Aparthied

( Click to enlarge Picture.)

by Dora McPhee

EDWARD SAID COMMENTS

“. . . for years, and years, few paid attention to the conquest of Palestine by Jewish forces, or to the Arab people already there who endured its exorbitant cost in the destruction of their society, the expulsion of the majority, and the hideous system of laws -- a virtual Apartheid -- that still discriminates against them inside Israel and in the occupied territories. Palestinians were the silent victims of a gross injustice, quickly shuffled offstage by a triumphalist chorus of how amazing Israel was. . .

. . .As a black South African reporter wrote while on a visit to Gaza, Apartheid was never as vicious and as inhumane as Zionism: ethnic cleansing, daily humiliations, collective punishment on a vast scale, land appropriation, etc., etc.

. . . Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are locked in Sartre's vision of hell, that of "other people." There is escape. Separation can't work in so tiny a land, any more than Apartheid did . . . it is up to us to provide the answer that power and paranoia cannot. It isn't enough to speak generally of peace. One must provide the concrete grounds for it, and those can only come from moral vision, and neither from "pragmatism" nor "practicality." If we are all to live -- this is our imperative -- we must capture the imagination not just of our people, but that of our oppressors. And, we have to abide by humane democratic values.”

(from “The Only Alternative” by courtesy 2001 Al Ahram Weekly and Edward Said)