South African Delegation: Israel worse than Apartheid

Israel's newspaper Haaretz reports about a South African delegation to the occupied territories in Palestine. Among the delegation are Israeli Jews and South African human right activists, some of them were member of Nelson Mandela's ANC, others are former SA Supreme Court judges.

They describe what they have seen to be worse than the apartheid in South-Africa.

Ninety percent of the children in one of the ancient neighborhoods they visited 'suffer from anemia and malnutrition, the economic situation is dire, the nightly incursions are continuing, and some of the inhabitants are not allowed to leave the city at all.'

International pressure had a large share to the ending of the suffering of the black people in South-Africa. For the Palestinian cause there is little support. Of course some prominent figures such as Carter and former Dutch prime-minister Van Agt openly criticize Israel's policy towards Palestinians, but 99 percent of the Western politicians rather ignores the situation than getting troubles with the Israeli lobby.

The US is the greatest supporter of the state of Israel. In the short history of the state of Israel, the country has received over 140 billion in US aid.

The Israeli lobby is so strong in the US that mainstream media never covers the suffering of the Palestinians. It always is the same old story 'Israel retaliates', 'Israel reacts to'.

Just Imagine how you would feel if you cannot move freely, you lack basic necessities and have no hope for a better future

I remember that Rise criticized Russia after they went into Georgia. She said 'this is the 21st century'. If this is the 21st century, why are people suffering like this. Why don't we pressure Israel to change? Because of the lobby.

It is not just Palestine that sees the double standards of the US. The US criticizes China for violating human rights while they themselves torture people, but them in boxes of 1 m² and refuse to give them a fair trial.

Israel should be stopped.

Oh but yes... it is Israel. I guess that just made an anti-Semite right? Of course this thread will result in some name calling on me by Christian zealots but I don't care too much about that. These hypocritical people should instead of defending Israel's policies think of what God will think of the human right violations by Israel.

58 years old woman beaten up by Settlers:



Being the grand children of Holocaust survivors, you would think they would have learnt differently:

Source

I thought they would feel right at home in the alleys of Balata refugee camp, the Casbah and the Hawara checkpoint. But they said there is no comparison: for them the Israeli occupation regime is worse than anything they knew under apartheid. This week, 21 human rights activists from South Africa visited Israel. Among them were members of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress; at least one of them took part in the armed struggle and at least two were jailed. There were two South African Supreme Court judges, a former deputy minister, members of Parliament, attorneys, writers and journalists. Blacks and whites, about half of them Jews who today are in conflict with attitudes of the conservative Jewish community in their country. Some of them have been here before; for others it was their first visit.


...snip...

Madlala-Routledge thinks that the struggle against the occupation is not succeeding here because of U.S. support for Israel - not the case with apartheid, which international sanctions helped destroy. Here, the racist ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South Africa. "Talk about the 'promised land' and the 'chosen people' adds a religious dimension to racism which we did not have."

Equally harsh are the remarks of the editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times of South Africa, Mondli Makhanya, 38. "When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid.

"The apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all. How can a human brain engineer this total separation, the separate roads, the checkpoints? What we went through was terrible, terrible, terrible - and yet there is no comparison. Here it is more terrible. We also knew that it would end one day; here there is no end in sight. The end of the tunnel is blacker than black.

"Under apartheid, whites and blacks met in certain places. The Israelis and the Palestinians do not meet any longer at all. The separation is total. It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case. The whites did not want the blacks to disappear. I saw the settlers in Silwan [in East Jerusalem] - people who want to expel other people from their place."

[edit on 3-10-2008 by Mdv2]