The
Land Question in Palestine and Eastern and Southern Africa
A comparative and historical study of two colonial
tragedies
John Henrik Clarke
(Professor, Hunter College,
City University of New York, United States of America)
The land question, in general, is as old as people and nations. It is part of a
world problem and must be seen in this context in order to understand the
specific land question that is the subject of the present paper. The quest for
land and the attempt to recover it when it is lost, is a recurring theme in the
drama of human endurance and survival. Stability on a piece of land that a
people can call its own is the basis for its nationhood, its culture and
religion: in essence, its humanity.
In my assessment of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, I will be,
figuratively, looking through several historical windows. My main focus will be
the land question. I will emphasize the importance of the land question in
Palestine by comparing it with the land question in Eastern and Southern Africa.
My intent is to show that the method and rationale that were used by the
Europeans to take the land from the Africans in the so-called White Highlands of
Kenya, in Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, and in South Africa, where the Dutch
or Boers encountered the Khoisan people whom they called Bushmen and Hottentots,
were basically the same.1
Further, I intend to show that the pattern of land encroachment by the Europeans
was part of a war against the cultures and customs of non-European people and it
differed, only by degree, at different times and in different places. In her
Ph.D. thesis, "The dominant modes of Western thought and behavior: an
ethnological critique", Professor
Donna Richards referred to this behaviour of Europeans as "the concept
of the cultural other". She says:
"It is in the nature of the Western ethos that one of the most accurate indices of Western man's self-image is his image of other ... The essential characteristics associated with this concept, within the Western world view, are control and consequently power - the theme which reverberates endlessly in the ethnological unfolding of Western culture, echoed in every Western statement of value."2
In another work, entitled "The ideology of European dominance", Professor Richards continues her examination of the European world view. She says:
"It is possible to isolate certain seminal ideas which have served as organizing principles in Western scientific thought ... These themes are intimately related to the Western European attitude toward other peoples and imply a particular relationship to them, which will subsequently be referred to as 'ethos'. ... The Western European ethos appears to thrive on the perception that those who are culturally and radically different are inferior. It relates to other cultures as superior or inferior, as powerful or weak, as 'civilized' or 'primitive'. The European world view reflects these relationships. It was the Western European ethos that created 'the savage'."3
If we understand what Professor Richards has said, we will also understand, at least in part, that temperament and attitude of the Ashkenazi Jews who control that part of Jerusalem that is called Israel. They are more European than Jewish. They are, in fact, a European nation. Their problem, however tragic it is, was started in Europe by Europeans and should have been resolved in Europe by Europeans. In the books "Democracy in Israel", the writer Norman F. Dacey calls our attention to the main aspect of this dilemma when he says:
"Jews in Israel don't persecute just Arabs - they persecute each other. The discrimination which is the hallmark of the life in the Zionist State is responsible for a widening gap between Western Ashkenazi Jews and the oriental or Sephardi Jews."4
Discrimination against the oriental Jews continues in
housing, in jobs and in education. Their plight in Israel is the plight of a
subject people. These oriental Jews once lived all over Western Asia, called the
Middle East. Zionist propaganda enticed them to come to Israel, when the State
was created. The European Jews never accepted them as their equals, although
they belong to the same religion. Oriental Jews had established communities in
Baghdad in Iraq and in other Middle Eastern countries 12 centuries before Islam
arrived. These Jews have not related to zionism because zionism was not created
by them or for them.5
Zionism has a direct relationship to European colonialism. It developed out of
the same political incubator at about the same time. In its racist attitudes and
treatment of Arabs, oriental Jews and the small number of American blacks who
have settled in Israel, zionism relates more to the Calvinist Christianity of
the Boers in South Africa. The Arab communities in Israel and on the West Bank
are surrounded by Jewish settlements that are armed camps, established to
contain the Arabs and control the land. These Arab communities are similar to
the black communities in South Africa that the Boers call bantustans. In both
cases the intent is the same: to deny the Arabs and the Africans any kind of
sovereign rights in their own land. Whether the system is practiced in Israel or
in South Africa, it is what the Boers call "apartheid".6
The word apartheid was coined by the Boer intellectuals for the general election
of 1948 that brought the Boers to political power. The condition of apartheid
existed long before the word, and the British are more responsible for creating
the condition than the Boers. The word, with the promise to keep the Africans
"in their place", caught on immediately among the white racialists who
saw apartheid as a means to advance themselves at the expense of the Africans.
The condition of apartheid also meant that the Africans, like the Arabs in
Palestine, could be made to feel alien in their own land.
The Palestinian writer and scholar, Fayez A. Sayegh, emphasized this point in
his pamphlet, "Twenty Basic Facts about the Palestine Problem" when he
said:7
"... Israel has additionally imposed a system of apartheid upon the Arabs who stayed in their homeland ... More than 90 per cent of these Arabs live in 'security zones'; they alone live under martial law, restricting their freedom to travel from village to village or from town to town; their children are denied equal opportunities for education; and they are denied decent opportunities for work, and the right to receive 'equal pay for equal work'."
Dr. Sayegh remind us that, in spite of this fact, Israel
is generally portrayed in the Western press as the "bastion of
democracy" and the champion of peace in the Middle East. The propaganda in
Israel's favour could not turn the facts around. This nation was established, at
the expense of the Arabs, at the intersection of three continents.
