How today’s liberal Zionists echo apartheid South Africa’s defenders

Rania Khalek The Electronic Intifada 13 February 2014

Liberal Zionists have adopted the same arguments in defense of Israeli occupation that conservative opponents of sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime used in the 1980s.

Najeh Hashlamoun APA images

“While the majority of black South African leaders are against disinvestment and boycotts, there are tiny factions that support disinvestment — namely terrorist groups such as the African National Congress,” libertarian economics professor Walter Williams wrote in a 1983 New York Times op-ed.

Williams’ claim was as absurd then as it appears in hindsight, but his sentiment was far from rare on the American and British right in the 1980s.

Yet today’s so-called progressive and liberal Zionists employ precisely the same kinds of claims to counter the growing movement, initiated by Palestinians themselves, for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.

Indeed, looking back, it is clear that Israel’s liberal apologists are recycling nearly every argument once used by conservatives against the BDS movement that helped dismantle South Africa’s apartheid regime.

“Singling out”

In a 1989 op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor, University of South Africa lecturer Anne-Marie Kriek scolded the divestment movement for singling out her country’s racist government because, she wrote, “the violation of human rights is the norm rather than the exception in most of Africa’s 42 black-ruled states” (“South Africa Shouldn’t be Singled Out,” 12 October 1989).

Kriek continued, “South Africa is the only country in Sub-Saharan Africa that can feed itself. Blacks possess one of the highest living standards in all of Africa,” adding that nowhere on the continent did black Africans have it so good. So, “Why is South Africa so harshly condemned while completely different standards apply to black Africa?” she asked.

Divestment opponents in the US provided similar justifications. In 1986, for instance, Gregory Dohi, the former editor-in-chief of the Salient, Harvard University’s conservative campus publication, protested that those calling for the university to divest from companies doing business in South Africa were “selective in their morality” (“I am full of joy to realize that I never had anything to do with any divestment campaign …,” Harvard Crimson, 4 April 1986).

Divestment was wrong not only because it would “harm” black workers, Dohi claimed, but because it singled out South Africa.

Déjà vu

Where have we heard these kinds of arguments before?

Arguing against BDS, The Nation’s Eric Alterman writes, “The near-complete lack of democratic practices within Israel’s neighbors in the Arab and Islamic world, coupled with their lack of respect for the rights of women, of gays, indeed, of dissidents of any kind — make their protestations of Israel’s own democratic shortcomings difficult to credit” (“A Forum on Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS),” 3 May 2012).

Alterman’s only update to Kriek’s logic is his mention of women’s and gay rights, a nod to The Nation readers’ liberal sensitivities.

Alterman’s sometime Nation colleague, reporter Ben Adler, has also reprised Kriek’s and Dohi’s 1980s-style arguments: “If you want to boycott Israel itself then you need to explain why you’re not calling for a boycott of other countries in the Middle East that oppress their own citizens worse than Israel does anyone living within the Green Line” (“The Problems With BDS,” 31 March 2012).

A scary brown majority

The late neoconservative war hawk, and long-time New York Times columnist William Safire — who in 2002 insisted, “Iraqis, cheering their liberators, will lead the Arab world toward democracy” — also sympathized with white supremacist anxieties about the implications of a single democratic South Africa.

One person, one vote “means majority rule, and nonwhites are the overwhelming majority in South Africa,” Safire wrote in a 1986 column. “That means an end to white government as the Afrikaners have known it for three centuries; that means the same kind of black rule that exists elsewhere in Africa, and most white South Africans would rather remain the oppressors than become the oppressed” (“The Suzman Plan,” 7 August 1986).

Almost thirty years later, liberal Zionists exhibit the same empathy with racists in their own hostility toward the Palestinian right of return, which BDS unapologetically champions.

Such a scenario would spell the end of Israel’s Jewish majority, a horrifying prospect for ethno-religious supremacists who, like whites in South Africa did, fear the native population they rule.

Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, well-known in academic circles for his left-liberal activism, conveyed the same fears in a recent anti-BDS tirade. He argued that “nothing in decades of Middle East history suggests Jews would be equal citizens in a state dominated by Arabs or Palestinians” (“Why the ASA boycott is both disingenuous and futile,” Al Jazeera America, 23 December 2013).

