by davidrobertlewis -

Pig Wars, Woolworths, BDS

FIRST there were the fatwas and pronouncements by Islamic scholars on the status of Woolworths in the global BDS movement. Then well-heeled young Muslim students staged a bizarre flash-mob event, consisting of coordinated dance and movement while shouting Pro-Palestinian slogans. Then the combined sit-ins by SACP and BDS members, and now the latest round involving COSAS and a badly executed pig.

cosasAlthough Woolworths stocks less than 0.1% products sourced in Israel, the high-end retailer has come under fire by youth groups and students who wish to see Israel replaced by an Islamic republic under the Caliphate.*

The recent COSAS porker incident, (what about cruelty to animals?) involved a failed attempt to contaminate a “kosher” meat section of an outlet in Sea Point, frequented by Jews, and marks a strange new turn in the campaign.

If anything, COSAS has merely demonstrated the troublesome nature of competing dichotomies in the Middle East.

It is one thing to target so-called ‘Israel Made’ goods, it is quite another thing entirely to black-list Kosher products eaten by Jews, forcing Woolworths to also recall Halaal products. Similar dietary laws apply to both groups and many of the products affected have duel labeling.

“Woolworths is appalled by this incident. Placing a pigs head in our store is unacceptable and offensive to our employees and customers, including Jewish and Muslim employees and customers” according to Woolworths Group Director of Retail Operations Paula Disberry

“We will destroy any halaal products that may be affected and take any other appropriate measures.” she said.

The resulting misadventure, in essence the expose of the culinary habits of rival and competing religions, and the rules surrounding kashrut and halaal produce, signals a troubling escalation, and we have surely not seen the end of it — over 40 BDS members were arrested over the weekend for creating a public nuisance in a campaign endorsed by SACP Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande and struggle luminary Denis Goldberg.

While Goldberg has criticised the SAJBD for not taking a stand on apartheid, it should be noted this position was also common to the MJC which refused to demand an inquiry into the death of Iman Haron.  Muslim support for apartheid as recorded in the TRC Final Report, is thus also part of the broader picture relating to BDS’s political project — the revision of South African history, and the relocation of apartheid to the Middle East in a short-circuiting of debate that avoids crucial questions regarding a solution.

The Woolworths ruckus may seem opportunistic and ill-considered, given that other retailers such as Pick ‘n Pay and Shoprite have more exposure to Israeli produce.

Then there are the uncomfortable questions which need to be posed regarding Israel’s many BEE deals with the ANC ruling party.

Remgro, a South African industrial conglomerate, which is also a large investor in Kagiso and Sabido, own several Israeli equity and IT firms, including Veritas Venture Partners and Fring.

Naspers which has ties with Remgro, recently bought Similarweb, an Israeli IT firm.

(*Certainly, the nuanced bipartisan and non-sectarian secular views of the late Nelson Mandela relating to a two-state solution and the 1967 borders, do not make for a pithy slogan, as those waving around the Jordanian flag and shouting: Free Palestine! The paradox of support for another Palestinian state while there is a war against a renegade Islamic State has also been remarked upon.)

by davidrobertlewis -

Shoot the Jew, or shoot the Gogo?

WHEN Jean Paul Sartre wrote his seminal work, ‘Anti-Semite and Jew – an exploration of the etiology of hatred’, it was shortly after the liberation of Paris, Sartre had noticed that in discussions about postwar France, “the imminent return of French Jews deported by the Nazis was never mentioned …. Some of the speakers, he guessed, were not pleased by the prospect; others, friends of the Jews, thought it best to he silent. (Neither they nor Sartre knew how many of the deported Jews would never return.) Thinking about these discussions, Sartre decided to write a critique of anti-Semitism. ”1 

In critiquing Rebecca Hodes opinion piece on the recent events surrounding the singing of “Dubul’ iJuda/Shoot the Jew”, Wits SRC deputy president Tokelo Nhlapo ignores the problems of stigma raised by Hodes while pursuing an offensive anti-Semitic inquiry on the issue of race identity: Does the Jew exist, and who exactly is a Jew?

“I don’t understand how black people in this country have experienced Jews differently from other whites,” writes Nhlapo in the Daily Maverick “Put simply, we experience Jews first as whites, then as Jews. “ he says, defending the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign and its troubling resort to Dubul’ iJuda/Shoot the Jew – merely an “unfortunate” incident which “diverts attention from the real issue at hand: the contention that Israel is a racist, colonial Apartheid state in the name of the Jew.”

