Apartheid & Israel - The Peace FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions:

● Isn't Israel's treatment of the Arabs just as bad as South Africa's

Apartheid?
● Does Israel force Arabs into laborious work, menial labor?
● Is there racist Apartheid in the Middle East?
● Is Mandela a hero of the Free World?
● Did Israel have a special relationship with the Apartheid regime?

Isn't Israel's treatment of the Arabs just as bad as South Africa's

Apartheid?

● Today, within Israel, Jews are a majority, but the Arab minority are
full citizens with voting rights and representation in the government.
Under apartheid black South Africans could not vote and were not
citizens of the country in which they are the overwhelming majority
of the population.

The situation of Palestinians in the territories - won by Israel in a

defensive war forced upon it by its neighbors - is different. The
security requirements of the nation, and a violent insurrection in the
territories, have forced Israel to impose restrictions on Arab residents
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are not necessary inside
Israel's pre-1967 borders. The Palestinians in the territories,
typically, dispute Israel's right to exist whereas blacks did not seek
the destruction of South Africa, only the apartheid regime.

If Israel were to give Palestinians full citizenship, it would mean the

territories had been annexed. No Israeli government has been
prepared to take that step.

Meanwhile, Palestinians from the territories are allowed to work in

Israel and receive similar pay and benefits to their Jewish
counterparts. They are allowed to attend schools and universities.
Palestinians have been given opportunities to run many of their own
affairs. None of this was true for South African blacks.

- from Israel Is Not An Apartheid State, JSource

http://www.peacefaq.com/apartheid.html (1 of 5)8/9/2007 9:52:30 AM

Apartheid & Israel - The Peace FAQ

● Yet Zionism itself, and not only the current policies of the Israeli
government, is constantly accused of being equivalent to apartheid
simply because it represents a national emancipation movement
which differs from others in being Jewish.

- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"

Does Israel force Arabs into laborious work, menial labor?

● "We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South
Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks
are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work, easy and hard,
skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will
not be our homeland"

- David Ben-Gurion in conversation with Musa Alami, 1934

from Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From
Peace to War, London: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 140

Is there racist Apartheid in the Middle East?

● Another myth about Islam is that it promoted equality. In reality

Islam permitted the ultimate inequality--slavery. As Muir says of
Mohammed: "He rivetted the fetter." "There is no obligation
whatever on a Moslem to release his slaves.' Mohammed himself had
slaves--17 men and 11 women.

One of the early Caliphs, Omar "insisted on a medieval Apartheid

with the Arabs as master race."

In subsequent years the Arabs had one of the worst records as

slavers, and this has continued right up till the later years of the 20th
century and may still be going on. Some of the worst feudal regimes
in history were based on Islam as is the present regime in Saudi
Arabia.

- from THE DEAD HAND OF ISLAM, by Colin Maine

● In fact, in an Islamic country, an infidel is a necessary evil, who is

just about tolerated. The dignity of man signified by human rights,
and promoted by bloody revolutions over a period of centuries, is a
piece of sheer nonsense in Islam. It is because a non-Muslim in an

http://www.peacefaq.com/apartheid.html (2 of 5)8/9/2007 9:52:30 AM

Apartheid & Israel - The Peace FAQ

Islamic state is required to pay jaziya, which in the Koranic language

is a Humiliation Tax. In fact, the life of an unbeliever is a series of
humiliations in a Muslim country. He has to wear distinctive clothes
and mark his house to express the unbelief of its dwellers. Muslims
are forbidden to associate with him and attend his matrimonial or
funeral ceremonies. He must not ride horses or bear arms. Since it is
the Islamic way of life, which requires an unbeliever to yield way to
the Muslim when they happen to be walking on the same path, it can
be safely called the forerunner of the South African apartheid.

- from ISLAM and Human Rights, by Anwar Shaikh

Is Mandela a hero of the Free World?

● "MANDELA'S MIDEAST MUDDLE"

by Patrick Goodenough
INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN EMBASSY JERUSALEM
ICEJ NEWS SERVICE
OCT 24, 1997

More than a year ago, on August 19 1996, South African President

Nelson Mandela was due to arrive on a long-awaited visit to Israel.
The trip was postponed because -- we were told -- Mandela's health
at the time was poor.