Nelson’s racism-induced panic is further distilled in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, where he argues that the BDS movement seeks “the elimination of Israel,” after which, “those Jews not exiled or killed in the transition to an Arab-dominated nation would live as second-class citizens without fundamental rights” (“Another Anti-Israel Vote Comes to Academia,” 8 January 2014).

Of course he wouldn’t put it this way, but Nelson fears, in effect, that Palestinians might do to Jews what the Israeli settler-colonial regime has done to Palestinians since its inception.

Relying on puppets

Last December, Mahmoud Abbas, the autocratic puppet leader of the Palestinian Authority, and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), declared his opposition to BDS, leaving Israel and its apologists predictably overjoyed.

In The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier chides pro-BDS academics for speaking on behalf of Palestinians. “Who is Abu Mazen [Abbas] to speak for the Palestinians, compared with an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego?” he quipped (“The Academic Boycott of Israel Is a Travesty,” 17 December 2013).

Jeffrey Goldberg is just as derisive, writing in his Bloomberg column that the American Studies Association — which voted to boycott Israeli institutions — “is more Palestinian … than the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization” (“Some Lessons in Effective Scapegoating,” 16 December 2013).

These and other liberal Zionists insist that the Israeli- and US-approved Abbas is the only authentic representative of Palestinian sentiment. They ignore the overwhelming support for boycotting Israel among the Palestinian people.

But for many Palestinians, an apt comparison for Abbas is with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the black leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Buthelezi was often denounced by black South Africans as a collaborator with the white apartheid regime and lauded by British and American conservative opponents of sanctions as the true voice of black South Africa.

In a 1985 address to representatives from US companies operating in South Africa, Buthelezi insisted that the majority of South African blacks firmly opposed sanctions because they would “condemn a great many millions and a whole new generation to continue living in appalling slum conditions.”

In 1990, Buthelezi came out against an ANC-led campaign of mass civil disobedience — marches, boycotts and strikes — throwing his weight instead behind “cooperation” and “negotiation” with the white regime.

This offers a striking parallel to the present-day Palestinian Authority which continues to give legitimacy to the endless “peace process” while suppressing direct action against the occupation.

Buthelezi was only the most prominent of a handful of black apologists and collaborators with the apartheid regime. Others included Lucas Mangope, puppet leader of the Bophuthatswana bantustan who also fiercely opposed sanctions that would isolate his white supremacist paymasters.

Mangope cringed at the idea of a one-person, one-vote system in South Africa and spent the last days of apartheid desperately clinging to power over his “independent” island of repression.

Yet it wasn’t uncommon for US media outlets — including The New York Times — to label Mangope, and others like him, “moderate” black leaders.

Israel, it seems, has taken its cues directly from the apartheid playbook, cultivating a small circle of Palestinian elites willing to maintain the occupation in exchange for power and comfort.

And liberal Zionists are more than happy to bolster the ruse by using these comprised figures’ words against Palestinians who still insist on their rights.

Think of the workers

When Mobil Corporation was forced to shut down its operations in South Africa in 1989 due to what it called “very foolish” US sanctions laws, its chief executive, Allen Murray, feigned concern for the impact on black workers.

“We continue to believe that our presence and our actions have contributed greatly to economic and social progress for nonwhites in South Africa,” the oil executive declared (“Mobil Is Quitting South Africa, Blaming ‘Foolish’ Laws in US,” The New York Times, 29 April 1989).

Before finally giving in to boycott pressures, Citibank also justified its refusal to divest by citing its obligation to the South Africans it employed.

Last month, SodaStream chief executive Daniel Birnbaum echoed this transparent posturing when he defended the location of his company’s main production facility in the illegal Israeli settlement of Maaleh Adumim.

The only thing keeping him from moving the factory, Birnbaum claims, is his loyalty to some 500 Palestinian SodaStream employees. “We will not throw our employees under the bus to promote anyone’s political agenda,” he told The Jewish Daily Forward (“SodaStream Boss Admits West Bank Plant Is ‘a Pain’ — Praises Scarlett Johansson,” 28 January 2014).

“Constructive engagement” again?

Scarlett Johansson, the Hollywood actress who resigned from her humanitarian ambassador role with the anti-poverty organization Oxfam in order to pursue her role as global brand ambassador for SodaStream, applauded the company for “supporting neighbors working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights.”

