In recent months there is a growing tendency among opponents of Israeli oppression and defenders of Palestinian rights to refer to Israeli policy towards the Palestinians as “apartheid”… I would like to warn against an unthinking use of this misleading analogy between Israeli policy and that of the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa. It is theoretically false and politically harmful.
IOA Editor: This very important discussion of the similarities and differences between the Occupation and Apartheid, originally published in 2004, is again timely, in view of recent commentaries, including on the IOA.
Attorney Daniel Machover from London is one of the best known figures in the international group of lawyers and pro-Palestinian activists trying to put IDF officers on trial in European countries for alleged war crimes… Anyone surprised by the activities of the Israeli-born lawyer does not know his family history. His parents, radical left-wing activists, left Israel in 1968… His father, Moshe Machover, was… one of the founders of the Matzpen movement.
Arab and Israeli socialists have a special historical responsibility. A revolution does not happen by itself; and when it does break out it can take a disastrous turn if it is hijacked by regressive forces. In order to ensure that an Arab revolution can resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the benign way envisaged here (along with the other great problems of the region), we must start working and organising now in a democratic and non-sectarian way. We must closely coordinate our thinking, strategy and activity; and form organisational links on a regional scale, prefiguring the future in the present.
How should we think about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? Please note: how comes before what. Before coming to any substantive conclusions – certainly before taking sides – we must be clear as to how the issue ought to be approached. It would be a mistake to start in normative mode. A moral value judgment must be made: I would certainly not advocate avoiding it. But we must not start with moral value judgments. Assigning blame for atrocities is not a good starting point. In any violent conflict, both sides may – and often do – commit hideous atrocities: wantonly kill and maim unarmed innocent people, destroy their homes, rob them of livelihood. And of course all these atrocities must be condemned.
