Passages: On the Genesis of " Apartheid —The Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation, 1948-1990 " European Research Council Project (original) (raw)
Related papers
Israel, Apartheid, and a South African Jewish Dilemma
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 20/1, 2021
Like many diaspora Jewish communities, South African Jews are divided on the politics of Israel-Palestine. The majority, however, remain strongly Zionist and opposed to allegedly self-hating Jewish critiques of Israeli government policy and action. This article draws on a series of in-depth interviews with South Africans who identify as Jewish but situate themselves outside of what they regard as the communal mainstream. Focusing on their views about Israel and Zionism, the article reveals the often intense internal struggles provoked by their attempts to reconcile emotional connections to Israel and discomfort with the country's politics. We show the extent to which such reactions are rooted in the rhetorical link between Israel and apartheid, which dominates global discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many of these Jews reject the direct analogy but find the perceived associations between apartheid and Israel deeply unsettling. This position is generationally inflected, with those who lived through apartheid typically more disturbed by the analogy than younger Jews, whose critique of Israeli politics does not draw from a deep personal well of apartheid experience.
From South Africa to Israel, the Three Pillars of Apartheid
Orient XXI, 2023
How does a South African and former anti-apartheid activist feel about visiting Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories? Classification of the population, freedom of choice of residence and movement, importance of security: based on the three central drivers of separation, Na'eem Jeenah considers Israeli apartheid to be worse than South Africa's.
Book review, 'Apartheid Israel: the politics of an analogy' edited by Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs, Chicago, IL, Haymarket Books, 2015, 212 pp. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, Vol. 17 , Iss. 4, 2016.
What's in the Apartheid Analogy? Palestine/Israel Refracted
Theory & Event, 2020
This article engages the analogy of Palestine/Israel to apartheid South Africa, and probes the political imaginary that contours this discussion while explicating the circumstances of its emergence. Accordingly, it contends that apartheid is not merely a system of institutionalized separation; rather, it organizes the facts and reality of separation(s) within a frame and against a background unity that effectively allows it to be perceived as such. To that end, the article explores four key factors that created background unity in apartheid South Africa: labor relations; political theology; role of language; and geo-political unit(y), and scrutinizes their political and experiential ramifications in Palestine/Israel.
'Negotiating Identity: Israel, Apartheid, and the United Nations, 1949-1952'
English Historical Review, 2017
Orthodox historiographies on Israel’s early policies in ‘black’ Africa and its relations with ‘white’ South Africa commonly, if disjointedly, assert that the state’s Jewish identity had played, in the early 1960s, a key role in Israel’s participation in the international ‘struggle against apartheid’. Revisiting this assertion, I examine Israel’s involvement in early United Nations debates on South Africa’s race policies. I trace the making of Israel’s position on South Africa’s treatment of persons of Indian origins in preparation for the 1950 General Assembly; present Israel’s voting praxis in that session; and demonstrate the persistence of both position and praxis in the 1952 Assembly session where apartheid first appeared on the UN agenda. Against the grain of existing accounts, I argue first that, on Africa, Israel’s multilateral diplomacy preceded its bilateral diplomacy; Israel’s encounter with Africa began not in the early 1960s but with its 1949 UN admission, compelling its envoys to vote and reflect on African and colonial questions, including apartheid. Secondly, I demonstrate that Israel approached apartheid with equivocation; at the UN, its diplomats devised and acted on a formula allowing them, in their words, ‘to have our cake and eat it’—even if, on the whole, Israel’s diplomatic praxis was far more progressive than that of Western states. Thirdly, I demonstrate how Jewish identity, constructed through the prism of Israel’s foundational ideology, affected such equivocation: it defined Israel’s dilemma on apartheid but, at the same time, also offered a route out of that conundrum. Finally, I illustrate that the elasticity of Jewish identity displayed by Israel’s envoys drew on sensibilities that were often formed in South Africa itself by their own previous encounters with racially-managed society and, later, with apartheid.
Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid Edited by Ilan Pappé
Apartheid does an excellent job in illustrating " the power of comparative work in helping to chart new possibilities, ideas and conversations. " In this collection of essays brought together by the respected anti-Zionist, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe a diverse group of contributors seek to build on and develop debates concerning the apartheid analogy and the state of Israel in its ongoing relations with Palestine and the Palestinian people.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END A Comparison Between the Apartheid (South Africa Vs. Israeli Occupation)
IAEME PUBLICATION, 2024
This paper compares the systemic practices of apartheid South Africa and Israeli occupation. The authors leverage the perceived similarities between Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and apartheid-era South Africa to foster global empathy for Gaza and Palestine. By synthesising the deeply reviewed literature, a list of the different forms of institutionalized oppression and segregation from both historical and contemporary examples is set in a table. The authors then examine the mechanisms and the consequences of the apartheid practices on affected populations and the possibility of extending this to Gaza. The study aims to understand the time framework that such apartheid practices would bring more international solidarity and empathetic commitment towards ending the Israeli occupation. Therefore, this work is meant to resonate through creating new sustained waves of social justice that would help to inspire solidarity among the oppressed population of Palestine and stop possible spreading such regime into Gaza. It also heralds the beginning of the end of the occupation regime, taking an analogy of the apartheid in South Africa previously.