Meshoe: To call Israel an apartheid state patently untrue

SUZANNE BELLING

PHOTOGRAPH SUPPLIED

He was speaking during an international online webinar during Israel Apartheid Week arranged by the Zionist Federation of the United Kingdom (Young Adults Division) in association with Deisi and the SA Zionist Federation. Others online were Mark Hyman, vice-chairman of Deisi, Benji Shulman of the SAZF and Royi Gutkin, director of Young Adults of the Zionist Federation of the UK.

The ACDP has been in the forefront of waging war against “the propaganda and hatred of anti-Zionist groups who have been lying to the public saying that Israel is an apartheid state”, Meshoe said.

He said he had challenged many of these propagandists to go with him to Israel, but they refused because they knew Israel, the only democratic country in the Middle East, was not an apartheid state.

Deisi, he said, was “totally opposed to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that seeks to isolate Israel with the ultimate goal of annihilating her”. It challenged those who were deceived into believing the lie that Israel was an apartheid state and oppressed the Palestinian people.

Apartheid had been a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the ruling National Party government from 1948 to 1994.

“What made apartheid different from segregation and racial hatred that have occurred in other countries is the systematic way in which the National Party government formalised it and enforced it through the law.”

The South African Parliament passed many laws to entrench apartheid in the country. Israel had no such laws entrenching racial, religious or cultural separation.

Meshoe referred to what he termed the 10 pillars of apartheid, laws that entrenched it – the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949; The Immorality Act, 1957; the Group Areas Act, 1950; the Natives Act (Abolition of Passes and Co-Ordination of Documents) Act, 1952; The Bantu Education Act, 1953; The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, 1953; The Natives (Prohibition of Interdicts) Act, 1956; The Extension of University Education Act,1959; The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act, 1959; and The Bantu Homelands Act,1970.

Apartheid was an evil system that denied black people basic human rights in their country of birth.

Anti-Israel propagandists and “hateful liars”, with their false allegations, minimised the pain that millions of black South Africans suffered under apartheid.

Arabs and Palestinians living in Israel, enjoyed rights that black people did not enjoy in South Africa during all the years of apartheid.

“As a person who has visited Israel about 13 times, I have not seen anything that can be compared to apartheid South Africa or that falls within the international definition of apartheid,” he said.

Non-Jewish citizens participated freely in the economy and held influential positions. People of different racial, religious and cultural groups used the same modes of transportation, schools, facilities and amenities without any restrictions.

“The closest thing to apartheid I have been able to find in the Middle East is the way Lebanon has been treating Palestinian refugees who have been living in refugee camps since the 1940s and 1950s without many fundamental basic human rights.”

The hypocrisy and double standards applied by the international community and the media against Israel had to be exposed and condemned, he insisted.

“There is a wicked agenda against the State of Israel. May we not remain ignorant to this agenda but be bold and courageous to stand up in defence of the truth and to be quiet no more.”