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Apartheid
is an emotive term. Left political activists are sometimes
accused of flinging it with abandon at states not
deserving of the jibe, while those within the establishment
eager to conceal inequality and discrimination try
to dismiss the term as nothing other than propagandist
invective lacking in all serious intellectual merit.
On reflection it could be argued that apartheid of
one sort or another operates throughout and across
societies, as much at the micro level as at the macro.
The Stormont Government for much of its existence
- despite the protestations of Ruth Dudley Edwards
in a recent critique of Gerry Adams - operated a type
of apartheid, treating nationalists as second class
citizens. In Crumlin Road Prison in the 1970s republican
prisoners employed a form of apartheid against those
of their comrades who were deemed to have 'broke'
under interrogation in the hands of the RUC, hands
that were not known for their velvet gloves. The unfortunate
prisoners were herded into a section of the canteen
ever after referred to as the 'back table'. Also in
Long Kesh during internment there was a cage set up
for those internees - Cage 8 - in which were housed
those republicans who had been isolated from the main
body for one reason or another.
Apartheid,
like fascism, as a typology is positional rather than
fixed in terms of meaning and application. Often it
seems to function as a singular rhetorical mechanism
or as an element in a wider discursive strategy. Either
way its purpose is to gain advantage for one position
over another in a field of conflict where language
performs the task that is the property of shock troops
on a conventional military battlefield. Given such
broader or even diluted usage of meaning when the
term is currently used in political discourse, those
hearing it do not always view it as being put forth
as a genuine form of regime classification.
And
then someone like Uri Davis comes along and inserts
a clear firewall between apartheid as a rhetorical
device and apartheid as a practice pursued and implemented
with ruthlessness by a government intent on maintaining
privilege based on division and hierarchy. In his
analytical framework the term 'apartheid' signifies
the policies of the Israeli state as employed against
Palestinians. Davis is so alert to the disadvantages
that accrue from misappropriating some terms and relocating
them in a different setting - he always cautions against
a comparison of the Israeli state with nazism - that
'apartheid' is obviously not a term that he would
pick up lightly, the nearest available stone to be
hurled as part of an intellectual or discursive intifada
and forgotten about as soon as it either hits or misses
its target.
When
the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Committee hosted
a lecture by Uri Davis at the Peter Frogatt Centre
in Queen’s University - 'Is there a case for
a boycott of Israel?' - those in the Belfast public
who were inclined to turn up were treated to a devastating
critique of a state that at best can only be described
in Ted Honderich’s terms as a ‘hierarchic
democracy‘. Other less anodyne adjectives quickly
leap to mind.
While
a long time campaign activist Uri Davis, who describes
himself as a Palestinian Jew, has arguably come to
public prominence as a result of his book, Israel:
An Apartheid State. He is a founder of the Movement
Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine and presently
serves the body in the capacity of chair. Through
his involvement in Fatah’s political party, he
is an ‘anti-militarist’ member of the PLO
who serves as an observer member of the Palestine
National Council.
His
outlook on life and his passionate commitment to social
justice did not develop in some philosophical ivory
tower stripped of any practical context. All his mother's
family were victims of the Holocaust in the wake of
the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. These terrible
happenings have not given way to some form of anti-humanist
ideology which then proceeds to drain the considerable
humanitarian reservoir from which he draws his moral
strength. This can be seen in his abhorrence of attacks
on Israeli civilians. ‘I do not accept revenge
as a basis for political action and have no problem
adding my name to the voices condemning any actions
targeting civilians.’
His
defence of civilian rights against those determined
to kill them and his anti-militarism do not detract
from his readiness to accept the legitimacy of armed
struggle. The Israeli state is the ‘first party
guilty of terrorist violence’, which leads him
to a position of recognising ‘the right to use
force in certain instances, in armed resistance, which
is legal in international law. It allows armed resistance,
the targeting of the opposite party in uniform.’
But
the mainstay of his offensive against the Israeli
state is that - similar to 'white South Africa' it
is an apartheid state, remaining the only such one
in the UN. Apartheid is a regime which creates legal
process and acts of parliament which compel people
to make criminal and racist choices over humanitarian
ones. For example, in South Africa 84% of the land
was for whites only. In Israel 93 % is for Jews.
In
his book he appraised matters as follows:
In
the case of Israel, Zionist apartheid is applied
under the categories of 'Jew' versus 'non-Jew'.
Of the almost three million non-Jewish Palestinian
Arabs who are today entitled, under the constitutional
stipulations of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, to Israeli
citizenship, less than 25 per cent (approximately
700,000 persons) are Israeli citizens. Under the
Absentee Property Law (1950), the state of Israel
has similarly denationalized 75 per cent of its
non-Jewish Palestinian Arab inhabitants (over two
million persons classified as 'absentees'). However,
having classified them as 'absentees' in the eyes
of the law, it has thereby not only defined them
as aliens in their own homeland, but has cast them
outside legal existence altogether.
The
argument that Israel is the only democracy in the
Middle East is 'a travesty'. He contends that for
those victimised by Israel apartheid the effects are
much worse than the victims of the phenomenon in South
Africa, in particular in the areas of land and water.
But because petty apartheid does not exist - segregated
buses and park benches - this helps disguise the essence
of Israeli apartheid and allows Israeli propagandists
to deny that their government oversees the institutionalisation
of an apartheid regime.
Not
content to only write about such matters he has thrown
his weight behind the international boycott campaign
against Israel aimed at forcing it to abide by more
than 80 UN resolutions. He argues forcefully for economic
sanctions against and financial disinvestment from
Israel and for the instruments of international law
to be used ‘to limit the capacity of the government
of Israel to inflict illegal acts.’ His hopes
for the future are sustained by the ‘enormous
encouragement’ arising from what he sees as the
success of the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa
and ‘the achievement of the indigenous peoples
of South Africa led by the ANC.’
On
the issue of US support for the Israeli state he believes
this can be traced to a US perception of Israel as
a strategic asset and one which it is determined to
maintain through massive financial and military backing.
Such an approach he describes as ‘extremely destructive.’
At the present juncture, the matter is exacerbated
by the likelihood of war on Iraq. This war will provide
the necessary cover for Israel as it sets about completing
the unfinished business of 1947-48. Already, under
the slogan ’Jordan is Palestine - Transfer’,
a practice of ethnic cleansing is in place which aims
at expunging the Palestinians from their homeland.
Consequently, there is a situation of ‘great
urgency‘. He fears a repeat of the Sabra and
Shatila massacre and feels that the presence of journalists
and international volunteers may act as a foil to
this. An indication of just how potentially limiting
on Israeli activity such presence can actually be
was the deliberate attempt made to target and intimidate
Caoimhe Butterly and her colleagues. In the view of
Uri Davis, the Israeli state does not want witnesses
to the atrocities it has in mind for areas like Jenin
and the West Bank.
Listening
to the views expressed by this remarkable man in the
relative safety of the Peter Frogatt Centre, the two
words that came to mind were ‘moral courage.’
To still live in Israel and hold the views that he
does cannot be easy. The only aspect of the evening
that I was sceptical about was his understating of
the hostility that he must surely face as a consequence
of his views. A combination of modesty and a desire
to see the spotlight of public concern maintained
squarely on the Palestinians rather than himself perhaps
explains this. A brave man with strong views, his
testimony allows those of us not in his shoes to see
what ‘courageous and imaginative’ - a term
overused to the point of vacuity in our own conflict
- really means.
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