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| Apartheid |
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One suspects that if the word "apartheid" were
eliminated from the vocabulary of Israel's critics, they would be rendered
nearly speechless.
The history of linkage between the Arab-Israel
conflict and the struggle against Apartheid is an excellent illustration of the
level of hypocrisy Israel's friends must tolerate from its foes.
The
"apartheid" slur began in the 1970s when the movement against racial
discrimination in South Africa began at the same time the oil boom gave
Israel's Arab foes the resources to link their struggle against the Jewish
state with battle for human rights in South Africa. Those same resources
allowed Israel's Arab critics to buy themselves a "Get Out of Jail Free" card
with regard to any serious scrutiny of their own human rights abuses.
The Zionism = Apartheid mantra fixed on Israel's treatment of its Arab
minority, while avoiding the obvious fact that those who shouted "racism" the
loudest were the rulers of some of the most racist states in existence, Middle
East regimes whose treatment of minorities (from the expulsion of Jews, to the
persecution of religious groups, to the enslavement of Black Africans) made
even the crimes of South African apartheid pale in comparison. (Saudi Arabia
has the distinction of having only legally banned human slavery in 1962, a
practice that still continues today in the Arab League member state of Sudan.)
A second charge had to do with Israel's trade ties with Apartheid
leaders in Pretoria, trade that while real, paled in comparison to South
Africa's senior trading partners in Europe, the US, Japan and the Arab Middle
East.
Carefully avoided during the anti-Israel/anti-Apartheid rallies
of the 1980s was the never-discussed fact that while South Africa had no oil of
its own, it managed to run an industrial, oil-based, first-world economy.
Simultaneously, the oil-rich Middle East somehow managed to fill its vaults and
shopping malls with ton after ton of South African gold. This particular
alchemy points to one and only one conclusion: the Arab oil trade with South
Africa, while carried on secretly, helped keep the machinery of Apartheid
fueled for decades.
The half-tracks that swept soldiers through the
streets of Sharpsville ran on oil, as did the generators that powered Nelson
Mandela's prison. And yet even now that Apartheid has been left in the ash heap
of history, even as South Africa itself has undergone the truth and
reconciliation process, even as the US and Europe have re-evaluated their
historical mistake of "constructive engagement" with the Apartheid regime, the
Arab oil-for-gold trade with Apartheid continues to be beyond the bounds of
discussion, especially by those most eager to brand Israel an "Apartheid"
state.
The language of the world-wide Israel boycott movement,
including it's recent incarnation as various divest-from-Israel campaigns, is
the inheritor of the investments Israel's Arab foes made over the decades to
brand Israel a racist society, while ignoring both the rampant bigotry within
their own borders, and the robust, hidden and hypocritical oil-for-gold trade
with Apartheid. One would hope that this history would cause the Zionism =
Apartheid crowd a small bit of reflection before continuing a tradition started
by those who provided Apartheid the fuel it needed to continue year after year
after year.
Sadly, reflection is not the strong suit of Israel's
critics whose self-righteous fury allows anything to be justified, no matter
how unfair, hypocritical or false, in their single-minded quest that Israel
must go. |
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