Geographically, Israel is located at the back door of Europe, the side door of
Asia and the front door of Africa. Since its inception as a State the rules of
Israel have behaved as though they were the colonial masters in this part of the
world. The Arabs in Israel are treated like colonial subjects.
Dr. Sayegh explains this dilemma more precisely in his pamphlet,
"Palestine, Israel and Peace", when he said:8
"The crux of the Palestine problem is the fate of a people and its homeland. It is the piecemeal conquest and continued seizure of the entire country by military force. It is the forcible dispossession and displacement of the bulk of the indigenous population, and the subjugation of the rest. It is also the massive importation of alien colonists - to replace the evicted, and to lord it over the conquered. And it is the colonization, by the foreign settlers, of both the expropriated private land and the seized national resources of the overpowered people. It is, indeed, the destruction of the native Palestinian society of Christian and Muslim Arabs, and its replacement by a society of transplanted Jews and a foreign body politic - which views itself as the vanguard of the 'Jewish nation', currently spread throughout the world but declared destined sometime to assemble in the seized land.
"The refusal of the Arab world to acquiesce in this fate of Palestine and
its people explains both the bitterness and the persistence of the Arab-Israeli
conflict. It also underscores the essential difference in character between this
conflict and ordinary international disputes. And it explains why the
Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be resolved until the Palestinian problem is
settled through restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people."
There is no intent on the part of the Israelis, not even the liberals or the Communists, totally to restore the rights of the Palestinian people. The liberals and Communists want an improvement in the living condition of the Palestinians. They do not want the Palestinians to come to power, nor are they willing to share power with them. What is called Israel and the West Bank is European-controlled territory. This means Ashkenazi control. The slight improvement in the living and political conditions of the oriental Jews in Israel in recent years does not mean that they will ever come to power. In an article contributed to the book Zionism and Racism, the writer Naseer H. Aruri explains the plight of the oriental Jews of Israel in this manner:9
"That Israel's oriental Jews have been subjected to social, economic and racial discrimination is no longer considered controversial. Although constituting about 60 per cent of the population, they are less than first-class citizens. Their representation in the State's social, economic and political institutions is strikingly incompatible with their numerical majority, while the European-American (Ashkenazi) communities are represented far out of proportion to their numbers. Disabilities imposed on the oriental sector are rampant in employment, education, housing, income, social welfare and political participation. Disparities between the two Jewish communities have grown worse in all these areas since the establishment of the Zionist State in Palestine; and there are no indications that the social gaps are narrowing. On the contrary, the available statistical data reveal a widening of the gaps.
"The largest share of the national income in Israel goes to the highest
strata of capitalists and managers, workers and government bureaucrats are
strategically situated to push for higher incomes. Jews of the oriental
communities have no professional skills to speak of and, consequently, are
unable to compete in their category. Their presence is most prominently observed
in the lowest strata of the socio-economic pyramid, that of the manual workers
in industry and agriculture, 'the only group whose share of the national income
has increasingly diminished'. Poverty in Israel is closely linked with ethnic
origin."
There is no need at this point to argue whether zionism is
a form of racism. In the face of so much persuasive evidence, proving that it is
is redundant and a waste of time. The Arabs in Israel, and to a lesser extent,
that is slight, the oriental Jews, live in a condition that does not differ
appreciably from the system of apartheid in South Africa. The Ashkenazi Jews of
Israel have almost complete control over their lives - their land, their jobs,
their housing, and their education.
The Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, Israel Shahak,
states that, "Israel is about as apartheid as South Africa". He
referred first to the difficulty Arabs and oriental Jews have in obtaining
decent housing.10
His comments are:
"This isn't the only thing.
If you go any place where there are so-called twin cities, like Nazareth and New
Nazareth, you will see that the old Nazareth is an open city. Anyone can come,
and by buying or selling or by agreement can dwell there. But in New Nazareth,
the so-called Upper Nazareth, to obtain a flat, you have to bring proof that you
are a Jew.
"A society in which such a thing is required for more than 90 per cent of
its inhabited areas has no other name than an apartheid society. Exactly the
same proof is required in Johannesburg. The only difference is that people know
about Johannesburg, but not about Nazareth.
"This goes for many other areas too. For example, you have now an official
plan in Israel for what is called the 'Judaization' of Galilee. This means that
the Government thinks there are too many Arabs in Galilee, so it has decided
officially and openly to confiscate some of their land, convert it into pure
Jewish land, and settle only Jews there."
What we need to consider here is that the treatment of the
Arabs and the oriental Jews in Israel has no justification in Judaism or
Christianity. This treatment violates the moral codes of both of these
religions.
Again referring to the treatment of the Arabs and oriental Jews in Israel, Mr.
Shahak says:
"We are on a much lower level than blacks in the United States because there is no recourse. No one can even do the same sort of job that the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] does in the United States. There is no possibility of bringing any case about discrimination, even the most blatant, to any court, because in Israel there is no law forbidding discrimination against non-Jews. On the contrary, all discrimination against non-Jews is completely legal."