533712_539912536019611_1400565373_n-382x570Nhlapo could do well to read Sartre, since his work serves as a prelude to the equally troubling question of existence, in this case, the imminent return of the Jews of District Six. A recent exhibition by the South African Jewish Museum paid homage to the contribution of South Africa’s black Jews — the Jews of District Six — expelled from a community which once represented a mosaic of culture and cross-pollination. Rendered all but invisible by the apartheid government, and persecuted today by ideologues like Nhlopo who would have every Jew conform to a normative model of Judaism in which the only Jews with acceptable identities are European, and the only Jews considered in possession of religion are the Orthodox.

The problem of South Africa’s Jewish assimilados, many of whom were assimilated into the coloured community, and who still identify as Jews while practicing a variety of faiths, are not wished away by a simplistic narrative which views the Jew as the oppressor and the Palestinians as the oppressed. It is thus dangerous to make such assumptions and associations, in articulating our history of struggle as a nation by linking  with a solidarity campaign that opposes the history of Jews living in Israel, many of whom are as black as Nhlapo, and who are as much a part of African history as black people living in Europe are a part of European history.

Let us not make the further error of forgetting all the Arab Jews, some 50% of Israeli’s, and those Arabian refugees, deported to Israel after 1948 or exiled from North Africa and the Arab States, and Southern Africa’s own Lemba people, a tribal group living in Zimbabwe and Limpopo who identify as Jews.

The ongoing middle east conflict, and its patina of similarity with the South African experience, does not allow for essentialist notions of struggle, and while one may sympathise with the Palestinian cause and the manner in which the quest for identity / self-identity is being raised by those seeking out the holy land as a focus point, can one do so without also posing the equally obnoxious question – do Palestinians exist and who exactly is a Palestinian? 

Such inquiries if they do not result in violence because of the ongoing blood libel against Jews by the Christian Church and Islam’s ever-present vendetta against Israel,  invariably produce an uncomfortable impasse — the answer usually presented in the form of  a composite and patchwork view of idealised historical communities with tribal and religious affiliations to the holy land, all of whom need to be accommodated under a future political dispensation.

My own Jewish bobba, Fanny Katsef, the product of refugees from Eastern Europe spent most of her life escaping the Nazis and “blending in”, classified as white, but passing as coloured. Along with so many working class from Woodstock, Maitland and Salt River, she had both a white card and the card enumerated by people like A Abdurahmen and C Vogel who elaborated coloured identity according to the discourse of fraternization and assimilation deployed by the apartheid government in its pseudo-scientific attempt to remove undesirables from the white race.

Would Nhlapo wish that people chant “Kill the Gogo?” In his reductionist efforts to save the Palestinian struggle and its demand for self-determination and autonomy, the university graduate fails miserably.  In not relating the problems presented by competing nationalisms and ethnic identities, the so-called colonial project, Nhlapo merely conveys his own ignorance of the subject matter. When people resort to the self-same logic of every brute who ever wished to persecute a minority group, first, by removing us from history, then by denying our common humanity, can one really blame those “unjust” Jews who support Israel, separating those who seek justice from those who at the face of it, do not, even though their religion may demand it?

Israel was created so that the Jews would no longer be treated as the objects of political intrigue but rather the subject of human rights. If entertaining a world in which “Zionism” exists alongside “Hamasism” makes one a collaborator in Nhlapo’s view, then so be it.

1 Michael Walzer, in preface to Anti-Semite and Jew, An exploration of the Etoilogy of Hate, Schocken Books Inc. 1948

by davidrobertlewis -

Cape Town World Music Festival Boycott

The Cape Town World Music Festival (CWM Festival) has begun in the face of a call to boycott the festival. The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) has released a statement saying “We have recently learned that the Cape Town World Music Festival  has crossed and violated the international-boycott-of-Israel-picket-line …Performing on a platform sponsored by Apartheid South Africa, or with a band from Apartheid South Africa, during the 1980s was to be on the wrong side of history. Today, performing on a platform sponsored by Israel, or with a band from Israel, is choosing to be on the wrong side of history. Be on the right side of history, don’t entertain Apartheid, and don’t collaborate with an Occupation regime. ” You can read the full statement on the website.

