Tag: Apartheid

Ronnie Barkan: I stand here today as the accuser, not the accused

Ronnie Barkan is  a long-time Israeli friend of FSOI. Alongside two other activists for Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, he faced a first trial hearing in Berlin on 4 March for disrupting a talk by Israeli lawmaker Aliza Lavie at Humboldt Wniversity in Berlin (in 2017). The three were pointing out her complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The three are Ronnie Barkan, Stavit Sinai (both Jewish-Israeli) and Majed Abusalama (Palestinian), known as the “Humboldt 3”.

This is his powerful speech to the court.

I stand here today with a sense of pride.

Not the pride of vanity, but pride in knowing that what I did was fundamentally right and done for the greater good.

I also stand here today as the accuser, not the accused.

he Humboldt 3, Stavit Sinai, Ronnie Barkan, and Majed Abusalama, receive an award from Copenhagen’s Mayor for Technical and Environmental Affairs, Ninna Hedeager Olsen (far right) in February 2019.
The Humboldt 3, Stavit Sinai, Ronnie Barkan, and Majed Abusalama, receive an award for their courage from Copenhagen’s Mayor for Technical and Environmental Affairs, Ninna Hedeager Olsen (far right) in February 2019.

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Don’t mention Apartheid

Richard Kuper
This article is reprinted from Open Democracy by permission of the author

The attempt to outlaw the use of the term “apartheid” in relation to Israel and its occupation has to be recognised as carrying dangers of effectively stifling debate on an issue of great importance

The checkpoint to exit Hebron Old City
The checkpoint to exit Hebron Old City (photo Mike Cushman)

We are faced with an increasing onslaught on criticism of Israel with attempts being made to drawn the lines ever more narrowly.  There are accusations that any singling out of Israel is antisemitic: so, for example, calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions in Israel’s case but not in others is prima facie evidence of antisemitism, as is using the word apartheid to characterise any aspect of Israeli society.

What I would like to address here is the use of the concept of ‘apartheid’ to compare South African and Israeli society, and the dangerous suppression involved in outlawing its use. Critics say the analogy is plain wrong and therefore its use can only be malign: an attempt to delegitimate, demonise and apply double standards (to use Sharansky’s 3-D test of criticism of Israel – see the discussion Is criticism of Israel antisemitic?) about what it is that goes beyond what is acceptable. Ultimately, for many of these critics, the use of the term “apartheid” is antisemitic.
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