What we have here is the lack of recognition of the Arab
people as human beings. This attitude towards the Arabs is as racist as any
attitude the Nazis ever held toward the Jews. In a booklet on the subject,
"Looking beyond coexistence - prospects of a binational Palestine",
Alan R. Taylor recalls the official nature of this attitude.11
In 1967, just after the June War, a delegation from the United Kingdom
representing the House of Commons, visited Jerusalem and was told by the
Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee that the Palestinians
"are not human beings, they are not people, they are Arabs". The same
sentiment was expressed by Golda Meir two years later in a Sunday Times
interview:
"There was no such thing as Palestinians ... It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away. They did not exist."
This inclination to dehumanize an entire people, to deny
its very existence, comes out of Western racism. Israel's main difficulty in the
Middle East stems from the failure to recognize the Arabs as a people with the
right to live in peace, in all or part of Palestine. Before the introduction of
zionism this was no problem. Jews and Arabs had met many times on the crossroads
of history and most of the time they complemented each other. Zionism introduced
a conflict between the Arabs and the Jews that did not previously exist. The
pogroms and persecutions that the Jews suffered in Europe had no counterpart in
the Arab world. The early settlement of European Jews in Palestine, in the late
nineteenth and in the early part of the twentieth century, had the goodwill and
cooperation of the Arabs. The early settlers presented themselves as a simple
humane people escaping from the religious and political persecution of Europe.
Behind this idealistic guise the real and previously unannounced intentions of
zionism were introduced. The leaders of the movement did not want a part of
Palestine. They wanted all of it. Humane Zionists who respected rights of the
Arabs and advocated a binational State were ignored or expelled from the Zionist
movement.12
It became known that the leaders of the Zionist movement intended from the
outset to colonize and take over Palestine and to establish there a Jewish State
"as Jewish as England is English". To this end the Zionists propagated
the myth that Palestine was an empty land crying out for settlers. The existence
of a large population of Arabs was ignored or brushed aside.13
The European Jews who carved a country called Israel out of Palestine, created a
country with double standards, one for the Israeli Jews and another for the
Palestinian Arabs. The conflict between the Arabs and the Jews was built into
the fabric of the Government. The main intention of the Zionists was to destroy
every element of stable life among the Arabs and control the land.
The conveners of the twenty-third World Zionist Congress, held at Jerusalem in
1951, were very clear about what they expected of zionism. This was the first
such congress after the establishment of the State of Israel. The programme that
was adopted began by saying: "The task of zionism is the consolidation of
the State of Israel".
The sponsors of this Congress were boldly talking about a political and not a
religious action. While zionism might mean different things to different people,
to the sponsors of this Congress it meant control - control over the lives of
the Arab people, especially control over its land. The following information
extracted from the pamphlet, "Zionism and racism - a case to answer",
explains in some detail what I mean:
"In summary, the nature and
extent of racial discrimination which is built into the administrative and
social framework of the Zionist State of Israel are these:
"1. An Arab living under Israeli rule in Israel may be arbitrarily excluded
from land which he and his forebears have owned for generations. He may have his
land confiscated and handed over to Jewish settlers. He may then be prohibited
from even working on that land. His whole village may be razed to the ground.
(Three hundred eighty-five Arab villagers in Israel have been wiped out in this
way.) He and his whole community may suffer gross discrimination in housing,
municipal services, education and social welfare. He may be refused nationality
and citizenship even though he was born in the territory of Israel and has lived
there all his life and even though any Jewish newcomer from anywhere in the
world automatically receives Israeli nationality. (Thousands of Palestinian
Arabs are in this stateless condition in Israel.)
"2. An Arab living under Israeli rule in the occupied territories may be
arrested arbitrarily and detained without trial. He may be deported from his
native land without judicial process or appeal. His home may be blown up or
bulldozed on a simple order from the local military commander. His land may be
confiscated for ostensibly military purposes, but in fact for the purpose of
Israeli Jewish colonization. His freedom of movement may be restricted. He
cannot express political opinions or engage in political activities without risk
of arrest and detention or deportation.
"3. An Arab refugee living in exile whose home is in Israel or the occupied
territories and who was uprooted from it in the wars of 1948 and 1967 is
prevented from returning home because he is an Arab and not a Jew - and this in
spite of repeated United Nations resolutions calling on Israel to allow him to
return. Meanwhile any Jew is free to enter and settle in Israel, even though he
has never seen the country before in his life."14
The land question was at the base of the Arab-Israeli
conflict from the beginning and it still is. The Camp David agreement, which I
will come back to later, only accentuated the conflict and further alienated the
Arabs.
This conflict has long historical roots and it was fully developed before the
representatives of the Zionist movement signed Israel's Declaration of
Independence on 14 May 1948. They declared that the new State would be
"open to Jewish immigration and the ingathering of Jewish exiles". In
the meantime nearly a million Arabs were forced into exile. The leaders of the
Zionist movement, now the new rulers of Israel, had stood before the world an
promised to "maintain complete equality of social and political rights for
all its citizens, without distinction of creed, race or sex". Further, they
had called on "the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the
peace and play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal
citizenship". This was a hollow promise that was never meant and never
kept. In his report of September 1948, United Nations Mediator for Palestine,
Count Folke Bernadotte, issued this warning:
"It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and indeed offer at least the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries."15
The report laid bare the crucial essence of the
Palestinian conflict. It did not move the Zionists from their position or help
the Arabs at all. Israel's new Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, said, "We
must do everything to ensure that they [the Arabs] never return." No
influential Israelis raised their voice in defiance of Count Bernadotte's call
for "elemental justice" for the Arabs now being driven from their
homes. The day after completing his report, Count Bernadotte was murdered by
Jewish terrorists. The Arab refugee problem became an international problem, and
as the Jewish-American journalists would later remark, "the moral millstone
about the neck of world Jewry".
