OPINION: A response to using 'apartheid' in Israel - the shoe fits
It was in 1961 that Hendrik Verwoerd, declared that, “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” In the half-century since, South Africans have dismantled the formal system of racial segregation instituted by Verwoerd and his racist National Party, and yet, on Palestinian land, apartheid still stands.
During that same period of time, countless other, more respectable South Africans have made the comparison between the two regimes and, unlike Verwoerd, have chosen to identify with the struggle of the indigenous Palestinians, rather than the ruling Israeli class. In 1987, Archbishop Desmond Tutu at a conference of Palestinian Christians said, “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in SA. I’ve seen the humiliation of Palestinians at [Israeli] checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”