Aside from the strange assumption that Apartheid no longer exists in South Africa post-Marikana, and following the failure of the government to adopt recommendations of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the unwillingness of the ruling party to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity, one has to question the credibility of the claim that what is occurring in Israel is Apartheid and that merely replicating the anti-Apartheid struggle along with sanctions and boycotts is the correct course of action. (please see my posting on the Apartheid Analogy also Good Jew, Bad Jew and Hadrian’s Flotilla – Zionism and a Free Palestine under scrutiny.)

As a member of ‘Artists against Apartheid’ during the 1980s, I participated in a number of such actions aimed at undermining the power and authority of the Apartheid state. We were guided by the principles enshrined in the Freedom Charter, in particular the promise that the “Doors of Learning and Culture would be opened”, and that all people, regardless of the colour of ones skin would be able to participate in a democratic country. I thus fought against racial segregation in a freedom struggle whose aims and objectives were the creation of a constitutional state with a Bill of Rights.

The Palestinian struggle has yet to produce a Freedom Charter. It has no such democratic goals, and does not aim to accommodate all people regardless of religious and ethnic identity. The illusion of a “Free Palestine” is exactly that, an illusion. It is a beguiling promise of a world free of the conflict that has raged on for the past 64 years, in which hundreds of thousands of people have been slaughtered in the futile search for a new world order. As much as one wishes the conflict were as simple as the black and white patina of the South African conflict, the truth is rather different. Israel is home to both black and white, Jew and non-Jew, it accommodates Arabs including 1 million Jewish Arabs, it is home to indigenous Jews, as well as Jews from the diaspora. In Israel, 75.4% are Jewish, 16.9% Muslim, 2.1% Christian, and 1.7% Druze, while the remaining 4.0% are not classified by religion.

It is easy to forget the expulsion of Jews from the Arab world after 1948 and the issue of Ethiopian Jews (over a quarter of a million of them) and other Africans living in Israel, many of whom have fled their home countries seeking refuge. Israel exists because of ongoing internecine strife in the Arab world, the inability to provide basic human rights, such as gender equality and freedom of sexual orientation. Although 37 000 people have died in Syria over the past year alone, there is no call from BDS for a boycott of Assad’s government. The Palestinian territories on the other hand, have no specific, stand alone civil rights legislation that protect LGBT people from discrimination or harassment. Same-sex acts are ostensibly legal in the West Bank, precisely because of the occupation.

The current dispensation, set in place after the Cold War took its starting point as the resolution of the conflict which began during World War Two. Resolution 242 upon which the current territorial demands of both Israel and Palestine are now based, specifically outlaws the gaining of territory by acts of war and conquest, and yet the Palestinian Struggle, for all intents and purposes, has merely turned into a battle for the conquest and reconquest of territory — current demands by Hamas are for the return of all land in Israel, including Tel Aviv and Haifa in order to recreate the Ottoman Empire, and more specifically to return Jerusalem to Dar al Islam, the Islamic Empire.

Nevertheless, we are told that if we do not support the Palestinian struggle, we are on the wrong side of history. While South Africa struggles to protect the rights of LGBT people in the face of corrective rape, the promise of religious freedom enshrined in the South African constitution has turned into nothing more than an unaffordible and inaccessible dream. One has only to look at the Robbie Jansen Scandal  (see here and here) and my 7 year labour discrimination case against an apartheid media company which refused to participate in the TRC and which declined to apologise to the victims and survivors of the apartheid system, to realise that South Africa falls well short of the vision encapsulated by the Freedom Charter. The South African struggle is thus far from over.

NOTE: Medialternatives has proposed a compromise solution called Israelstine. I am also on record as being opposed to the separation barrier, and have actively campaigned for equal rights for Palestinians, Arabs and Jews, as well as being against the War in Gaza. I support UN Resolution 242 and do not support the latest round of claims with regard to the return of land held under the Ottomans.

UPDATE: It appears a redacted version of this letter was published by the Cape Argus, as can be seen from a google search:

Cape Argus – Cape Argus – I’m not sure Palestinian stance puts me on the wrong side

 alongside a piece written the same day 

Cape Argus – Palestinians have every right to fight Israelis

 

DeepinScrot-2624

However, both articles have since been removed from the Cape Argus online edition in an obvious attempt to suppress the contents of the correspondence.

DeepinScrot-3045

by davidrobertlewis -

Is Israel Apartheid a too simplistic analogy?

The Apartheid analogy is useful in describing what is occurring in Israel today. One cannot remain silent when pictures of Arab children massacred by the IDF find historical resonance in similar pictures taken during our own struggle. The tragic portrait of Hector Peterson is but one example. Unfortunately, like any analogy, the use of an emotive term such as apartheid is open to abuse, the more so when those who deploy the term, move from simple analogy to an outright revision of the historical record.