The Defence Laws that the new State of Israel had inherited from the British
Mandatary Government that had ruled Palestine between 1922 and 1948 were
rewritten and made more stringent against the Arabs. Now, at last, some
influential Israelis found their voices and spoke out against these laws. At a
conference of the Jewish Lawyers' Association, held at Tel Aviv in February
1946, a future Justice of the Supreme Court in Israel made the following
statement about these laws:
"These laws ... contradict the most fundamental principles of law, justice and jurisprudence. They give the administrative and military authorities the power to impose penalties which, even had they been ratified by a legislative body, could only be regarded as anarchical and irregular. The Defence Laws abolish the rights of the individual and grant unlimited power to the administration."16
The representative of the Jewish Agency, Bernard Joseph, who was later to become Israel's Minister of Justice, went even further:
"With regard to the Defence Laws themselves, the question is: Are we all to become the victims of officially licensed terrorism, or will the freedom of the individual prevail? Is the administration to be allowed to interfere in the life of each individual without any safeguards for us? there is nothing to prevent a citizen from being imprisoned all his life without trial. There is no safeguard for the rights of the individual. There is no possibility of appeal against the decision of the Military Commander, no possibility of resort to the Supreme Court and the administration has unrestricted freedom to banish any citizen at any moment."16
Even more emphatic was a future Attorney-General of Israel, Ya'acov Shimshon Shapiro, who later succeeded Mr. Joseph as Minister of Justice:
"The system established in Palestine since the issue of the Defence Laws is unparalleled in any civilized country; there were no such laws even in Nazi Germany ... They try to pacify us by saying that these laws are only directed against malefactors, not against honest citizens. But the Nazi Governor of occupied Oslo also announced that no harm would come to citizens who minded their own business. It is our duty to tell the whole world that the Defence Laws passed by the British Mandatary Government of Palestine destroy the very foundations of justice in this land."
The Israeli legal system is based mainly on the Defence
Laws and they have used them more ruthlessly than the British who originally
created them. The purpose of these laws is to continue the movements of the
Arabs and control the land, by any means necessary. This hunger for the land had
manifested itself among European Jewish settlers in Palestine long before the
creation of the State of Israel. Unfortunately, the Arabs were not aware of the
intentions of the Zionist movement. In his pamphlet, "Twenty Basic Facts
about the Palestine Problem", Fayez A. Sayegh raises these questions about
the progression of the land problem in Palestine:
"DO YOU KNOW:
"1. THAT, when the
Palestinian problem was created by Britain in 1917, more than 90 per cent of the
population of Palestine were Arabs? ... And that there were at that time no more
than 56,000 Jews in Palestine?
"2. THAT more than half of the Jews living in Palestine at that time were recent
immigrants, who had come to Palestine in the preceding decades in order
to escape persecution in Europe? ... And that less than 5 per cent of the
population were native Palestinians Jews?
"3. THAT the Arabs of Palestine at that time owned 97 1/2 per cent of the
land while Jews (native Palestinians and recent immigrants together) owned only
2 1/2 per cent of the land?
"4. THAT, during 30 years of British occupation and rule, the Zionists were
able to purchase only 3 1/2 per cent of the land of Palestine, in spite of the
encouragement of the British Government? ... And that much of this land was
transferred to Zionist bodies by the British Government directly, and was not
sold by Arab owners?
"5. THAT, therefore, when Britain passed the Palestine problem to the
United Nations in 1947, Zionists owned no more than 6 per cent of the total land
area of Palestine?
"6. THAT, notwithstanding these facts, the General Assembly of the United
Nations recommended that a 'Jewish State' be established in Palestine? ... And
that the Assembly granted that proposed 'State' about 54 per cent of the total
area of the country?
"7. THAT Israel immediately occupied (and still occupies) 80.48 per cent of
the total land area of Palestine?
"8. THAT this territorial expansion took place, for the most part, before
15 May 1948: i.e., before the formal end of the British Mandate and the
withdrawal of British forces from Palestine, before the entry of Arab armies to
protect Palestinian Arabs, and before the Arab-Israeli war?
From its inception, the State of Israel and the Ashkenazi
Jews, who are its rulers, were an extension of Europe. This is reflected in
their temperament, in their intentions and in the arrogant, racist attitude they
have towards the Arabs and the oriental Jews. Israel is the most westernized
country in the Middle East. It is only geographically a part of Western Asia.