Such appeals for cooperation with an oppressive status quo in the face of growing support for BDS mirror President Ronald Reagan’s insistence on “constructive engagement” with apartheid South Africa.

While asserting in 1986 that “time is running out for the moderates of all races in South Africa,” Reagan opposed sanctions that could foster change. Today, supporters of the endless Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” also regularly insist that “time is running out,” while fiercely opposing BDS.

Reagan praised his British counterpart Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for having “denounced punitive sanctions as immoral and utterly repugnant.” Why? Because “the primary victims of an economic boycott of South Africa would be the very people we seek to help,” the president argued (“Transcript of Talk by Reagan on South Africa and Apartheid,” The New York Times, 23 July 1986).

The Reagan administration even funded a survey of black South African workers to prove they loved working for benevolent American corporations and adamantly opposed divestment, never mind the fact that advocating for sanctions under apartheid was a severely punishable offense.

Fast forward to 2014 and Jane Eisner, editor of the liberal Jewish Daily Forward publicly hails SodaStream as the solution to the conflict, using her newspaper to portray Palestinian workers as grateful to be employed by the settlement profiteer, sentiments they expressed while being interviewed under the watchful eyes of their supervisors.

Taking racism a step further

Today, twenty-first century liberals and progressives who are ideologically invested in Zionism have embraced the rationales of racist right-wingers from a bygone era.

What’s more, liberal Zionists have taken the racism a step further than Reagan and Thatcher ever dared to go with South Africa.

Although they opposed sanctions, Reagan and Thatcher regularly denounced apartheid as an unjust system that needed to be dismantled.

Israel’s apologists, by contrast, firmly support the maintenance of Israel’s discrimination against Palestinians with their insistence that the country remain a “Jewish state” and their continued denial of the Palestinian right of return.

Rania Khalek is an independent journalist reporting on the underclass and marginalized.

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Comments

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Blake replied on

Sounds like a steak eating vegan.

Great piece though. Very true. They learn from the best.

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Duncan replied on

This is a good article, I've often thought of the similarity between pro-Israeli arguments and older defences of white settler regimes.

For instance, I remember coming across this Editorial from the Northern News in March 1960 (one of the main white settler newspapers in the Rhodesias) opposing the boycott of apartheid South Africa and questioning the motives of those who advocated it:

“It is also illogical, if trade unionists, Labour Party members and others in Britain are prepared to go to such extreme lengths in showing their displeasure at the policy of another country why are they not equally active in protesting about imports from Communist Russia or Franco’s Spain. The answer, of course, is that their political ambitions are better served… by playing a racialist tune”.

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Zionism Is Not Judaism replied on

In short what the "liberal" zionists are saying is they would support the Klan in the old Jim Crow South because African Americans are by nature racist, violent and vengeful. That poor exploited defenseless white supremacist communities are under attack and must be protected. What a load of baloney.

Whatever happened to equality, justice, inclusion, democracy? Or do they apply only to some but not others.

Hypocrites! Liars!

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Peter Loeb replied on

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

There are many sources describing the lynching of black Americans...
It was..a STATE concern the Courts and Congress would say.
(Sound like an "internal matter"?" A horrible redemption through "santified"
violence, salvation through "revolting barbarity" and "shameless hypocrasy" as Frederick Douglass expressed it on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, NY.

At least now those of us supporting BDS know who our friends are.

---Peter Loeb, Boston MA (USA)

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Anonymous replied on

Playing with liberal Zionists is like playing with the spoiled brat that always expects you to move off their favorite playground toy because it's ALWAYS their turn. So now that the Palestinian cause has a successful non-violent movement that effectively does what armed resistance failed to do, it's not fair? Eric Alterman and his phony justice loving ilk can honestly go fly a kite, and according to history, these are the final claims of an imminent loser about to eat dirt.
The Nation let us down back when the US attacked Iraq and the next day the whole magazine about faced its arguments on that illegal war. What did many of us do? We pulled our subscriptions and never looked back.

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Sonja replied on

There is one important distinction we can make between zionism and liberal zionism. Zionism is a racist ideology that wants to get rid of all Palestinians (people they address as Arabs), including their history (archeology, Palestinian homes, etc.) and culture, in order to expand the land for Jews (only). Liberal zionism has the same ideology, however, it is accompanied by gratitious humanistic remarks and excuses, often recognised by the use of sentences like: "I am not a racist, but ..." or "The blockade must end, but..." - and after that justifying the very same thing.

