Apartheid-era South Africa needed the black population to exploit the treasure chest of minerals and the country's agricultural land. The Palestinians, as distinct from Israeli-Arabs, seem to no longer play a role at all in Israel's society or economy in this age of Chinese and Thai guest workers, apart from as suicide-bombers, hence the "apartheid" wall. Two peoples, two states - why not?
Prof Asher Susser, who heads the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University has been criticising the comparison and the academic boycott mooted in a letter to the Irish Times signed by sixty-one academics. These included TCD law lecturer, Senate candidate and Mary Robinson wannabe Ivana Bacik, known at Trinity as "Vlad the Impaler", one lecturer at UCC who was convicted of storing explosives for the IRA in England and some acquaintances of mine. Notable by their absence was anybody with a professional specialisation in international relations or a publications record on the Middle East like, Rory Miller at KCL, Michael Cox or Fred Halliday at the LSE, Eunan O'Halpin at Trinity or others.
"I was born in South Africa . I know what apartheid is. Israel is not an apartheid state. I lived in an apartheid state and left it because it was an apartheid state, as did many others. The comparison is either ignorant, propagandistic, or both combined."
Any attempt to equate the treatment of Palestinians by Israel with the position of black people under apartheid was completely misguided: "It is simply, absolutely incorrect. How come Palestinians in Israel are members of our parliament? How come they are professors in our universities? How come they are treated in the hospitals where everybody else is treated? If anybody knew a word about South Africa , that was never the case, ever, anywhere in South Africa . The whites and blacks didn't ride the same buses, didn't ride the same trains, didn't sit in the same theatres, couldn't sit on the same benches in the park."
Comments