The out­come of South Africa’s geno­cide case against Israel at the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) is unlike­ly to have any more effect on the war in Gaza than the court’s rul­ing against Russia’s actions in Ukraine had on Vladimir Putin. But apartheid has some lessons Israel — and the Pales­tini­ans – would do well to absorb.

To equate Israelis in gen­er­al with white South African racists who con­coct­ed and per­pe­trat­ed apartheid is stretch­ing the point to the lev­el of disingenuous.
But when it comes to under­stand­ing what has been and con­tin­ues to be done in their name – for what­ev­er rea­sons — and what it will mean to their self-esteem as a nation, Israeli Jews have more in com­mon with apartheid’s ben­e­fi­cia­ries than I think would make the major­i­ty of them comfortable.
The  argu­ment that Israel is not an apartheid state, not least because it’s  a democ­ra­cy with free­dom of speech, dis­sent and access to courts of law is valid, but only up to a point. The occu­pied West Bank, for exam­ple, has much in com­mon with South Affrica’s “Ban­tus­tan” policy.
I cov­ered both the hey­day and down­fall of apartheid, and report­ed exten­sive­ly from Israel, the occu­pied West Bank, Gaza and the refugee camps of the Pales­tin­ian diaspora.
My last­ing impres­sion is that Pales­tini­ans and Israelis only think they know how the oth­er side thinks.
When it comes to not under­stand­ing the extent of inter­na­tion­al oppo­si­tion to the war in Gaza and why the geno­cide claim has inter­na­tion­al trac­tion, Israelis real­ly can “blame it on the media”.
In a piece sub-head­lined: “Cov­er­age that omits plight of Pales­tini­ans leaves Israeli pub­lic dan­ger­ous­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the rest of the world, crit­i­cal jour­nal­ists say” Guardian jour­nal­ist Chris McGre­al not­ed that:  “Israeli mil­i­tary cen­sors, who oper­ate in every TV stu­dio and news­room, have decid­ed to give away very lit­tle detail about progress on the ground. Videos from Gaza tend to be close cropped, and often show only the after­math of engagement.”
That mir­rors the way state-owned South African tele­vi­sion (the only ser­vice wide­ly avail­able at the  time) cov­ered the riots dur­ing the states of emer­gency that failed to curb the fight to end apartheid.
The result was what turned out to be a feel­ing of shame on the part of whites over their igno­rance of the lev­el of anger and deter­mi­na­tion on the part of black South Africans to fight no mat­ter what the odds and cost, and the actions of the secu­ri­ty forces to counter it.
That was brought home to me when a white South African friend came to the CBS Johan­nes­burg bureau to watch some of the sto­ries about town­ship vio­lence we’d put on air. After half a dozen or so, I turned to ask what she thought. Tears were cours­ing down her cheeks. “I didn’t know,” she whis­pered. “Dear God, I didn’t even know.”

                 THE ALLY EVERYONE CLAIMS

The oth­er thing apartheid’s archi­tects and both the Israelis and Pales­tini­ans have in com­mon is a con­vic­tion that God is on their side. Con­sid­er­ing how many oth­ers make the same claim, that’s a huge, no pun intend­ed, leap of faith.
Two thou­sand years ago, Christ issued a prayer for reli­gious uni­ty (John 17). Today, there are 45,000 Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions worldwide.
Islam has sev­en branch­es (Sun­ni, Shia, Whab­bi, Salafi, Berelvi, Sufi and Deoban­di) and Judaism has split into three main branch­es (Reform, Con­ser­v­a­tive and Ortho­dox) , which have bro­ken into at least eight sub groups.
All of the above trace their ori­gins to Abra­ham, wor­ship the same god, claim their rit­u­als are the ones the deity prefers and that he (or she, some claim) is on their side. (By the way, Putin cites reli­gion as one of his jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for invad­ing Ukraine.)
When it comes to who has exclu­sive “right” to inhab­it what is uni­ver­sal­ly termed the  “Holy (or ‘Promised’) Land”, it seems to me that the only fair thing to God is to leave he/she/it out of it.
Which leaves Pales­tini­ans (who are main­ly Mus­lim but include Chris­tians of var­i­ous denom­i­na­tions) and Jews in their rite and rit­u­al mul­ti­plic­i­ty, to share it.
That’s anoth­er way of say­ing what has always been obvi­ous and con­sis­tent­ly denied by those who ought to know bet­ter, that the only solu­tion is the one com­mon­ly known as “Two State”.
So maybe quit squab­bling and killing each oth­er in the name of God and get on with it?
And if you need help, take a les­son from how one of the most intre­pid, implaca­ble and tru­ly moral oppo­nents of injus­tice, the late Arch­bish­op Desmond Tutu, summed up what was need­ed to well and tru­ly bury apartheid and it’s lega­cy:  “True rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is nev­er cheap, for it is based on for­give­ness which is cost­ly. For­give­ness in turn  depends on repentance,which has to be based on an acknowl­edge­ment of what was done wrong, and there­fore on dis­clo­sure of the truth. You can­not for­give what you do not know.” 

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