated. It’s not complicated! It’s very simple, the simplicity is that a dominant group [Jewish Israelis] exclude the indigenous Palestinian people from equal rights”.
Honouring the anti-apartehd struggle in South Africa also means being active in the struggle against apartheid in Israel where Palestinians face the same race-hatred and oppression from Israeli authorities that black South Africans faced from the white regime.
10 Reasons Israel Is Not An ‘Apartheid’ State
here are 10 reasons why Israel is not an “apartheid” state:
1. All people living in Israel have full equal rights.
There are no inferior or second-class citizens, unlike non-whites in South Africa or minorities in Islamic or Arab countries. Moreover, Arabs occupy senior positions on the Israeli police force, the Knesset and the Israeli judiciary. For example, Salim Joubran, who currently serves on the Israeli Supreme Court, is a Christian Arab. South Africans living under apartheid could only dream of obtaining these types of positions.
Ishmael Khaldi, an Islamic Bedouin, is currently a diplomat in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Majalli Wahabi (Druze) was the acting president of Israel in 2007. These are just a few examples out of the many minority groups holding prominent positions in Israeli society.
2. An Arab judge, George Karra, sentenced an ex-Israeli president Moshe Katsav to prison for seven years.
When an Arab judge sentences a former Israeli president to jail — this is truly a testament to Israel’s equality amongst all citizens, regardless of race or ethnicity.
3. In 1953, the Bantu Education Act was passed.
This separated blacks from whites in the South African educational system. The government created a new curriculum for black people in which they were taught skills related to manual labour and serving in their Bantustans. In Israel, citizens are given equal opportunity in the workplace and educational department as evidenced by the fact that there are Palestinians and Arabs in Israeli universities who both study and teach as professors.
Today in Israel there are hundreds of Arab schools. Furthermore, education in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Courts, laws, taxes, police etc. are also under PA jurisdiction in the majority of the West Bank.
4. Incitement to racism is a criminal offence in Israel.
This is the polar opposite of apartheid in South Africa, whose government specifically passed incendiary racist legislation.
5. Arabs and Israelis receive the same treatment in hospitals.
The Hadassah Medical Organization which operates two hospitals in Jerusalem, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize due to its push for peace in the Middle East and its equal treatment of Palestinians and Israelis. Furthermore, Arab and Israeli children are born amongst each other in the same hospitals.
Even during Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, Palestinians receive top-of-the-line treatment in Israeli hospitals. During apartheid, blacks were specifically given limited access to health care.
6. Non-whites in South Africa had separate amenities.
These include hospitals, beaches, buses, restrooms, drinking fountains and even designated park benches to sit on. None of this discrimination is prevalent in Israel and a law prohibits discrimination in public places.
7. Israeli Arabs have their own political parties in the Knesset — some of whom are Israel’s harshest critics.
The Joint List is an example of this. They received 13 seats in the 2015 Israeli election. Furthermore Arabs have equal voting rights, whereas coloured people during apartheid were not allowed to participate in the political process.
8. Arab citizens are allowed to seek redress through the courts and government if they feel they have been wronged.
Arab citizens also receive trial based on the facts, not ethnicity. This is nothing compared to apartheid South Africa, where discrimination was authorized from the highest position in the government.
9. Arabs in Israel have more fundamental rights than other Islamic and Arab countries in the Middle East.
Ironically, they have more rights than they do in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.
10. In Israel, there are 1.6 million Arab citizens integrated within Israeli society.
They make up 20 per cent of Israel’s population. There was no such integration in South Africa. Furthermore, according to a poll done by Harvard University, 77 per cent of Arab citizens living in Israel would rather live there than any other country in the world. If these citizens were experiencing “apartheid,” why are so many of them supportive of Israel?
To proclaim that Israel is an “apartheid state” is to undermine and trivialize the harsh and actual struggles many blacks went through during that dark time of human history. These are the words ofmanySouth Africans who would also concur that Israel is not an “apartheid” state.
Arabs have the right to move freely, vote, obtain an education, work in prominent positions, receive world-class health care, own land and speak freely. Blacks in South Africa had none of these rights.
