As an Israeli of South African origin, privileged to spend time each year in South Africa, I would like to reflect here on what Palestine/Israel might learn from South Africa. In Palestine/Israel, we are locked into a situation of war, occupation, discrimination and genocide that shuts off any horizon of equality, justice and peace for both Israelis
and Palestinians. Until the early 1990s, South Africa too seemed locked into a system of apartheid that shut off horizons of hope for the vast majority of South Africans.
Perhaps most importantly, Palestine/Israel might learn from the South African experience that things do not have to be this way. Israeli leaders try to convince people at home
and abroad that things have always been this way, they will always be this way, and so we must simply accept the conflict and manage it as best we can. In their opinion, hoping for equality, justice and peace for all is naïve and unreal. Jewish Israeli privilege must be defended to guarantee stability and calm. The South African experience shows us that systems of inequality, injustice and violence must and can come to an end.
Secondly, South Africa can teach us how to dismantle systems that cultivate inequality, repression and violence. These systems are rooted not only in the political establishment but also in every other aspect of society – especially in education and socio-economic structures that perpetuate state ideology. South Africa has the experience of uprooting state ideology and promoting a vision of an open
and pluralist society. Although South Africa did not become a paradise, suffering even now from deep poverty, extreme inequality, economic exclusion, and violence, with worrying levels of criminality and corruption, risking eroding the gains of democracy, a rights-based Constitution continues to direct those in government to recognise the dignity and equality of all.
South African apartheid and the occupation and discrimination perpetuated by the Israeli state have much in common. They are founded on what might be described as ‘settler colonialism’. However, white South Africans and Jewish Israelis are part and parcel of the fabric of society and do not have another homeland. Just as the new South Africa integrated white South Africans and offered a vision of confession of guilt, pardon and integration through the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission, so too a vision of Palestine/Israel must be founded on the integration of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs that allows every citizen to live in equality, justice and peace.
White South Africans were brought to a realisation that they had to change, at least in part, through the imposition of boycotts,
disinvestment and sanctions. These social and economic pressures, alongside mass-based domestic opposition to apartheid and international solidarity, provided a non-violent incentive for change. Similarly, such pressure might be essential to bring Jewish Israelis, who have little incentive to change a system that benefits them enormously, to realise that their welfare depends on the welfare of the Palestinian people.
Finally, in South Africa, religious leaders played an important role in standing up against the unjust status quo. Their prophetic voices were raised to condemn a system that contradicted the values that are at the heart of religious tradition. In Palestine/Israel, the proponents of prophetic religion, rather than the religion of empire, by which false prophets and self-interested clerics defend the status
quo, are still a tiny minority. I pray that religious leaders in Palestine/Israel, Jews, Muslims and Christians, might learn from their South African counterparts too.