Blaming Jews for apartheid, like blaming Africans for slavery, is a form of apartheid denial which obliterates the memory of those most affected by the system of race segregation. A system which came about because of racist laws enacted under a Christian government. The role of the Dutch Reformed Church/Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK) in the creation of the apartheid system is well documented by scholars and formed part of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission Faith Communities hearings into the subject.

If the situation was 100% analogous to the South African situation, and anywhere correct from a semantic and heuristic point of view, both the PLO and Hamas would have a Freedom Charter guaranteeing rights for all, whether Jew or Arab. No such charter exists, instead, both organisations have highly inflammatory founding documents that are a far cry from the civil rights articles formulated in our own country, at Kliptown.

The founding documents of Hamas, for example, call for the subjugation of Jews, the total destruction of the Jewish state, and its replacement by an Islamic Republic. Israel, on the other hand, has an “emergent” constitution which still has a long way to go before it ranks in terms of our own constitution which guarantees human rights for all.

Calling what is happening in Israel and the “occupied territories” a civil rights struggle in the making is thus more accurate than abusing a term which inevitably ends up by denigrating the memory of the victims and survivors of the apartheid system.

Many Jews for instance were active in the civil rights movement, and are vocal supporters of the Communist Party and ANC. Jews were imprisoned alongside Mandela during the Treason Trials and are found on the left as much as the right, as is the case with any religious grouping. Instead of banding around apartheid terminology, we must therefore take care to distinguish the facts on the ground in the Middle East, unpacking what is similar from what is actual reality.

We must also remember Jews are a threatened minority group in South Africa, comprising less than 1% of the population. Despite this, our courts have consistently failed to protect diversity and divergence of opinion within the community (my own problems with Jazz discrimination at an apartheid media company is case in point ) —  typically, the corrupt legal system of South Africa can’t be bothered with such details and refuses to recognise the idiosyncracies of the Jewish religion — I am a progressive Jew not an Orthodox Jew.

It is arguable whether or not our own struggle has actually delivered tangible freedom and rights for the black majority as well as the minority of minorities — Progressive Jews. Despite a constitution which ostensibly grants freedom of belief and religion for all, we are lumped into the same category as Zionists and the Ultra-Orthodox. Has apartheid ended? Are we suffering from a collective delusion in forgetting the importance of minority rights?

While the black majority in South Africa has freedom of movement and association and may now purchase land anywhere in the world, no such universal rights exist for Jews. Many of the Arab states for example, forceably expelled their Jewish communities resulting in what is known as the Jewish refugee problem.

Although most “whites” in South Africa trace their descent from Europe, many as former “colonialists”, and Jews as relative newcomers from Eastern Europe were classified “white” under apartheid, this is not the case for Jews from Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, Yemen, and the Arab Peninsula where Jewish communities have an entirely different culture and heritage and are not considered European. Apartheid denialists thus seek to diminish the existence of black Jews and the role of assimilated, non-white “whites” in the South African struggle while insisting on the validity of the apartheid race classification system.

Since there are at least a quarter of a million black Ethiopian Jews, and 2.5 million Arab Jews living in Israel, admissions policies which give local communities autonomy in deciding who can and cannot settle in Israel are thus no more racist than similar admissions policies restricting immigration in our own and other countries.

The genocide of European Jews is often used by the right-wing to justify atrocities in the name of religion, undoubtedly Jews as a people have a right to self-determination, the more so in the light of the Holocaust. In contrast, the genocide of the Khoisan by Europeans as well as the Bantu has gone unnoticed in South Africa where whites own more than 60% of the land as a result of the 1913 Land Act. In Israel, the reverse is true and there have been no such race laws, rather expropriations of land in Jerusalem and occupation of land in the disputed territories are the basis for the ongoing conflict over borders since the “Jewish State” has yet to define its boundaries following the 1948 War of Independence.

The historical reality shows less than 30% of the former British Mandate of Palestine, a country created shortly after World War 1, currently under Israeli control, while the remaining 70% including the Kingdom of Jordan is in Arab hands. South Africa has abundant land available for redistribution, while this is not the case in the Levant.  Maps show Israel existing historically, on both sides of the Jordan river, thus an entirely different geographic problem prevails.