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John Dowdle replied on

I have frequently found it difficult to reconcile the behaviour of so-called "liberal" Zionists with what is going on in apartheid Israel.
Historically, Zionism has presented a "liberal" face, while - at the same time - pursuing racist and supremacist policies.
Professor Ilan Pappe has recently published a new book under the title of "The Idea of Israel", in which he employes the term neo-Zionism to describe a new, much more right-wing form of ideology now on clear show in Israel.
People like Netanyahu and Bennett are the new face of Zionism today which bears little resemblance to so-called "liberal" Zionism.
I recommend that we all use the term neo-Zionist, in the same way as we use the terms neo-liberal and neo-conservative, to differentiate between the former softer versions of these ideologies and the far more extremist and harsh versions of these ideologies which confront us today.
The hasbara headbangers have formulated their own version of BDS:-
B for blocking: online they endeavour to block arguments against apartheid neo-Zionism with infantile argumentation. If that fails they employ other forms of blocking, which I will deal with separately.
D is for diversion, which is what they attempt to do by bringing up comparisons with just about anywhere else in the world. Their pathetic attempts at diversion should be identified for what they are - hasbara propaganda - and dismissed richly with the contempt they deserve.
S for sullying the reputation of the person they are attempting to argue with through ad hominem attacks, using ridiculous terms like antisemitism (which never existed before 1860) or hatred of Jews [as though have any legitimate claim to speak on behalf of all Jews - which clearly they do not].
Returning to blocking, one thing that is absolutely essential is to ensure your computer has the latest and the best available anti-virus and anti-malware software as Israel is investing big-time in illegal cyber warfare activities.

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Ray Kohn replied on

BDS is obviously the best policy. However, the parallels with South Africa only run so far. The Israeli State has quite different foundations and ignoring the religious dimension is unhelpful. The extraordinary proliferation of antisemitic sentiment in 19th & 20th century Europe was fed by an irrational fear of Judaism (viz. George Steiner's 'Bluebeard's Castle'). This culminated in the pogroms of Russia and the Nazi holocaust. One book (thought to be the most read piece of literature other than the Bible), the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, fed the flames.

In Israel, an irrational fear of Arabs has led to the systematic oppression of Palestinians. The mass dissemination of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Arabic fans this irrational fear as the book was the invention of a rabidly antisemitic Russian monk before the 1st World War who wrote that leading Jews meet in secret in order to run the world. The apparent widespread reading of this tract across the Middle East reinforces the view of those in Likud and further right that the driver behind any anti-Israeli moves is religious/antisemitic. There was no such dimension in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

This quasi-religious dimension forms a double lock on attempts to break the Israeli apartheid system. BDS supporters who simply assert that this is not the issue are averting their eyes from what differentiates this apartheid from South Africa's. The search for a Palestinian Mandela who can both lead the oppressed and denounce the fraudulent Protocols before his Israeli audience goes on.

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John Dowdle replied on

The very real problem is that there is no enlightened Israeli F. W. de Klerk.
Please do not mention Netanyahu - that is plain ridiculous.

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Alexa replied on

Please go to the page IPCRI on facebook and see what they're doing to achieve peace and see photos of Ramallah.
There are initiatives out there that are working instead of boycotting which only hurts workers, many of whom are Palestinian. Unless, that is your true goal, to keep people oppressed financially.

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Alexa replied on

Please go to the page IPCRI on facebook and see what they're doing to achieve peace and see photos of Ramallah.
There are initiatives out there that are working instead of boycotting which only hurts workers, many of whom are Palestinian. Unless, that is your true goal, to keep people oppressed financially.

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Anonymous replied on

Alexa, boycott because the liberal options are dead end, cul-de-sacs. The Palestinians have been far too patient as the world watches, and liberals have stood by and done next to nothing in the name of human rights and international law. Boycott because it allows those of us who carry heartache for the plight of the Palestinian people an opportunity to vote with our money. Boycott because we want to see justice in our lifetime. Boycott because we believe that all humans are equal and deserve equal treatment under the law they live under. Boycott because it has been widely demonstrated that colonizer apartheid is unsustainable at best, illegal at worst. Boycott because we want Palestinians to have jobs under a non apartheid government. Did I mention that we want all that soon?