The socio-culture of Israel is completely alien to the Middle East. The oriental
Jews are more a part of the history and culture of the Middle East. They are an
Arabized people who have lived in peace in North Africa and in Western Asia for
more than a thousand years. If there are any descendants of the Jews of biblical
times, the oriental Jews are most likely those descendants. I repeat, the
Ashkenazi Jews are European creations.17
There is a need now to look at the history of the Arabs and the Jews, at least
briefly, in order to see that the conflict over Palestine and who is entitled to
it as a homeland, was not completely settled in ancient times and it is not
settled now. Palestine is at the crossroads of the world - a meeting place for
the people of three continents. Since 3500 B.C. the main population in this part
of the world has been a people called Semites. They were then, as they are now,
a people of many colours and cultures. In 2500 B.C. a branch of the Semite
people settled in what is now Palestine. They were called Canaanites, after the
first name of the country, Canaan. About 2000 B.C., the migrants from the
Arabian Peninsula stabilized themselves into new State formations.
When we meet the people now called Jews for the first time in history, they are
migrants from that crossroads of the world in Western Asia, now called the
Middle East. Their leader is Abraham. At the time he led his people into Egypt,
the civilization and the monarchy of Egypt was already old. The pyramids had
been built hundreds of years before, and the origin of the sphinx was already a
mystery.18
Egypt was invaded for the first time in 1675 B.C. by a people from Western Asia
called the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings. This invasion turned Egypt's first age of
greatness into a nightmare. According to tradition, and the Bible, during this
time, 70 Jews, grouped in 12 patriarchal families, nomads without industry or
culture, entered Egypt. These Jews left Egypt 400 years later, 600,000 strong,
after acquiring from African people all of the elements of their future
religion, tradition and culture, including monotheism. Whoever the Jews were
when they entered Africa, when they left 400 years later, they were ethnically,
culturally and religiously an African people. The people called Jews did not
enter Europe in any appreciable numbers until after 70 A.D.
It is open to question whether the European Jews have any traceable ethnic and
cultural ties to the Jews of the ancient world, who were the first Jews to claim
Palestine as their homeland. This first claim by the Jews of Western Asia was
based on evidence that is shrouded in myth, and a question that still begs for
an answer. Who said that Palestine was theirs to be taken without the consent of
the people who were living there? For over a thousand years the country that the
Jews would later call Palestine was populated by a people called the Canaanites.
According to the traditional account of the Jewish flight from Egypt, around the
year 1200 B.C., the Hebrews, led by the prophet Moses, fled from Egypt, and
crossing the Sinai Peninsula settled in the area east of the Dead Sea. Under the
leadership of Joshua, the Hebrews invaded the State of Canaan. Crimes of the
most heinous nature were perpetrated against the inhabitants. These crimes are
recorded in the Old Testament. This was an imperialist invasion, no different
from many others in history. The inhabitants who were not killed were reduced to
servitude, and thus the Jews took over Palestine for the first time.
They were only able to occupy parts of Palestine and the area east of the Jordan
River. In the year 1020 B.C., King Saul established their first State. He was
followed by King David and King Solomon who ruled until 923 B.C. Here the Jews
gained their first experience in agriculture, urbanization and statecraft.
In 586 B.C. the Babylonians brought an end to the reign of the Hebrews in
Palestine. During the years of their reign, the original inhabitants of
Palestine remained in continuous residence. For the next 400 years, one invader
after another laid claim to Palestine, the Persians in 538 B.C., the Greeks,
under the leadership of Alexander the Great, in 331 B.C., and the Romans, in 64
B.C.
A great wave of Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula settled in Palestine in the
year 636 A.D. This massive migration was not the first Arab population in
Palestine. The Arab identity with Palestine was reaffirmed and that identity
with Palestine has not been broken to this day.
From 1517 to 1917 Palestine was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. For Arab
support of the Allies in the First World War, they were promised independence.
This promise was not kept. Colonialism and subsequently zionism followed. This
was part of a broader picture of European expansion that had started in the
fifteenth century and would climax in the closing years of the nineteenth
century. The Europeans were looking for new land, labour and raw materials. Jews
were a part of this search, more as Europeans than as Jews.19
When the European age of exploration started in the fifteenth century, the
Portuguese were searching for a sea route to India by way of the Cape (now
Capetown, South Africa). During one of their early expeditions, they attempted
to establish a refueling station along the coast of South Africa. This
expedition was undertaken upon the advice of Abraham Ben Samuel Zacuto, a Jew,
who was then the Royal Astronomer for the King of Portugal, Manuel II, before
the edict of expulsion was issued against Spanish Jews in Spain, then the
greatest institution of learning in the world.
One of the first Jews to land in South Africa was a seaman, Ferado Martins or
Fernam Martinz. He was a mariner of Vasco da Gama's ship San Gabriel. He
was with the Portuguese fleet that landed at St. Helana Bay in November 1497.
Between 1492 and the end of the sixteenth century, nearly half a million Jews
left Spain and Portugal. The Status of the Jews varied from one European country
to another. In Holland, Jews participated in the formation of the Dutch East
India Company. When the company's undertaking included the occupation of the
Cape of Good Hope, in 1652, the Amsterdam Jewish community was part of this
settlement. Holland had absorbed a large number of Jewish refugees who had
spread throughout the provinces. When Jan van Riebeek and his company of
servants were preparing to sail for the Cape of Good Hope, the Jews of Holland
were petitioning Cromwell for readmission to England. By the end of the
seventeenth century, the Jews of Holland were the principal stockholders in the
Dutch East India Company.
