Roadmap to Apartheid (2012) - full transcript

This is the beautiful land
of Israel and Palestine.

The world’s three
most prominent religions

Islam, Christianity and
Judaism, consider it holy land.

Each year, millions of
people from around the world

Come here to pray for
peace and prosperity.

Yet this land is
also a major center

of conflict in the world today.

(gunshots)

For Jewish Israelis,
the conflict

centers on protecting a homeland

Created for the Jewish
people in 1948.



For Palestinians, it is about

resisting decades
of colonialism,

expulsion, occupation,
and apartheid.

(music)

Most people identify
apartheid with the

grotesque system of
control that existed

in South Africa
from 1948 to 1994,

in which the white minority

ruled over the black
majority, stole their

land, and deprived
them of basic rights.

It was a system reviled
by the whole world,

and it eventually
crumbled under the

combined pressure of internal

resistance and
international sanctions.



Today the word is
back, and with it too

is a growing global
movement to end the

Israeli form of apartheid.

(music)

(music)

(music fades out)

Time, October, 1948.
A new leadership.

It denies the morality
of economic free

for all. Its slogan:
“To each his own.”

Its belief: parallel
development,

separate identity. Apartheid.

The word Apartheid,
is an Afrikaans word,

Which simply means separateness,
Being apart.

So we had the wonderful
term called separate

development, but it was
never intended to be equal.

One could talk about the
petty Apartheid. That

was about the fact
that almost from birth

your life was separated
from people of other races.

You’d have to stand
if the bus was

full. If you went to the beach,

there were some beaches
you could not walk on.

Those were the sorts of petty
manifestations.

But you had the real Apartheid,
which for me was about

the structural systems and
policies of Apartheid,

the way in which land was
taken away from people.

In the first post-war
election, the

white electorate
voted into power

a group of men dedicated
to the complete

separation of the races
in South Africa.

The vision was to
create a demographic

white majority, at
least of citizens,

even though you were going to
have the others in your midst.

The entire nationalistic
existence was

at stake. It was
going to be swamped

by the black majority, so they

evolved the concept
of Apartheid.

Ultimately the driving
force behind it all

was to create the
white Afrikaner-led

nation so that Afrikanerdom
could sustain its

permanent existence
as a national entity.

Now united, the folk would
decide South Africa’s destiny.

The years of division,
of second-class citizenship,

had conditioned
Afrikaners to thinking

of themselves as a
people besieged.

Afrikaner history formed a sort

of self-contained
moral universe.

Whereas the rest of
the world saw them as

oppressors, as
colonizers, as racists,

they saw themselves primarily
as victims, settlers

who were escaping religious
persecution in Europe.

They saw themselves as fighting
for self-determination.

In 1836, in an
extraordinary gesture

of self-reliance and courage,

2,000 Afrikaners crossed
the Orange River into the

wilderness, out of the
bondage of British rule.

The first time in
history that the

term concentration camp appears,

is in Afrikaner history.
About 10% of the

population died in British
concentration camps.

So for them, Apartheid
was about survival,

about self-determination,
about redemption,

about preserving a way of life.
You see

a very similar
pattern in Zionism.

Despite that Palestinians
experienced it as

a very aggressive
colonizing movement that

has dispossessed them
Israelis are capable of

seeing themselves as
victims, as survivors

of drawing on Jewish history in

order to justify
their status quo.

It’s important to address that.
It’s

important to address
them with empathy

and to say, “I don’t
accept what you do,

but I understand what
the motivation is”,

and to be able to
talk about that.

(ambient sounds)

We feel that the
concept of Apartheid

is really crucial
for understanding

what’s happening here,
and where Israel

is going, because
it’s the only term

that accurately
defines the system

that Israel is
trying to develop.

It isn’t just a policy. It’s
not just discrimination.

It’s the way the
system is structured.

It’s separation of
populations in which one

group permanently and
institutionatally

dominates another group.

It’s getting to the
point where there

isn’t going to be a
Jewish majority.

If you take the
entirety of Israel and

the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip,

we’re at the point now where
it’s roughly 50/50.

And that’s before any
Palestinian refugees return.

Palestinians are
broadly categorized

into three main groups.

The majority of
Palestinians are refugees

who were forced out of
the land that became

Israel in 1948. Today
they number over 6

million people and still
live in refugee camps

in places like Syria,
Lebanon, and Jordan.

A second group are
the Palestinians

who managed to
stay inside Israel

during the 1948 war and became
Israeli citizens.

And lastly, there are the
5 million Palestinians

living in the
occupied territories:

the West Bank, East Jerusalem,
and the Gaza Strip.

This territory is defined by
what is known as the green line.

This is land that
Israel occupied in the

1967 war, and still
controls to this day.

Palestinians in these
areas do not have Israeli

citizenship, nor do they
have a state of their own.

(children shouting)

What you have in the West
Bank is two entirely

separate and unequal
geographies that are

super-imposed on each other,
but exist separately.

You have the Palestinians
who are cut off

into dozens of ghettos,
literally surrounded

by walls and physical
barriers, with

little access to
work, to education.

