Gaza and the ‘Crime of Crimes’

PALESTINE - ISRAEL, 29 Sep 2014

Ronnie Kasrils – Al Jazeera

Russell Tribunal on Palestine finds that Gaza is on the brink of a genocidal apartheid.

Israel and its accomplices must not be allowed to get away with the extermination of a people, writes Kasrils [EPA]

The characteristics of this crime involve killing, causing serious bodily harm or inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Unlike the crime against humanity it must be inflicted with the intent to destroy the group in whole or in part. What we found from this session of the Tribunal is that we are on the brink of a genocidal apartheid, with incitement to genocide a real and present danger, articulated across many levels of Israeli society, on both social and traditional media, from football fans, police officers, media commentators, religious leaders, legislators, and government ministers.

The people of South Africa, save for a minority of Zionists and their hangers on, are horrified. We have known apartheid. The freedom fighters among us visiting the occupied Palestinian territories have unanimously declared “we are reminded of apartheid but what we see is far worse”. The apartheid system in South Africa required cheap black labour to make the economy function and thus the state kept them alive – if barely. But there were still huge similarities with Israeli apartheid.

As in Israel, the “non-white” people or “non-Europeans” (Apartheid terms) were deprived of equal rights and freedom of movement; had their homes in white towns demolished and were removed to wired-off ghetto settlements; faced check points, undignified searches, constant harassment and strict requirements for work permits. If you failed to produce one and were in a white town, you went straight to jail. Any resistance was met with police repression, imprisonment, torture and sometimes massacres such as the most infamous at Sharpeville in 1960 where 69 peaceful protesters were shot dead. However, no African (black) townships or Bantustan settlements were ever bombed from the sky or attacked by tanks and artillery.

During those bad old days, the people of South Africa learnt the lessons of struggle. Foremost was never to give in to repression but to continue to resist. To submit meant to effectively validate and exonerate the oppressor’s system. To be intimidated or shocked by punitive repression into submission meant giving the opportunity to the oppressor to claim that the oppressed were quite content with their lot. They would then boast that their “blacks” were better off and happier than those in independent Africa.

So we South Africans who went through the struggle understand very well a people’s right to resist tyranny and occupation. Even the right to resist with weapons is recognised in international law. In our apartheid struggle we contemptuously rejected the “terrorist” barbs hurled at us by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher and were inspired by the international community understanding and supporting our just struggle.

Moral duty

With such a legacy we benefited from the international solidarity and the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) and understand our moral duty. We cannot tolerate a critique that questions the Palestinian people’s right to resist by whatever means they deem necessary. We reject the attempts to equate the violence of the two sides as though there can be parity with Israel’s state terrorism and Palestinian resistance. We reject the nonsense of the “terrorism” of the Resistance having the sinister motive of “digging tunnels”. They have enough right to do so as we sometimes did during our armed struggle and as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto did in their courageous action in their 1943 uprising against the Nazis. We easily understand that it was precisely those tunnels on the borders of Gaza that halted Israeli land forces from advancing to inflict greater carnage.

Solidarity demonstrations in cities and towns around South Africa (200,000 in Cape Town) have urged our own ANC Government and all governments everywhere to stop playing the game of calling on both sides to cease violence as a precondition to ceasefire and negotiations. We certainly go as far as pressurising government to implement BDS against apartheid Israel, as the ANC requested all governments to do so during our struggle, and not to toothlessly say that this is the task of civil society. It is governments who apply sanctions and ensure they are implemented by the public and private sector.

The findings of the RToP have served to educate and mobilise governments, institutions, civil society and solidarity movements to implement Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions tactics and policies. Most significant has been the RToP’s investigation into Israel’s practise of ethnic cleansing and currently of what the Russell Tribunal has articulated as murder, persecution and extermination.

The barbaric onslaught on Gaza July-August 2014 will be a main focus of our campaigning for accountability of not just Israel but third party states. Israel and its accomplices must not be allowed to get away with the extermination of a people. We must prevent the crime of genocide from taking place. What we saw in Gaza 2014 can and will happen again, if the world remains silent. The world must stand by the people of Gaza, of the West Bank, and the Palestinian refugees. This is for the sake of peace and justice for all living in the entire land of Israel/Palestine.

________________________

Ronnie Kasrils served in the ANC’s armed wing from its inception in 1961 and was South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Defence (1994-99); Water & Forestry Minister (1999-2004); and Minister for Intelligence Services (2004-2008). He has retired from government but is active in Palestine Solidarity Committees.

Go to Original – aljazeera.com

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