Pierre Galand, international co-ordinator of the Tribunal, is organising a session of the kangaroo court "Russell Tribunal on Palestine" in South Africa. South Africa was chosen because he accuses Israel of being an apartheid State. The "session" will take place in November in Cape Town and he has enlisted the support of two well-known Israel-bashers Desmond Tutu and John Dugar, as well as ... Winnie Mandela.
At the press conference, a priest Rev. Edwin Arrison, on behalf of Kairos (a viciously anti-Israel Christian group) said:
"From the side of the churches it is important that we show our support for this tribunal. It is important because just as we declared apartheid a heresy, the new heresy we are facing today is Christian Zionism and because of Christian Zionism there is so much support coming particularly from Christians in the USA. There are many of us who say that "no, we cannot allow the Bible, Christianity and so on to be misused in this way"."
"Apartheid in Israel" was on all the press conference participants' lips.
NGO Monitor has a special report on Pierre Galand: "PIERRE GALAND (BELGIUM) USING POLITICAL NGOS TO PROMOTE DEMONIZATION AND; ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE UN AND THE EU" and an UPDATE (2004)
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Having grown up in apartheid South Africa, and having left the country 40-years ago because - at that point - positive change seemed unlikely, I can attest that any attempt to draw valid historical comparisons between South Africa 1945 - 1990 and Israel 1947 - date are entirely fallacious and devoid of any historical truth or reality.
Unlike black South Africans who were an oppressed and dispossessed majority in their own nation, Palestinians have always had a choice. In 1947 some Palestinians chose to reject the decision of the United Nations and to literally 'go for broke' in an attempt to seize the fragment of Turkish Palestine - divided equally between the nascent Israel & the Palestinian territory - which remained after the UN devolved 90% of Turkish Palestine on the Kingdom of Jordan. The suffering of the Palestinians, other than those who chose to settle in other countries or become Israeli citizens, dates from their rejection of the 1947 decision, their continued rejection of that decision, and their unrelenting attacks on the citizens of Israel, Jew and Gentile.
Had South Africa had to defend itself against powerful well-armed neighbours, with forces trained initially by the British and the French and armed more recently by the former Soviet Union, on no less than three occasions between 1948 and 1973, as well as suffering ongoing violent acts of terrorism and rocket/mortar attacks across its borders, the situation in South Africa today would be very different and it is doubtful whether a relatively peaceful democratic transformation would have been achieved.
Unlike black South Africans who were innocent victims of a system which deprived them of human rights and dignity in the land of their birth, the militant Palestinian factions are wholly responsible for the position in which the Palestinian peoples find themselves. They chose war at a time when a weak and defenceless Israel accepted the 1947 dispensation and wanted nothing but peace with its neighbours.
Apartheid was a system whereby a small minority of South Africans oppressed and discriminated against the majority of South African people. No law abiding citizen or resident of the sovereign nation of Israel has ever been subject to such treatment.
It is sad to see South Africans attempting to expiate their own guilt, both concerning their tragic past and their present inability to effectively confront the challenges presented by the legacy of apartheid, by deflecting attention from their own problems to a region where they have no mandate. In this they are no better than the OAU attempting to shore up the dictator Gaddafi on the baseless pretext that he is (a)African; and (b)formerly supported liberation movements.
South Africa needs to clean up its own backyard before masquerading as an honest broker in matters which do not concern it. South Africa's failure to address the crime, poverty and inequality which is the toxic legacy of apartheid presents a clear and ever present threat to its own young and fragile democracy. South Africans should not presume to lecture the Middle East's only functional, prosperous democracy.
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