The Dutch East India Company established the forerunner of the South Africa of
today. The Dutch were welcomed to South Africa by the Khoisan whom they later
betrayed and enslaved. This small people (small only in stature and in numbers)
fought the Dutch in order to hold on to its land and cattle in a series of well
planned wars that the Boers or Dutch call Kaffir Wars. Finally they lost both
their land and their cattle. After the great Zulu warrior Shaka was killed in
1828, the British began to push the Boers and Boers tried to move inland and
establish a new republic away from British influence. This started a land war
between the Zulus and the Boers. The British came to the rescue of the Boers
when they were about to be defeated by the Zulus. These wars did not end until
1906. By now, because of the superior weapons of the Europeans, most of the land
was lost. The continued loss of land and the plans to make Africans strangers in
their own land led to the establishment of artificial African communities called
bantustans.
In 1970, Dr. P. Koornhof, the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and
Development, admitted that the bantustans made Africans foreigners in their own
land. He said:
"I am afraid to say that the African males from the homelands have no rights whatsoever in South Africa. Their rights are in their own homelands, and they are in South Africa only to sell their labour."20
The best known of the Bantustans is Transkei, one of the
first to be established. When it was declared "independent" in 1976 by
the apartheid regime, three million Africans were stripped of their citizenship
and they lost 13 per cent of their land area. The whites own or control 87 per
cent of the land although they are only 17 per cent of the population.
Most Africans do not live in bantustans but work in mines, factories and on
farms owned by whites. Under the bantustan programme, these Africans will be
turned into foreign migrants and be stripped of all rights in the country where
they have lived and worked for centuries.
The bantustans are completely dependent economically on the South African
Government. The bantustans have been imposed on the African people against its
will. They are white-controlled black communities. The ways in which the
Africans are treated in these bantustans can be easily compared to the way the
Arabs in Israel and on the West Bank are treated in their own land which
explains, in part, the unholy alliance between Israel and South Africa.
The most tragic aspect of the alliance between Israel and South Africa is that
it is a perfectly logical alliance. By the rationale and intent of Western
racism and colonialism, the alliance makes sense.
Both Israel and white South Africa are artificial settler States, created by the
political backwash of Europe. They are parts of Europe mentally and culturally
while being removed from it geographically. This is the basis of the
schizophrenia that prevails in Israel and in South Africa. These European
settlers are involved in a perpetual contradiction. They are stubbornly trying
to establish a nationality in nations that never belonged to them. They are
doing this at the expense of the indigenous population in the countries where
they have settled. In making an assessment of the relation of Israel to white
South Africa, this dilemma must be taken into consideration.
In order to understand the present dilemma and what it forecasts for the future,
there is a need to consider the interplay of forces in South Africa, and in the
world at large, that created the State of Israel and the apartheid-dominated
State of South Africa.
This dilemma has long historical roots that predate the European settlement of
South Africa and parts of Palestine now called Israel. It was in or near Africa
that the people now referred to as Jews entered the pages of history for the
first time. Like all people who came into Africa from other countries, they took
more from Africa than they gave.
Small Jewish settlements at what is now Capetown and other parts of South Africa
developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On 17 September 1828, the
Zulu King Shaka granted Nathanial Isaacs the use of a large tract of land for
himself and the Jewish people. This was a gesture of friendship from the
powerful king who was assassinated by two of his half-brothers before the end of
the year.
The discovery of diamond and gold in South Africa profoundly affected the
economic status of the Jews. They had a tradition of dealing in precious
minerals. From the 1800s to the present time the Jews of South Africa have been
closely related to the marketing of gold and diamonds.
The politics of zionism in South Africa is mainly a vintage of the twentieth
century. This was for many years a quiet relationship with no appreciable
international attention. The so-called six-day war in 1967 changed this picture
and made a large number of people examine zionism in general, as a world-wide
political force.
In the 10 years after the independence explosion starting in 1957 with Ghana,
the new State of Israel had more goodwill in Africa than any other white
controlled nation. By November 1973, most of this goodwill had been lost and
nations of Africa like the Ivory Coast (no Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Zaire and
Liberia, otherwise considered Conservative, had broken off diplomatic relations
with the State of Israel. There are many factors involved and the assumption is
that Arab influence is the main one. That is not true. The main reason for the
break and the change of minds and hearts among African States is Israel's long
relationship with the apartheid regime of South Africa. There are, of course,
many other factors. The Africans seemed to have been slow to learn the fact that
the Israelis in Africa were no different than other whites who wanted to control
the resources of this vast continent, by any means necessary.
The land question in Zimbabwe did not disappear with the "peace"
accord between the British Government and the Patriotic Front. The roots of the
conflict over the land are deep. What is now Zimbabwe was once a well-run
independent country. In 1870 when Lobengula became king, the Zulu wars against
the British were not over and the British settlers' designs on African land were
intensified after the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa. The
British used a missionary, Rev. Moffatt, to get Logengula to sign a treaty which
the British the right to exploit the land and establish farms and settlements.