Many Israelis believe Jordan today, to be the Palestinian homeland, over 40% according to a poll conducted by the Christian Science Monitor. The country has exactly the same flag as the Palestinian flag, with the only real difference being the addition of a white star, denoting the Hashemite monarchy. In 1950 Jordan annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  The country is home to some 2.6 million Palestinians and 1.5 million refugees from Palestinian West Bank and is 80% Palestinian Arab. The country later revoked citizenship of its West Bank refugees in order to prevent them from settling, using them as pawns in a power-play over control over precious land and natural resources in the Levant.

At no point has there ever been a separation barrier in South Africa. Apartheid instead used laws to segregate and de-emancipate people of colour. It oppressed black Christians as much as those from other groups who were not members of the NGK . The race-based political system denationalised non-Europeans and created bantustans which allowed Europeans to rule with impunity. This is precisely what the policies of Hamas and the PLO seek to do in their attempt to reclaim the Ottoman Empire (Turkey is a member of the European Union)  while delegitimising the state of Israel in order to seek control over 100% of the former British Mandate of Palestine.

Jordanian Flag

Flag of Palestine

How many Palestinian states does the world need? Why are their now three different Palestinian entities – Jordan, Gaza and West Bank? Are we not seeing the tragic result of the United Nation’s sponsored balkanisation of the Middle East?

Unlike the current Palestinian-Israel conflict, the freedom struggle in South Africa aimed to unify all South Africans under a common Bill of Rights. All the land was to be shared by all the people. It sprung into motion upon the motivation for class solidarity and equality for all and was not overly characterized by separatist calls for independence and self-determination by ethnic groups. This is why South Africa now has 11 official languages.

While the adoption of Hebrew as the national language of Israel has overtones of Afrikaner Volkstaat, it is the universal civil rights struggle which is most pertinent to the problem in the Middle East today, not our country’s historical legacy of race laws. In particular it is religion not race which is the political and social determinant underpinning the conflict. As can be expected, Israel remains the sole Jewish state and it is this claim which needs to be examined if we are to understand the root cause of the problem.

Why are there 9 Roman Catholic nations in Europe and South America, 4 Eastern Orthodox  and 4 Lutheran in Europe and one Anglican country, the United Kingdom? Why are there 49 Muslim countries in which Muslims are in the majority?

Clearly, it is religious separatism which is the problem in Israel today. Yet calling this separatism, ‘religious apartheid’ results in a strange invective, in which one must undo history, first by denying the Covenant and then forgetting the  blood libel against the Jews, who were accused of murdering Jesus Christ during the Middle Ages.

Yes the Jewish religion has retained its tribal identification with the Israelites of the Old Testament and does not proselytise because of the historical journey over the eons in which Christianity and Islam gained the upper hand.

The accusation that Judaism is thus inherently racist, since it generally refuses to induct gentiles should be seen for what it is, the tragic result of ongoing anti-Semitism.

Let’s look at the problem from another angle:

Is it also not the case that those who are not Hebrew-speakers suffer the most from lower status in Israel? An Arabic speaker is more likely to be searched when stopped at a check-point than a Hebrew-speaker.

The Haredim, a particular sect of Rabbinical Judaism involved in a recent controversy surrounding gender segregation on a Jerusalem bus, illustrate the complex problems found in a quixotic nation that is avowedly all about protecting the religious and linguistic rights of its Jewish citizens to the detriment of other groups. While the controversy has called into question Israel’s claim to be a modern democracy, tolerant of diversity and expression, unlike its neighbours Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, where no such freedom exists, the incident has more in common with the civil rights movement than the apartheid struggle.

If the apartheid analogy truly fitted as anything more than a metaphor, one would expect race not religion, (comprising gender and linguistic dimensions) to be the important deciding factor in discrimination, discrimination which, since it is religious in nature, is lawful by any standard. One might as well argue for changes in laws restricting non-Muslim access to Mecca, and yet Muslims are allowed to visit Jerusalem, a city which is holy to all three monotheistic religions.

Has the apartheid label been misappropriated? How useful  is the apartheid analogy when one constantly has to qualify it, with other terms that are more applicable to any analysis of the “holy land”, for example, religious apartheid?

As tragic as the 64 year old conflict is, and as terrible as the ongoing violence and aggression by religious fanatics on either side remains, the apartheid label does not serve as anything more than a metaphor, a loose analogy that expresses solidarity with an oppressed people in the face of military aggression.

We must therefore take care to avoid stripping it of its meaning, since doing so, destroys the historical narrative of those who directly experienced the apartheid system in South Africa.