- The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments
of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of
international pressure--in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s.
Over the past six months a similar movement has taken shape, this time
aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation.
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- Divestment from apartheid South Africa was fought by
ordinary people at the grassroots. Faith-based leaders informed their followers,
union members pressured their companies' stockholders and consumers questioned
their store owners. Students played an especially important role by compelling
universities to change their portfolios. Eventually, institutions pulled
the financial plug, and the South African government thought twice about
its policies.
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- Similar moral and financial pressures on Israel are being
mustered one person at a time. Students on more than forty US campuses
are demanding a review of university investments in Israeli companies as
well as in firms doing major business in Israel. From Berkeley to Ann Arbor,
city councils have debated municipal divestment measures.
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- These tactics are not the only parallels to the struggle
against apartheid. Yesterday's South African township dwellers can tell
you about today's life in the occupied territories. To travel only blocks
in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier.
More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime
earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor
to work in Israel's cities, but their luck runs out when security closes
all checkpoints, paralyzing an entire people. The indignities, dependence
and anger are all too familiar.
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- Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels
to what we went through. Ronnie Kasrils and Max Ozinsky, two Jewish heroes
of the antiapartheid struggle, recently published a letter titled "Not
in My Name." Signed by several hundred other prominent Jewish South
Africans, the letter drew an explicit analogy between apartheid and current
Israeli policies. Mark Mathabane and Nelson Mandela have also pointed out
the relevance of the South African experience.
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- To criticize the occupation is not to overlook Israel's
unique strengths, just as protesting the Vietnam War did not imply ignoring
the distinct freedoms and humanitarian accomplishments of the United States.
In a region where repressive governments and unjust policies are the norm,
Israel is certainly more democratic than its neighbors. This does not make
dismantling the settlements any less a priority. Divestment from apartheid
South Africa was certainly no less justified because there was repression
elsewhere on the African continent. Aggression is no more palatable in
the hands of a democratic power. Territorial ambition is equally illegal
whether it occurs in slow motion, as with the Israeli settlers in the occupied
territories, or in blitzkrieg fashion, as with the Iraqi tanks in Kuwait.
The United States has a distinct responsibility to intervene in atrocities
committed by its client states, and since Israel is the single largest
recipient of US arms and foreign aid, an end to the occupation should be
a top concern of all Americans.
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- Almost instinctively, the Jewish people have always been
on the side of the voiceless. In their history, there is painful memory
of massive roundups, house demolitions and collective punishment. In their
scripture, there is acute empathy for the disfranchised. The occupation
represents a dangerous and selective amnesia of the persecution from which
these traditions were born.
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- Not everyone has forgotten, including some within the
military. The growing Israeli refusenik movement evokes the small anticonscription
drive that helped turn the tide in apartheid South Africa. Several hundred
decorated Israeli officers have refused to perform military service in
the occupied territories. Those not already in prison have taken their
message on the road to US synagogues and campuses, rightly arguing that
Israel needs security, but that it will never have it as an occupying power.
More than thirty-five new settlements have been constructed in the past
year. Each one is a step away from the safety deserved by the Israelis,
and two steps away from the justice owed to the Palestinians.
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- If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral
force and international pressure will have to be just as determined. The
current divestment effort is the first, though certainly not the only,
necessary move in that direction.
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- © 2002 The Nation Company
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- Bishop Desmond Tutu Says Americans Afraid
of Jewish Lobby
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- Bishop Desmond Tutu: "But you know as well as I
do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the
US], and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if
the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the
madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating
with the apartheid government on security measures?"
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- "People are scared in this country [the US], to
say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful.
Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral
universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer
exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were
all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust."
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- Desmond Tutu Monday April 29, 2002 The Guardian
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- http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020715&s=tutu
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