WHILE Israel continues its assaults against Islamic sites in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, crimes that have not prompted the international community or the Arab and Islamic world to take a strong stand against Israel, civil society and many universities in the world have launched their 6th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The week, which was initiated in the Canadian university of Toronto by members of the Arab Students' Collective in 2005, has expanded to cover some 40 cities worldwide including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and London, hosting activities of the IAW and BDS Week. This year, the Week aims at uncovering Israel as an apartheid regime, calling upon the people of the world to refrain from buying Israeli goods, to scrap contracts with companies and institutions involved in Israeli-style apartheid, and to push for governmental sanctions against the Jewish state, until it grants Palestinians their basic human rights. This international movement intends to restore Palestinian rights and end the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories in the same way that the world ended apartheid in South Africa. One couldn't help making comparison between the two cases of the black people of South Africa and the Palestinians in occupied Palestine respectively. On the one hand, the two crises emerged in the same year and even the same month of May in 1948. However, the international community eventually stood by the black Africans in South Africa with their iconic leader Nelson Mandela to restore their rights and live in dignity on their land after ending the apartheid regime. Nevertheless, the same international community continues to play a passive role in dismantling the Israeli version of apartheid. It is significant that this Israeli Apartheid and BDS Week and its organisers do not focus on the traditional problems of ending occupation or the return of refugees. Rather they are seeking to ensure justice and respect for the human rights of the Palestinians, who share the same land with the Israelis, but never enjoy citizens' basic rights to their land. For this reason, the call continues to gain support from different parties including some Israelis. So it was not strange to see the Israeli academic and author Neve Gordon write a column expressing his concern about Israel's future within its apartheid policies. Gordon, who penned Israel's Occupation and teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel, declared his worry about raising his two children in the state of Israel that keeps on practising this injustice against the Palestinians. In a column he contributed to the Los Angles Times last August, Gordon wrote: “It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faithbased organisations, unions and citizens to suspend co-operation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.” “The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region, about six million Jews and close to five million Palestinians reside,” he continued. “Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews ��" whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel ��" are citizens of the state of Israel.” The question that keeps Gordan up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that his two children, as well as the children of his Palestinian neighbours, “do not grow up in an apartheid regime”. Another significance of this IAW is that it has turned into a very important international event for expressing solidarity with the Palestinians, supporting the opponents of Israeli apartheid across the globe, and reinforcing the call for sanctions to be imposed on the Jewish state. For example, the scattered calls for boycotting the Israeli universities and academics for supporting their government in its brutality against the Palestinians, have recently gathered a momentum in many world universities seeking to boycott Israeli academic activities, professors and institutions. In Britain, for example, the University and College Union, Britain's largest trade union and professional association for academic and associate staff, used to abort calls from its members to boycott Israel. However, this year, as reported by some Israeli newspapers, several motions, with various degrees of hostility towards Israel, have been submitted by the union's branches for debate. One such motion calls for the "ending of apartheid and lifting of all barricades in Gaza; recognition of the democratically elected Gaza [Hamas] government; the establishment of free independent Palestine; respect for human rights in Palestine and to stop killing defenceless Gazans". The same motion calls for Israeli officials to be tried for "human rights violations". Another motion calls for an arms embargo on Israel, a ban on settlement goods and "the British government to expel the Israeli ambassador". So if many academics in the world can no longer close their eyes to the ugly face of Israeli apartheid, why can't the entire international community and the Arab and Muslim world put harder pressure on Israel to submit to the international will and resort to peace for restoring the Palestinian rights? Civil society and all people of conscience throughout the world should impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in its apartheid era. It is true that Israel possesses a huge nuclear arsenal and has endless military support from the US; yet it could still accede to the international will if the world got united over the principle of administering justice and ending the Israeli apartheid in Palestine. Dear readers are invited to contribute their comments, views and questions via 111- 115 Ramsis St., Cairo or e-mail: ([email protected])