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John Dowdle replied on

Dear Alexa (no surname - why is that, I wonder?),
My goal - along with all the decent people on this planet - is to free the Palestinians from the military and economic oppression of Israel.
At one time, many others - possibly yourself too - worked to end the oppressive apartheid system in South Africa. Now, instead, we find so-called "liberals" supporting apartheid Israel's many crimes against the Palestinian people.
How times change.......

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ben replied on

The comparison is absurd.

Before European colonialism, there had never been white people in what is today South Africa. There had never been dutch-speaking, white, Christian, Europeans. They came as strangers to the land, the local cultures and indigenous peoples. They sought to exploit, civilize, and convert the indigenous peoples. They built a racist regime based on color, not culture or nationality, but color. The lighter the higher your place in society, the darker the lower. Apartheid was cruel, colonial, color-based racism.

Israel and Zionism is nothing like this. First off, there has been a continual Jewish presence in Israel/Palestine for the last 3000 years. There were Jewish sovereignty, revolutions, political and religious movements in Israel/Palestine long before Islam, Christianity, or any Arab cultural or linguistic presence in the area. This does not mean, like some right-wing Jews argue, that Palestinian Arabs are not a people, or have no right to this land or to self-determination. That is NOT my point. The point: Judaism, Jewish culture, the Hebrew language, and Jewish identity is indigenous to Israel/Palestine in a way that white Europeans never belonged to South Africa. Hebrew belongs to this region. Judaism belongs to this region. Jews belong to this region.

Furthermore, Zionism has nothing to do with color-based racism. It bares no resemblance to Apartheid. Israelis are not afraid of brown people. Most Israeli Jews are brown. Israeli Jews are afraid of a Palestinian right of return because of what it would mean for mostly secular Jews to live in a Muslim and Arab majority society. What would it mean for Jews to live as a minority, with not national self-determination, in a society that would be thriving with Jew hatred and religious extremism. Not because Palestinians are brown -- which by the way is false. There are plenty of white Palestinian Arabs.

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Anonymous replied on

Ben, by your logic, wouldn't Christians from any part of the world be able to move to South Africa and claim citizenship, and enforce laws that gave Christians legal benefits over members of other faiths since Christianity is a leading religion there?
What you are saying is apartheid based on skin color is wrong but apartheid based on religion is ok?

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ben replied on

What are you talking about? My logic is that the Jewish people, Jewish culture, the Hebrew language, Jewish religion, etc. are and always have been a part of the Middle East and Israel/Palestine - long before Islam or Christianity existed. Long before there was any Arab cultural presence in Israel/Palestine. Israel/Palestine is the historical birthplace of the Jewish people and there has always been a Jewish community here. So it is impossible to argue that Jews represent a foreign, colonial force in a region that they don't belong in -- like white colonialists in South Africa. White, Christian Europeans in Africa came as strangers and ruled as strangers. This is not the case with Jews in Israel.

Secondly, Israel and Zionism are not based on religion. It's based on nationalism. Zionism was always and for the most part remains a secular, nationalist ideology.

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John Dowdle replied on

Ultimately, all of us human beings are evolved from a tiny handful of people who lived long ago in Africa. That does not mean that we have any kind of entitlement to "own" Africa. The same is true for people in all other parts of the world.
Whatever your religious, ethnic or other beliefs, we are all part of one species: home sapiens sapiens.
The Ashkenazim ruling class in Israel are from Germany. That is what Ashkenazim means in Hebrew. They are Europeans, descended from European women and have no connection with Palestine whatsoever.
The myth of jewish "exile" is just that: a myth. The people who had always lived in what we now know as Palestine were all descended from the ancient Canaanites.
The original occupants still live there today and represent 20 per cent of the population inside Israel, 80 per cent of the population of the West Bank, most of the inhabitants of Gaza and all the other refugee camps in the south west Asian area.
European and North American immigrants to historic Palestine have no more historic claim to the land than they did when they ethnically cleansed indigenous Americans in North, Central and South America.
Professor Ilan Pappe's recent publication "The Idea of Israel" refers to a new form of ideology, which he labels neo-zionism. It is clearly evident that this new form of ideology bears little relationship to the forms of socialist and liberal zionisms of the past and has a lot more to do with the Zabotinsky revisionist form of Zionism but with added orthodoxy thrown in, just to further complicate matters.
All this talk of blood and soil and lebensraum is highly indicative of a mindset we all thought had been defeated long ago. Why do you insist on bringing it up again?

