Friday, December 30, 2011

RANT: Apartheid South Africa A Mirror to Israel

I'm on an anti-Israel offensive today. Just minutes after reading that the IDF launched a deadly attack on Gaza, my anger at this rogue state has just gone through the roof.

There they go again- the Big Bully Israel punching way above its weight, no doubt largely thanks to the massive support of the United States and the vociferous pro-Israel lobby in Washington D.C.

I am often amazed at how people seem so appalled when Israel is called an apartheid state. They get seduced by Israel's patina of 'democracy' (as long as you don't live in the occupied territories), the 'sophistication' of Tel Aviv (just as Johannesburg was back in the 1980s) and its (mostly) white and European-looking population. Yes, that does help in the United States and Europe.

This was South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s:
  • 'Bantustans' ("homelands") for the 'others'
  • laws and regulations along racial lines
  • an 'enemy within' that had to be brutally contained
  • deep-seated paranoia
  • a militarized state
  • a much-feared secret service
  • death squads mandated by government to 'eliminate terrorist threats'
  • endless and very 'justifiable' wars/ skirmishes with or raids on neighbours
  • a 'beacon of hope' in a region of dictators and 'failed states'
  • mandatory conscription
  • the fervent support of Washington D.C. and many in the West
  • the condemnation of most of the rest of the world
That was South Africa during the height of apartheid.

Sound familiar? Hang on, doesn't this all sound very much like Israel today?! Yes, it most certainly does.

Yet calling Israel an apartheid state (which it most certainly is) is hysterically attacked as being 'anti-Semetic' (which it need not be, convenient as that attack may be). The 'anti-Jew' counter-attack by Israeli and Zionist apologists is so old, so tired and so knee-jerk, it's beyond reproach. Yawn.

No, I'm just anti-apartheid and oppression of human rights, and I don't like bullies, Israel.

This image pretty much says it all, whether one likes it or not:


Do you get my point?


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