Regardless of the unfounded criticisms, Israel will still strive in the face of growing adversity. Those who seek to delegitimize, malign and deprecate Israel have lost their moral compass.
While those who are able to discern the truth for themselves, are able to recognize the fact that Israel is a beacon of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.
When one group of people, Jewish settlers illegally occupying Palestinian land are allowed to vote in elections in Israel, but Palestinian citizens living on the same land have no voting rights at all, let alone in Israeli elections, that’s apartheid pure and simple.
Either you have a two state solution divided along the 1967 Green Line with one state for Jews and a separate independent state in the West Bank for Palestinians, or you have a single state solution “from the river to the sea”, where all citizens, regardless of whether they are Jewish or Palestinian, each have a single vote. Anything else, including the status quo, is apartheid. Glad to have cleared that up for you.
So Israel has never stolen Palestinian land, bombed hospitals and schools or shot children or did you just forget to mention that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel
From 1968 on the UN has passed resolutions condemning Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Illegal settlements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israeli_settlements
What happened.
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2017/50-years-illegal-settlements/index.html
Apartheid it is.
The UN has never said otherwise.
Tell us about the laws banning mixed marriages in Israel Tomer.
Anti-miscegenation laws ,,,,, like South Africa used to have.
You do know that Israel is racist against Africans as well as Arabs ,,,
Judea-Africa-America https://youtu.be/QEfxIys4BY0
“Israel is telling African refugees to accept a £2,000 cash offer and a one-way ticket out of the country or face an indefinite stay in a desert prison.
The Eritrean and Sudanese migrants have been sent letters giving them 30 days to accept the offer of the cash and a ticket home or to another African country.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3083038/Israel-tells-African-migrants-2-000-one-way-ticket-face-indefinite-stay-prison.html
Thanks for this article John. Yes, apartheid in South Africa was a cruel regime.
Yet South Africans are aghast at the treatment of Palestinians not just those in Gaza, who are under a death sentence what with unsafe drinking water, health clinics bombed, now Covid-19 ..but those in the West Bank, in East Jerusalem and those in ‘non-occupied’ Israel.
If someone really wants to find out the truth, there are many sources, including from within Israel itself. There is award-winning journalist Jonathan Cook , based in Nazareth who has his own website, there is Defence of Children International..the treatment of Palestinian children is appalling..Israel is the only country in the world that sentences children, Palestinian children that is, in military courts . There is B’tselem an Israeli human rights NGO.
There are articles and books by Gideon Levy, Ilan Pappé, Ramzy Baroud, Raja Shehadeh and others.
May 15 is an important day for the Palestinian people, Nakba Day..not just a day to remember what happened in 1948 but how the cruelty and oppression continues to this day. The open violence of ‘settlers’ and the IDF is increasing while the world is distracted by Covid-19. Israel tries to any suppress any acknowledgment of Nakba Day.
May 31 is an important day too. On 31 May 2010, the Mavi Marmara ,the lead ship of a Freedom Flotilla,with international crew and passengers carrying relief supplies to Gaza, was violently attacked by the Israelis in international waters..9 were murdered outright, many were wounded. One NZer was aboard . She was standing near a Turkish photography who was shot in his head .
There is so much more to say.
The Israeli regime knows that whatever it does, the West will continue to look the other way.
Western leaders, political, religious, media ..are all afraid to speak out. It’s safer to look the other way.
The only hope for Palestinian people will come from civil humanitarian society, including American groups Code Pink , Catholic Workers, Jews for Justice for Palestine..including Freedom Flotilla participants.
The cowardly use of military against, farmers, fishermen families and civilians is abhorrent. Israel call it “mowing the lawn” – an extermination program metered out by “the chosen people”, a gutless lot who use the power of money to justify their inhumanity. They earn the scorn and often hatred of others.
Whoops..I made a mistake on the last sentence.
I meant to mention the US group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) I receive and read a lot of messages from them.
The group I mentioned , Jews for Justice for Palestine, is British..good people too , no doubt.
And, by the way, Freedom Flotilla participants come from many different countries…sometimes even NZ! Brave people!