Israel’s here to stay. Put it in your pipe and smoke it

DAVID SAKS

Assiduous lobbying aimed at persuading the ANC to declare Hamas to be a fellow liberation movement with essentially the same legitimate goals as its own had been during the anti-apartheid struggle, have long been taking place behind the scenes.Assiduous

Whether this will help to legitimise Hamas on the international stage, or whether in fact the net result will be to further diminish South Africa’s standing as a credible moral voice, remains to be seen.

Many see the ANC’s enthusiastic embrace of a movement that has never disguised its Islamic fundamentalist aims and the methods of barbarism it intends employing to achieve them as just the latest stage in post-apartheid South Africa’s sorry decline into “rogue democracy” status.

That term was coined a few years ago, with specific reference to South Africa, to describe a country that abides by democratic norms and standards at home, but in its foreign policy tends to side with regimes that are anything but democratic.

Obvious instances where South Africa has earned for itself this ignoble title would include its support for the Mugabestan over the Limpopo, the refusal on three separate occasions to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama and this year’s Omar al-Bashir fiasco, where someone wanted on multiple counts of crimes against humanity was hustled to safety in open defiance of a High Court ruling. 

The question does arise as to why so much effort has been expended, locally and abroad, to bring this country onside in the current political-diplomatic war against Israel. To that, the answer must be that South Africa is seen as being key to pushing the “Israel = Apartheid” analogy; if South Africans, who actually experienced apartheid, adjudge Israel to be an apartheid state, then what more is there to argue about?

Once the “apartheid” smear has been broadly accepted, it is then believed that just as apartheid South Africa was brought to its knees by international sanctions, boycotts and other measures aimed at isolating it, so can the “illegitimate” Israel regime be forced out of existence and the land returned to its rightful Muslim Arab owners.

How justified, however, is the optimism felt by those who see the “Apartheid Israel” campaign as the key to that state’s ultimate demise? Objectively speaking, they would in fact appear to be going up a blind alley.

Firstly, sanctions were just one of the factors that brought white minority rule to an end in this country. That apartheid’s final demise occurred at the same time as the collapse of the Soviet Union, which effectively constituted the death blow to Communism as a credible political ideology, is significant.

Had this not been the case, white South Africa would have clung on to power at any cost rather than allow a Communist regime to take over.

Then there is the reality that by the late 1980s, the practical failure of the apartheid system was so apparent that even its architects realised that a whole new system of control had to be put in place.

In my own view, the greatest push factor was the internal resistance of the majority population – strikes, consumer boycotts, increased instances of violent attacks by the underground resistance and the failure of successive States of Emergency to quell the mounting popular defiance essentially forced the ruling party to unban the ANC, release its leaders and submit to a process of negotiations.

Let it not be forgotten, too, that the vision of the liberation movements for a democratic, non-racial South Africa was decisive in allaying white fears, so that a large majority of whites became reconciled to a future for themselves in a country that belonged “to all who live in it”.

Can anyone imagine whites ceding power to those espousing a black nationalist version of the Hamas Charter or Palestine National Covenant?

Finally, it surely must count for something that Israel is not, in fact, an apartheid state, and can demonstrate as much to those willing to listen. 

For all the triumphalist rhetoric by the boycott lobby, one is struck by how little it has actually achieved in concrete terms up until now. Indeed, the past decade or so since the boycott movement really got underway, the Israeli economy has grown by leaps and bounds, with trade relationships with all the world’s major economic players expanding dramatically.

Remember, too, that apartheid South Africa had no trade ties with the Soviet Union (and therefore all the East and Central European states under its sway), India or China.

Israel, by contrast, has strong and rapidly growing relationships with these countries, the last two of which have emerged as economic superpowers.

The current evidence, therefore, suggests that the notion of Israel’s being doomed to suffer the fate of apartheid South Africa appears to be no more than wishful thinking on the part of those unable to accept the existence of a Jewish State.

This being said, the pernicious drip-drip effect of constant invective to which Israel is being subjected to in innumerable forums, from the United Nations downwards, may well be creating a climate where one day, such a witch hunt may start to make headway.