arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

AGAINST ISRAELI APARTHEID
Desmond Tutu and Ian Urbina (07/02)

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.

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.

Similar moral and financial pressures on Israel are being mustered one person at a time. Students on more than 40 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.

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.

Many South Africans are beginning to recognize the parallels to what we went through. Ronnie Kasrils and Max Ozinsky, two Jewish heroes of the anti-apartheid 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.

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.

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.

Not everyone has forgotten, including some within the military. The growing Israeli refusenik movement evokes the small anti-conscription 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 35 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.

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.

VOUS AVEZ DIT « JUDEO-NAZIS » ?
25 janvier (enquête publiée par le quotidien Haaretz le 23 janvier sous le titre « Judéo-Nazis ») – « Même les gauchistes les plus radicaux ressentaient un malaise quand le
professeur Yeshayahou Leibowitz traitait les colons de "judeo-nazis". Moins
de 30 ans plus tard, ses mots sont devenus realite avec un graffiti sur un
mur de l'enclave juive de Hebron.

VOUS AVEZ DIT « JUDEO-NAZIS » ?
Il y a quelques semaines, le photographe
Shabtai Gold a trouve et photographie la phrase ecrite sur un mur de
l'enclave : "les Arabes au crematoire", a cote d'une etoile de David.
Depuis, quelqu'un a efface l'inscription terrible. Non loin de la, sur un
autre mur, quelqu'un a ecrit : "Arabes = sous-hommes".

Ce genre de graffiti fait flores dans les rues de Jerusalem. Des militants
de gauche se sont rendu compte que ces insultes demeuraient longtemps sur
les murs, alors, pour accelerer l'action de la ville contre les graffitis,
ils ont trouve une solution glacante mais efficace : ils y ajoutent une
croix gammee.

Comme dans chaque cas ou l'on tente de lier des phenomenes locaux a la
shoah, la publication dans ces colonnes, le 31 decembre dernier, d'extraits
d'une petition initiee par des survivants de la shoah a provoque les
protestations d'organisations de survivants.

Mais la photo de Hebron ne faitqu'amplifier le message de la petition, dont le texte complet parait dans
l'edition d'Haaretz d'aujourd'hui. La phrase "les lecons de la shoah doivent
etre un code culturel pour l'education aux valeurs humanistes, a la
democratie, aux droits de l'homme, a la tolerance et contre le racisme et
les ideologies totalitaires" acquiert une signification supplementaire a la
lumiere de la lettre envoyee par Y., un conscrit en poste depuis cinq mois a
Hebron :

"Je veux que je vous ayez connaissance d'une des premieres experiences que
j'ai vecues a Hebron, pendant la deuxieme semaine de mon service dans la
ville", ecrit-il. "Alors que je montais la garde devant la soukka (cabane
provisoire montee pendant la fete juive de Soukkot, ndt), rue David
Hamelekh, pres de la place Gross, deux enfants arabes sont sortis de la
casbah. Sept fideles qui se trouvaient a l'interieur de la soukka se sont
jetes sur eux, et mes camarades et moi avons du les separer. La melee a été
dure, et nous avons tous recu des coups de poing dans la figure et ailleurs
de la part des colons, qui par ailleurs hurlaient et nous insultaient. Ceux
qui ont ete le plus victimes de violences et d'injures ont ete les policiers
en faction dans la ville. Les cibles principales des colons etaient les
Druzes et les Bedouins, ainsi que les volontaires de la Presence
Internationale a Hebron. J'ai du intervenir un nombre incalculable de fois
pour m'interposer entre eux et les colons." Les violences, le vandalisme et
les injures racistes ne representent qu'une goutte d'eau par rapport a ce
que les Arabes de Hebron subissent quotidiennement. Ces actions ont fait de
nous, les combattants, non plus une force chargee de proteger les Juifs des
assaillants arabes, mais une force qui protege les Arabes des Juifs. J'ai
souvent entendu des colons se plaindre que nous les empechions de battre des
Arabes, de penetrer dans leurs magasins et de se livrer au vandalisme.
Ainsi, disent-ils, nous ne protegeons pas les interets juifs a Hebron. Et
moi, pauvre innocent, qui croyais que ma tache etait de faire respecter la
loi israelienne dans la ville."

(traduction Les Amis de La Paix Maintenant - CAPJPO)
informez-vous

http://www.paixjusteauproche-orient.asso.fr/main.php

http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/

http://www.solidarite-palestine.org