Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: reality check 1

Diamo tutti per scontato che se un sudafricano critica Israele, questa
critica sia particolarmente autorevole. Si tratta di un riflesso
condizionato che impedisce di vedere qualcosa di molto importante
http://blog.z-word.com/2008/07/south-africas-false-halo/#more-151
South Africa’s False Halo
I first learned of the visit of a “South African Human Rights
Delegation to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories” when I
was on a brief visit to London last week. Ducking into a corner store
to escape the incessant rain, I flicked through that day’s edition of
The Independent and came across an article by Donald Macintyre, the
paper’s Jerusalem correspondent, headlined “This is like Apartheid.”
“Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle,” Macintyre began, “said last
night that the restrictions endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-
occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on
the black majority under white rule in South Africa.” And so on.
Over the next few days, I did some more research and established that
the delegation’s perspective, despite a web site with the hackneyed
image of a gun-toting Israeli soldier and smiling Palestinian kids,
was a little more nuanced than Macintyre’s account allowed for. Even
so, my initial reaction to his piece (basically, “why on earth are the
judgments of this group portrayed as definitive?”) remains, I think,
valid.
Because of the legacy of apartheid, South African interventions into
international debates about human rights enjoy a certain privilege.
Therefore, when the word “apartheid” is invoked, people, especially
those on the liberal left, tend to stop and listen, even if, as Rhoda
Kadalie and Julia Bertelsmann have so eloquently argued, it is done
stupidly and maliciously, as it is in the case of Israel.
I am tired of this halo effect, and I don’t think I am alone. Yes,
South Africa has made some huge advances since the nefarious apartheid
regime was dismantled. But South Africa is not the embodiment of
global conscience. It is one state among many. The views of its
leaders, parliamentarians and opinion-formers are just as prone to
error and distortion as those of the rest of us.
But whereas Jews are frequently told, when it comes to Israel, that
they are either exploiting the Holocaust or ignoring its lessons, post-
apartheid South Africans are seen as untouchable. No matter what their
government does elsewhere in the world, any South African with even a
vague amount of clout who analogizes Israel and apartheid is
guaranteed a respectful, even gleeful, audience.
Hence the innate power of a human rights delegation to Israel and the
Palestinian territories. If South Africans are there expressing
concern, the logic goes, then that is because of the inescapable
comparisons with apartheid. By virtue of being South Africans, they
know, better than we do, what human rights abuse really means,
especially in the Middle East. It is a particularly intriguing and
effective way of muzzling debate.
Yet reality has to intrude. The record of South Africa’s government
over neighboring Zimbabwe, where Mugabe has turned torture and
political murder into a grizzly routine, has been a disgrace. On the
very day that Macintyre’s report was published, South Africa voted
against a UN Security Council resolution toughening sanctions against
Mugabe and his cronies. In the last 40 days, in defiance of the UN’s
main refugee agency, South Africa has sent a breathtaking 17,000
Zimbabwean refugees back to Mugabe’s hell on earth. And that’s not
even mentioning the anti-foreigner pogroms which erupted across the
country in May, leaving scores dead and injured.
Imagine if, during this unspeakable violence, a group of Israelis,
solemnly invoking the persecution, ghettoization, murder and genocide
which have indelibly marked the Jewish experience, had landed in
Johannesburg on a fact-finding mission. Such a delegation would have
been - to say the least - mocked and reviled.
Does it then follow that all of the conclusions of the delegation to
Israel and the Palestinian territories should be dismissed? No, not
necessarily. Certainly, the delegation’s credibility was done no
favors by Macintyre, or by an even more ludicrous article in Ha’aretz
penned by Gideon Levy. Their complete inattention to the security-
driven aspects of Israeli policy - put bluntly, how many suicide
bombers were there from Soweto? - was jaw-dropping. But their
collective conclusions were basically moderate, if unremarkable (…”it
is clear to us that there should be freedom and security for all who
live here”), and occasionally astute (for example, High Court Judge
Dennis Davies observing to the BBC that if “Israelis and Palestinians
are serious about a two-state solution, it has to be an amicable
divorce because they are going to end up living side by side.”)
All of this is trumped, however, by a truth that the delegation will
find unpalatable. It is only because of the false, ugly apartheid
analogy that their views are given more credence than those of a
delegation from Mexico, say, or Iceland. In other words, this
seemingly noble discourse rests upon a lie.
Some South Africans might draw the right conclusion from that, and
focus instead on a principled, genuinely international fight against
racism, rather than franchising the word “apartheid” out of political
expediency. A delegation might be sent to, for example, Italy, which
has been sharply rebuked by the European Parliament for fingerprinting
gypsies (although they should be as wary of saying “apartheid” there
too; it’s more properly called “discrimination”). Or they could focus
on their own continent.
One can hope, after all.

 
http://blog.z-word.com/2008/07/south-africas-false-halo/#more-151
Volendo, bastava questa frase:
"How many suicide bombers were there from Soweto?"


Suicide bomber? Vuoi dire martiri della causa anti-demoplutosionista
costretti a sacrificarsi dalla disparita' di forze?
Palmiro Pangloss

eugenio ha scritto:

beh almeno il sudafrica non verrà spazzato via dalla furia nucleare


nel caso del tuo cranio è bastata una scorreggia del vicino: la fuga
dei cervelli