Lobengula did not know that the treaty went that far. In 1870 parts of
Mashonaland, later to be called Rhodesia, was occupied by an expeditionary force
of mercenaries funded by the British Africa Company. It did not take long for
white settlers to evict the Shona people from their land. In this case they did
not buy the land. They took it. The Africans, in large numbers, were forced off
the land. Others were brought in to work the land. Many Africans were forced off
the land to sea and work to pay the heavy British taxes. White political power
was consolidated by the unequal tenure and the allocation of land by white
control over the labour power of the blacks. White workers had a monopoly on
skilled jobs and the trade unions. In her article, "From Rhodesia to
Zimbabwe", Marion O'Callaghan states that:
"Land became more important
for the settlers as the hopes entertained by Cecil Rhodes of vast mineral wealth
receded. The result was the continuing appropriation of African land from the
nineteenth century on. Indeed, between 1936 and 1959, according to a Rhodesian
Select Parliamentary Committee on Resettlement (1960), over 113,000 Africans
were compulsorily removed from 'white' farming areas.
"By 1969, 250,000 whites had legal rights enshrined in the Constitution to
44.95 million acres, while 5 million Africans had the right to 44.94 million
acres."21
The areas in Rhodesia where the Africans lived, which the
Europeans called reserves, were the same as what the Boers in South Africa
called bantustans. Taxes and the need for basic items of food and clothing
forced the Africans to leave the reserves and work on European-owned plantations
or in the cities. They pay was poor in both places. The pattern for education
followed along the same lines as the division of the land. Two hundred
seventy-five whites got the same appropriation as 6 million Africans. These are
the conditions that led to the war for independence.
In Kenya, land hunger among the Kikuyu people led to the Mau
Mau uprising and stimulated the fight for independence.22
My point in digressing from the land question in Palestine is that this question
cannot be seen or answered in isolation. What is called Israel and the rest of
Palestine is a part of an international problem created by colonialism and its
handmaiden - capitalism. This is a European problem imposed on the Arabs in
Palestine. The accompanying propaganda and mythology about who has a right to
the land in Palestine now and who had that right in ancient times goes on in
spite of a large body of scholarly writing that set the record straight years
ago. Many people who are sympathetic toward Israel do not agree with the
treatment of the Arabs and the settlements on land formerly considered Arab.
Dov Ronen, a research association of the Center for International Affairs at
Harvard University, made the following comment on this subject in the 5 April
1980 issue of The New York Times:
"I am an Israeli who does
not support Jewish settlements in the West Bank, nor the opening of a yeshiva in
Hebron. I personally do not claim sovereignty over Judea and Samaria on the
basis of a biblical right, nor do I consider Israel's sovereignty there
essential to our national security in all circumstances. Furthermore, although I
would oppose any plan to redivide Jerusalem, I can envision a new administrative
arrangement in the city that would address and seek to satisfy Muslim and
Palestinian aspirations.
"Having studied the issue of self-determination in world politics, I
recognize this as a right that the Palestinians must be accorded. The
Palestinians should have the right, both in principle and in practice, to
control their lives and not be ruled by Israelis or anyone else. If independent
statehood rather than 'mere' autonomy is what they want, I for one support their
quest for statehood."
In spite of strong Jewish voices such as Moise Menuhin,
Ahad Ha'am, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Alfred Lilienthal, Israel Shahak and
I. F. Stone speaking out against the Zionist treatment of the Arabs and the
settlements on Arab land, the expansion of Israel at the expense of the Arabs
continued. Also continued is the attempt to justify this expansion on the basis
of Bible texts.
On this point the Jewish-American writer, I. F. Stone, has this to say:
"These contradictions now
play their part in the efforts at peace in the Middle East. At one end of the
spectrum the Bible preaches justice and universal brotherhood. At the other end
it contains some of the most primitive and blood-thirsty ethnocentric teachings
in human literature. So Menachem Begin, Israel's fundamentalist prime minister
and the religious parties on which he depends for a thin and precarious
parliamentary majority, claim that they cannot give up the West Bank because God
gave it to the Jews.
"This can, of course, be supported from Bible texts. Indeed, if we are to
go back to a literal reading of Holy Writ for guidance in the Middle East
conflict, the religious ultras of the Israeli community can find much else along
the same lines, and in the same direction, though carried to lengths that would
make even the most fanatical among them quail. It is, of course, true that in
the final chapter of Numbers, God gave the whole of Canaan, west of the Jordan,
to Israel. But if the Word of God is to be taken literally, whose who now dwell
on the West Bank may tremble. For only three short chapters earlier, the Lord
says, "Ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you,
destroy their Holy Places and 'dispossess' them.
"Nor is that all. Numbers 33 ends with the fiercest warning of all if the
children of Israel do not dispossess the inhabitants: 'I shall do unto you, as I
thought to do unto them'. If the Jews do not drive out the Canaanites, God will
drive out the Jews. This is the harsh theology of depopulating the land to make
room for one's own."23
Palestinian leaders and organizations in the United States
say Israel is trying to remove all vocal opposition to the Camp David
"autonomy plan" by expelling Palestinian mayors in the occupied
territories or forcing them to resign.
I will conclude this paper with I. F. Stone's warning, relative to this
situation:
"Some people have been cooking up a
brew that could poison the peace not only of the Middle East but of the world.
