The following was posted on ML Today:
Why South African Trade Unions Favor Sanctions and Boycotts Of Apartheid Israel
Address to Lenasia (near Johannesburg) Rally on Palestine 14th January 2009, by Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary, Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU]
From our own experience, we know how painful and dehumanizing is the system of segregation, otherwise known as apartheid. Apartheid is a system based on the assumption that one group or race is superior to others and therefore has a right to all the privileges and virtues associated with that particular status. It has a right to run and determine the lives of others, excluding them from certain privileges, merely because they do not belong to the “chosen” group.
What other definition would so fittingly define a system based on different rights and privileges for Jews and Arabs in the Middle East? The bantustanization of Palestine into pieces or strips — West Bank, Ramallah, Gaza Strip and so on — run by Israel and with no rights whatsoever for the Palestinians, is definitely an apartheid system. Israel occupied the land of the Palestinian people and created settler communities of Jews who enjoy a different lifestyle and privileges than those experienced by Palestinians. Palestinians are packed like Sardines in a tin throughout the Bantustans, with Gaza being acknowledged as the world’s biggest open-air prison.