Even the basic means
of survival; food

and water is often
difficult to come by.

And then super-imposed on
that you have the settlers,

who live in what look
like American-style

suburbs, very spacious,
very luxurious homes

with swimming pools,
with access to water.

Immediately after the
1967 occupation, Israel

began building
Jewish-only settlements

in the occupied
territories and started

moving its population
into these settlements,

a practice that is illegal
under international law.

There are approximately
220 Jewish-only

settlements scattered
throughout the West Bank.

Their territorial jurisdiction
includes not only

the Palestinian land upon
which they’re built,

but often the land that
surrounds the settlements

which is reserved for their
so-called natural growth.

Each of those settlements,
every single one of

them, is only allocated
to Jewish Israelis.

Roughly 60% of the West
Bank is allocated to,

or controlled by the
settlements, or the

military installations.

What we see in the
last 40 years is

vast Israeli government efforts
and vast amounts of public money

spent and poured into allocating
land in the territories,

building settlements on it, and
encouraging Israelis to move out

of Israel and into
these settlements.

Gilo is, I think, a neighborhood
where everybody is living.

Because if you can’t afford
to live in the center

of the city, you move out
to the new neighborhoods,

and you’re going to
find you have everybody

living over here, religious
and not religious;

more people to the left,
people to the right,

because most people look at
Gilo as part of Jerusalem.

This is Gilo
settlement, which was

annexed in the ‘80s
and early ‘90s.

They started building
it in the mid-‘80s,

and they started bringing in
caravans, then it started being

built up and built
up until it became

a very big neighborhood
of Jerusalem,

accommodating thousands of
settlers’ families.

On Palestinian land.
The people there

didn’t sell the land.
They stole it.

There was a decision
taken by Israel in 1967

that Jerusalem should
be reunited as one city

and part of that political
agenda was to build and

establish on the hills
surrounding Jerusalem,

new Jewish
neighborhoods in a way

that would make
it very difficult

to, again, divide the city
into two parts.

The settlements were not
built for security.

They were built out of a
proactive claim to the country.

The words mislead.

They're not a couple of little
trailers on the hillside.

These are cities of 40, 50, 60,
70,000 people.

They’re built over
water aquifers.

They’re built at key junctions.

They’re built on
certain hilltops.

They’re built to
control movement.

They’re built to
control the border.

Every settlement
has its rationale.

We can see from here the village

extended toward the
settlement of Ariel,

which is located above
the hill over there.

Ariel, located in the
heart of the West Bank,

25 kilometers to the
east of the green line.

There’s a very important aquifer
located underground,

under this area, which
the Israelis are

stealing. They are
enjoying the water.

They are irrigating their
gardens, washing their cars

and playing with their
dogs with water, and

here we are suffering
a shortage of water.

Per capita Israelis
use about six

or seven times the
amount of water

that Palestinians use,
and many times in the

summer months Palestinians
do not get water,

even though it’s their
water that’s being pumped

out by the Israelis and
sold back to them,

they don’t get
sufficient supplies.

They cut off water in summer,
meaning that we will be

without water for three or
four months of the year,

so we try to compensate for that
by collecting the rain

in the cisterns and the wells,
which is not healthy.

But we are forced to use this

water, which causes
many diseases

for the children and for the
inhabitants in the village.

And my daughter was one case of

that; she got a
very bad infection

because of the water,
and she got kidney failure.

Apartheid was the attempt
to separate people

and allow resources and
privilege and rights

to flow to people on the
basis of the separate

groups in which they
were categorized.

And so the settlements are very

strategic; it’s not
just real estate.

They were built out of
aproactive claim to the country.

Nowhere is the
government’s separation

principal shown so
starkly as in the city

of Hebron, a city
deep in the heart

of the West Bank
with a population

of about 160,000 Palestinians.

In the middle of
Hebron, in Palestinian

homes, often vacated
under severe

pressure, live 600
Jewish settlers

cordoned off and protected by
thousands of soldiers.

Although neighbors, these
two populations live

under two separate and
unequal sets of laws.

Jewish settlers in the West Bank
live under Israeli civil law,

while Palestinians live
under Israeli military law.

The settler population
in the West Bank

is roughly 500,000.
The Palestinian

population in that same area
is roughly 2.5 million.

So we have a classic situation
of an ethnic minority claiming

the entire country,
a large territory,

and then, now, what
do with the natives?

What do you do with
the non-whoever

you are? in this
case, the non-Jews.

In South Africa, the
architecture was

amazing. First, you give
people an identity.

Then, of course, you
give people pass laws,

so you define how
they can move freely,

and you construct blockages
for the movement of people.

Control was exerted
through a complicated

pass system that
determined when and where

an African could move.
These passes

became one of the most detested

symbols of apartheid.

The issue of the pass
was much more than a

question of identity or
an identity document.

It was a mechanism to
ensure the control over

people’s movement and
where people lived.

Today in occupied Palestine,

Palestinians must carry
IDs at all times

that essentially dictate where
they can live, work and move.

A complex system of
movement restrictions

requires special permits
to enter certain areas.