It is the duty of the American Government and American-Jewish leadership to use
their leverage, financial and political, to put a stop to this criminal
concoction before it is too late. Begin, characteristically, chose this moment
to announce 10 more settlements on the West Bank. As usual, he promises these
will be the last, Israel and Palestine, says his opponents on the right would
prefer a military takeover of the Israeli Government. Only recognition of the
Palestinian right to self-determination can revitalize the peace talks and avert
the slide to catastrophe."
Notes
1/ Fayez A. Sayegh, Palestine,
Israel and Peace, Palestine Liberation Organization Research Centre (New
York, Friendship Press, Inc., 1970), p. 8. See also Ethel Khopung, Apartheid:
The Story of a Dispossessed People (Sharpeville Day Association, Mbizana,
Dar Es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania, 1972), pp. 1-10.
2/ Donna Richards, "The dominant
modes of Western thought and behavior: an ethonological critique", (The
Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, The New School for Social
Research, 1975), chap. IV, pp. 301-360.
3/ Donna Richards, "The Ideology
of European Dominance", The Western Journal of Black Studies,
vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter 1979), pp. 244-249.
4/ Norman F. Dacey, "Democracy in
Israel", paper especially prepared for distribution to the members of the
United States Senate and House of Representatives, on behalf of the American
Palestinian Committee, 1976, p. 1-29.
5/ Alfred Lilienthal, "Israel is
an anti-Judaistic State", Palestine Digest, vol. 8, No. 6 (September
1978), pp. 24-25. See also "Israel is about as apartheid as South
Africa". Interview with Israel Shahak, Chairman of the Israel League for
Human and Civil Rights in Intercontinental Press, vol. 13, No. 12 (31
March 1975), pp. 428-431.
6/ George J. Tomeh, Israel and South
Africa: The Unholy Alliance (New York, The New World Press, 1972), pp.
48-50. See also Richard P. Stevens and Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri, Israel and
South Africa: The Progression of a Relationship (New Brunswick, NJ, North
American Press, 1977), pp. 57-83.
7/ Fayez A. Sayegh, "Twenty Basic
Facts about the Palestine Problem", Palestine Liberation Organization
Research Centre (Beirut, 1966), pp. 4-5.
8/ Sayegh, Palestine, Israel and
Peace, pp. 8-9.
9/ Naseer H. Aruri, "The Oriental
Jews of Israel", Zionism and Racism (London, International
Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1977),
pp. 107-121. See also Raphael Patai, The Jewish Publication Society of
America (Philadelphia, PA, 1953), pp. 27-55.
10/ Interview with Israel Shahak, 31
March 1975, pp. 428-431.
11/ Alan R. Taylor, "Looking
beyond coexistence - prospects of a binational Palestine", British Section
of the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Co-operation and the Council for
the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (London, 1977), pp. 1-7. See also The
Sunday Times, 15 June 1969 and 28 November 1975.
12/ Isom Sartawi, A Legacy for the
Palestinians, Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding
(London, 1975), pp. 1-8. See also Moshe Menuhin, "Zionism reassessed",
Arab Perspectives, vol. 1, No. 1 (New York, April 1980), pp. 12-19, and Nationalism
and the Jewish Ethic: Basic Writing of Ahad Ha'am (New York, Schocken
Publishers, 1962), especially the chapter entitled "The Jewish State and
the Jewish People", pp. 63-89.
13/ Zionism - the obstacle to
peace, Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (London,
1978), pp. 2-4. See also Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri, The Land of Promise
(New Jersey, North American, 1977), pp. 1-18.
14/ "Zionism and racism - a case
to answer", European Co-ordinating Committee of Friendship Societies with
the Arab World (Paris, 1972), pp. 1-4. See also Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri, op.cit.,
chap. 8.
15/ Michael Adams, Israel's
Treatment of the Arabs in the Occupied Areas, (Paris, International
Committee for Palestinian Human Rights, 1976), pp. 1-6. See also Maxine Rodinson,
Israel, A Colonial-Settler State, (New York, Pathfinder Press, 1973), pp.
27-33.
16/ Adams, op.cit., pp. 5-11.
17/ Ralph Patai, Israel between
East and West, pp. 9-55.
18/ A. H. Sayce, The Egypt of the
Hebrews and Herodotos (London, Rivington, Percival Co., 1896), pp. 7-41. See
also Ismail Shammant, Palestine: Illustrated Political History,
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), distributed by the Arab Information
Center, New York.
19/ John Henrik Clarke, "Israel
and South Africa: The unholy alliance against Africa's people", Black
Book Bulletin.
20/ Robert Molteno and Henry
Freedman, Pan-Africa Diary 1979 (London, Zed Press, 1979).
21/ Marion O'Callaghan, "From
Rhodesia to Zimbabwe", UNESCO Courier, November 1977.
22/ Jomo
Kenyatta, Facing Mr. Kenya (New York, Vintage Books, Random House,
1965). See also Josiah Mwangi Karwki, Mau Mau Detainee (New York, Penguin
Books, 1965).
23/ I. F. Stone, "Bible
diplomacy", The Washington Post, 19 August 1977. Also see I. F.
Stone, "An Ulter in the Mideast", The Village Voice, 16 June
1980.