Since then, however, Mandela has travelled to most corners of the

globe, addressing international gatherings and conducting full state
visits from Britain to Indonesia. This week he visited Israel's
neighbour, Egypt, before heading for a highly controversial visit to
Libya. It's hard to believe any longer that Mandela is not staying
away for political reasons.

His reaction to US opposition to the visit, and those of his somnolent

Foreign Minister, Alfred Nzo, suggest that these two old men are
woefully out of touch with late 20th century reality. Mandela accused
Washington of arrogance for dictating "where we should go or who
our friends should be" Nzo called for an end to UN sanctions against
Libya.

On October 21, the Johannesburg MAIL & GUARDIAN newspaper

published letters on its Internet edition from Libyan exiles, deploring
Mandela's decision to visit. One wrote: "I simply cannot believe that
it is too much to ask of you what you have asked the world to do in
the recent past: boycott tyranny and oppression".

http://www.peacefaq.com/apartheid.html (3 of 5)8/9/2007 9:52:30 AM

Apartheid & Israel - The Peace FAQ

Another called the visit "an insult to Libyan martyrs who have been
hanged publicly by [Muammar] Gaddafi and left to rot in public
squares for days; to the families of Libyans whose bodies were dug
up by his thugs and thrown to the sea for opposing him during their
life; and to the thousands of Libyans who are still in the jails of this
tyrant, subjected to torture on a daily basis for asking nothing more
than what you and the people of South Africa have asked for: to
breathe free in our own land".

The reaction of these dissidents -- shock at Mandela's apparent

blindness to the irony of his stance -- is not new. Many South
Africans with a deep love both for our country and for this one share
their concerns.

To many of us who grew up in the shadow of apartheid, Mandela in

his prison cell were a constant reminder of a future, better South
Africa which we, too, could work towards. But our joy at the
transition when it occurred was tempered by profound misgivings
about the close relations between the ANC and the likes of Libya,
Iran and the PLO.

We hoped the ANC's ties with such dubious allies of the exiled
organisation would diminish once Mandela assumed power, but that
did not happen. His loyalty to old friends appears to have blinded him
to a cold assessment of the damage done to his reputation by images
of him embracing Yasser Arafat and Gaddafi.

Pretoria's shifting policy on the Middle East is cause for deep

misgiving. A case in point was last year's agreement to store Iranian
oil, flying in the face of American appeals for sanctions against
Tehran. (The deal was since aborted, reportedly for reasons
unrelated to US pressure).

Even more disturbing was the admission by former Energy Affairs

Minister, Pik Botha, that nuclear cooperation between the two
countries was on the agenda during his visit to Tehran early last
year. Botha told the writer he had "met with representatives of Iran's
nuclear research industry" whom he said were "engaged in research
and the peaceful application of nuclear power"

Yet Iran's attempts to buy nuclear know-how from China, North

Korea and former Soviet republics have triggered alarms among
intelligence services around the world. In the light of this, Botha's
insistence in response to my queries that "under no circumstances
will South Africa become involved in any form of cooperation in
violation of its obligations and responsibilities in terms of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty"sounded naive at best -- if not downright
untrue.

If Mandela is unaware of the involvement in terrorism of Tripoli and

http://www.peacefaq.com/apartheid.html (4 of 5)8/9/2007 9:52:30 AM

Apartheid & Israel - The Peace FAQ

Tehran, he is clearly not being properly advised by Nzo (who was

himself warmly received in Tehran in October 1994).

When it comes to Arafat, one wonders what Mandela sees to talk

about with a man not just with a history of personal responsibility for
terrorism, but who even now oversees a security force which
kidnaps, tortures and kills opponents in the areas under his
authority. At a time when South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation
Commission is hearing gruesome evidence of "dirty tricks"activities
carried out by operatives of the apartheid state, doesn't it strike
Mandela as ironic that his government's foreign policy transforms the
perpetrators of similar crimes into diplomatic and trading partners?

Should he ever decide indeed to visit Israel, Mandela will have to

bear in mind that, by legitimising the tyrants in Tripoli, Gaza and
Tehran, he has relinquished any right to advise Israelis on matters
which could affect the very survival of the Jewish state.

http://www.peacefaq.com/apartheid.html (5 of 5)8/9/2007 9:52:30 AM