Israel, South Africa and Genocide: Some Personal Reflections
By
Allan C.Brownfeld
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Israel
recently appeared before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in
The Hague to face accusations that it is committing genocide in Gaza.
South Africa, which brought the case, alleges that Israel is violating
international law by committing and failing to prevent genocidal acts
“to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.” Israel has rejected the allegations.
The
ICJ case adds to international pressure on Israel to scale back or end
its war against Hamas, which health officials in Gaza say has killed
more than 23,000 people—-many of them women and children. It has, it is
charged, rendered most of Gaza uninhabitable and pushed the population
to the brink of famine.
South
Africa points to Israel’s large-scale killing and maiming of civilians
and its use of dumb bombs; the mass displacement and the destruction of
neighborhoods; “deprivation of access to adequate food and water,”
medical care, shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation to civilians.
South
African human rights specialist John Dugard leads his country’s legal
team. He has extensive experience investigating Israel’s alleged rights
violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, and has served as a
judge on the ICJ.
How
all of this will be resolved is, of course, difficult to predict. But,
for me, this brings back personal memories of South Africa in the years
of apartheid and its relationship with Israel at that time.
During
apartheid, in addition to my syndicated column in American newspapers, I
wrote for a number of South African publications, the English-language
news magazine “To The Point,” and Afrikaans-language newspapers Beeld
in Johannesburg and Die Burger in Cape Town. I was a frequent visitor
to South Africa in those days.
What
few Americans remember is the close relations Israel had in those days
with South Africa. Israel’s alliance with South Africa started in the
1950s, soon after the state was established in 1948. Daniel Malan,
Prime Minister of South Africa, was the first foreign head of state to
visit Israel and was welcomed by David Ben Gurion in 1953—-despite the
fact that Malan opposed South African participation in World War 11. He
was accused by United Party leader N. Strauss of having appealed for
aid to Hitler.
Israel
allied itself in those years with South Africa. When Israel started
developing its nuclear capacity, it was counting on uranium supplied by
South Africa. When Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor started working in
1962, the uranium it used was from South Africa. The alliance was well
established when C.L.Sulzberger wrote about “the strange alliance” in
the New York Times (April 28, 1971).
It
is ironic that Israel, a friend and ally of apartheid South Africa, has
now been accused of practicing “apartheid” in its treatment of
Palestinians by such organizations as Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Nat
Hentoff argues that apartheid in Israel is worse than it was in South
Africa. In his view, South Africa needed its large black labor force
and had to treat it properly for the economy to work. Israel, quite to
the contrary, wants to remove as much of its Palestinian population as
possible. In the years of apartheid, South Africa never had separate
roads for blacks and whites. In the occupied West Bank, Hentoff points
out, Israel has separate roads for Jews and Palestinians.
I
remember long talks with my Afrikaner friends on visits to South Africa
during the years of apartheid. They understood that the system of
apartheid was immoral. They would say, “We are Western Christian people
who believe in individual freedom. But we are treating our black
population immorally. If we do not change, our children will leave.
They will go to Australia, America and Canada.”
Fortunately,
South Africa had a leader, Frederick Willem de Klerk, who brought
apartheid to an end and instituted a multi-racial democracy. He was
lucky to Have Nelson Mandela as a partner. Both De Klerk and Mandela
won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Now,
in 2024, it is South Africa which is challenging Israel at the
International Court of Justice. It was always my hope that Israel would
find a leader like President de Klerk who would
bring genuine democracy to the country——either creating a Palestinian
state or creating a single state with equal rights for all, regardless
of religion or ethnicity.
These
memories of those years in South Africa convince me that with proper
leadership an oppressive system can be brought to an end and something
better can replace it. Afrikaners recognized that apartheid violated
their Christian values of what constituted a just society. Hopefully,
Jewish Israelis will to see that the current system is a contrary to the
humane Jewish moral and ethical tradition. South Africa showed the
world that peaceful change is possible if leaders can be found with the
will to move forward.
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Allan C.Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and editor of
ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.