Isolating South Africa through sanctions and boycotts was certainly not the choice of Mrs Thatcher or Mr Reagan, but their governments were eventually forced to take action by the outrage of their own electorates at the suffering apartheid inflicted. The international anti-apartheid movement began at the grassroots among religious, community and labour groups, but it grew sufficiently powerful to force governments to distance themselves from a regime that they had viewed sympathetically. And that is a lesson that terrifies Israel’s leaders.
Israeli government officials have spoken openly since the Gaza conflict of their growing sense of isolation. Despite their most strenuous PR efforts, the 1,417 Palestinian deaths they caused in Gaza (compared with 13 Israelis, four by “friendly fire”) made it hard to sell the idea that Israel was the victim in the conflict. Israel’s narrative did not fit the images of the Gaza clash. It’s hard to convince people that the guys with the F-16s and Apache helicopters and the tanks are little David, while those facing them with side-arms, mortars and a handful of improvised unguided missiles are actually Goliath.
Coddled in their own narrative in which they are the eternal victims, Israelis are not accustomed to finding themselves the focus of international moral opprobrium. And they see in it a mortal threat.
That’s of course the main difference between South Africa and Israel. Both are racist settler states which drove the indigenious population off the best land in the country and locked them up in Bantustans, but South Africa didn’t have the Holocaust as a justification. The founding myth of Israel is that it was created as a shelter for the people who through the centuries had always been the victims, created from land liberated by them from those who would want to repeat the Holocaust. With the establishment of Israels, Jews worldwide would finally have a safe haven and therefore they need to defend it no matter what its crimes. At the same time, anybody who criticises Israel obviously wants to destroy this safe haven and is therefore evil.
But World War II ended almost 64 years ago, the generations that survived the Holocaust is slowly dying and even their children are getting old. Israel’s existence hasn’t been under threat for decades, its military is the most capable in the region and it’s a nuclear power. the whole victim card just doesn’t work well anymore, either with western Jews themselves or with non-Jews.
The recent Gaza donor conference at Sharm el Sheikh was a familiar exercise of nations pledging large amounts of money while respecting taboos imposed by Israel that effectively block reconstruction. That was in marked contrast to the aid convoy led by the maverick British MP George Galloway that arrived in Gaza two weeks ago, comprising some 100 trucks and ambulances loaded with medical and humanitarian supplies funded and collected at grassroots level in churches, mosques, trade union branches and community groups all over Britain.
Sure, the amount of aid delivered was small potatoes relative to the need, but the gesture showed that hundreds of thousands of ordinary Britons no longer accept their government’s equivocation on the fate of the Palestinians. That is exactly how the international anti-apartheid movement was born, back when the governments of the US and Britain were happy to concur with Pretoria that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist.
Back when I started blogging, in 2002, online opinion even in leftist blogs was much more in line with official reality, in which both Israel and the Palestinians were to blame for the ongoing conflict but the Palestinians with their terror much more so and any attention to the root causes of the conflict characterised as anti-semitism and beyond the pale. Over the years this has slowly changed, especially after the Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza this year, but also through the way the Palestinian population was treated for daring to elect Hamas. Alternative news sources, especially online, have helped a lot in exposing the official reality for the sham it is.
Grassroots initiatives like the British aid convoy to Gaza cannot stop Israeli Apartheid, but they are a hopeful sign that it will be increasingly difficult to maintain.