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Anonymous replied on

So if we agree that biology ties people to a land then why did European Jews have any right to expel and kill the people who were already living in the land of Palestine starting in the 1940s? The truth of the matter is that Jews from Palestine are Arab, biologically speaking. That’s why Palestinian Jews look like Arabs; they look like the Christian Arabs and the Muslim Arabs. In fact, these Arab Jews and Christians and Muslims are descended from the Semitic people. And let's face it, Jews have always been a minority across time and place. But in the end, trying to claim your Jewish cousin from Brooklyn with blue eyes, a pink tone in his skin and the bubbe who speaks Yiddish has stronger blood ties to Palestine than the actual people whose grandparents spoke Arabic is quite far fetched. Thank you, however, for demonstrating how one who disagrees with SA apartheid can, at the same time, harbor such backwards views. That was precisely the point of the original article.

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ben in yafo/jaffa replied on

This is just absurd. All of your arguments are absurd.

European Jews were never an indigenous people to Europe. Their religion, rituals, religious language, core cultural texts, and customs were all foreign to Europe. Yiddish literature is a very late development (late 19th, early 20th century). Before then is was considered a low level jargon. There was always a rich Hebrew and Aramaic literary tradition among European Jews, and until the French Revolution, Jews were never integrated into European culture. Numerous genetic studies have found that European Jews are closer related to Iberian (Sephardi) and Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) Jews than their European neighbors. The primary YDNA haplotypes among Ashkenazi Jews are Middle Eastern, and very rare in Europe. Do a short google search, and you will find endless peer-reviewed genetic studies. But this is silly. Identity is not in your blood. Jews are not a race. It doesn't matter who married who, who converted, etc. European Jews maintained a religious, cultural, and linguisitic tradition that came from and remained completely based on the land of Israel.

Regarding Jews from Arab countries. First off, they don't look like Palestinians. They don't identify as Arabs. So stop forcing your ideology onto them. Jews were always second class citizens in Arab countries, and rarely intermarried.

As for skin, hair, and eye color. Have you been to the middle east? Do you know that light skin, blue eyes, and red hair is very common in Syria and Lebanon? Do you know that red hair and blue eyes is not rare among Palestinians? Do you know the light eyes is the stereotype of Druze? Look at Suha Arafat, Yasser Arafat or Fairouz. Why do you all think Arabs are brown with very dark features and Jews are all light?

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John Dowdle replied on

The SA white settlers - like the Ashkenazim settlers in Palestine - had their own language: Afrikaans; indeed, many Dutch, German and Huguenot descendants still speak, read and write in Afrikaans in South Africa today.
European settlers only arrived at the Cape in the 1650s and it is arguable that Jews lived in Palestine a lot longer than that. But it is also the case that the elite sections of the Judaic community left Palestine with the Romans after their empire began to decay and recent mitochondrial DNA research by the University of Huddersfield has revealed that the majority of Ashkenazim are descended from a small number of European women. I believe the word Ashkenazim in Hebrew means German, which is an indicator of their true origin.
The descendants of the Canaanites who subsequently adopted Judaism were left behind after the Romans left and they subsequently converted to Islam. It is evident that the Palestinians who were living on the land for centuries if not millenia are the true descendants of the original indigenous people of the area and not the European non-maternal Jews who subsequently adopted an ethnic cleansing approach towards the Palestinians.
Like former Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, I lived and worked in 1970s apartheid South Africa - with whom the neo-Zionist Ashkenazim had very close ties, even offering them nuclear weapons technology - and I have visited Palestine on a number of occasions. Like Tutu, I too have concluded that what the Israeli regime is doing to the Palestinians is actually far worse than what the Afrikaaners did to the non-whites in apartheid South Africa.
Israeli race laws and their attempts to inoculate Ethiopian Jewish women with birth control solutions indicate quite clearly that the present Israeli regime is just as racist as the white Afrikaaners in apartheid South Africa ever were.
The status of Israeli Sephardim and Mizrachim bears some resemblance to that of "coloureds" in former apartheid South Africa too.