There are over 600
manned checkpoints and

physical roadblocks
in the West Bank

that restrict the
freedom of movement of

Palestinians. Only
36 of these separate

Israel and the West Bank.

The rest separate
Palestinian towns

from other Palestinian towns.

Abuse, beatings, humiliation
at the checkpoints

is a routine part
of the experience.

It’s part of the systematic
disempowerment of Palestinians,

placing an entire
population at the mercy of

18, 19-year-old soldiers
who have absolute

power over the lives
of Palestinians.

How many? Is it over
60 women who have

given birth at
checkpoints because some

silly kid won’t let
them through, or taking

20 minutes to let an
ambulance through?

I have been able to
visit Israel and

Palestine, on more
than two occasions.

And what I experienced there was
such a crude reminder of a

painful past in
Apartheid South Africa.

We were largely controlled
in the same way.

The continuous checking
at the roadblocks,

and to see these
young men and young

women standing at the roadblock,

having to perform the
duties of a military junta.

These parallels with Israel
pained me severely while

I was travelling through
that lovely country.

The settlements are
linked by modern

superhighways, which
are Jewish-only roads.

Palestinians are not
allowed to use them,

and these super
highways crisscross

across Palestinian land, linking
the settlements together,

and linking them with Israeli
cities inside the 1948 borders.

The separate roads
that you find, that

kind of settlement
infrastructure

that you find in the
West Bank, you know, in

South Africa, we didn’t
dream that we’d have

roads that would be
only for whites.

In 2008 there were
800 kilometers of

Jewish-only roads
in the West Bank,

or as the Israeli
military prefers

to call them, "Sterile roads".

Settlers are issued
yellow license plates

so that the military
can distinguish

them from Palestinian drivers.

The other part of
this system is the

Palestinian roads,
which is linking the

Palestinian villages and cities

together, but with
tunnels and bridges

under the main network
of roads that

they are creating
for themselves.

And these bridges
and tunnels have gates,

and the gates have
locks, and the keys

are in the hands
of the soldiers.

So if they want to impose a
curfew all over the West Bank,

they can do it in two hours.

The Jewish-only roads serving
the settlement of Avne Hefez,

are but one of the many examples
of the segregated road

system in the West Bank.
Because of the settlement,

Israel declared the
roads between the

Palestinian towns of
Shufa and Izbat Shufa

a sterile road for
Jews only, erecting

dirt roadblocks for
Palestinians at every

exit of the town.

Recently, Israel allowed
Palestinian pedestrian

but not vehicular
traffic on the road.

Due to these
conditions, one out of

every four families
has left Shufa.

(quiet music and road noise)

A deeply religious
people, the white

Afrikaners of South
Africa believed they

had a god-given right
to a land that

they considered
mostly uninhabited.

In what is known as
the great trek, what

Afrikaners consider their
equivalent of the Exodus

thousands trekked
into the wilderness

in search of the Promised Land.

The Afrikaners pushed
into land the Africans

considered theirs, and
many battles ensued.

Armed with guns and
protected by a circle

of covered wagons,
known as a “laager”,

the Afrikaners
easily beat back the

indigenous masses that
outnumbered them.

This image of the heroic
settlers in their

“laager” fending off
the savage masses

became the dominant mythology in
Afrikaner history, morphing into

the philosophy of
Apartheid in 1948.

Under apartheid law,
the one standard

against which
everything was judged

was the security of
the state, and the

state meant the
Afrikaner people.

With every law
enacted, the freedoms

of the majority
were whittled away

in order to protect the
privileges of a white minority.

In Pretoria today stands
a monument to the Great

Trek, a shrine to this
history and philosophy.

A concrete "laager";
that iconic image of

the Afrikaners’ military
defense tactic,

completely surrounds
the monument.

A physical representation
of a state of mind

that sees enemies
everywhere and will

do anything to protect
against them.

What I experienced
there was made even

more painful by the
existence of the wall

of separation, what
we from South Africa

prefer to call the
Apartheid wall.

We didn’t have that type of
division in South Africa.

In 2002, under the
guise of a temporary

security measure, Israel
began construction

of the separation
barrier to completely

seal off the West
Bank from Israel.

In urban areas it is a concrete
wall eight meters tall.

In rural areas it
is a “smart” fence

averaging 60 meters
wide, with motion,

heat and vibration
sensors, cameras,

trenches, patrol
roads, and razor wire.

To many however, the
wall is not about security.

Its snake-like
route through the

West Bank annexes
large Jewish-only

settlements,
agricultural land and

important water resources,
clearly marking

it as a tool for
massive land grabs.

Only 15% of the wall
follows the green line.

Instead, the wall
twists and turns deep

into the West Bank,
making it more than

twice as long as the
green line itself.

It separates Palestinian
villages from

neighboring
Palestinian villages,

farmers from their land and
income, parents from children,

and severely restricts
Palestinian freedom of movement.

It encircles many
towns from all sides

creating isolated
ghettos surrounded

by walls, checkpoints and
Israeli-only roads.

When you put people
behind the wall, in

all of these ghettos,
because almost

everywhere it is creating ghetto
communities with one road or one

checkpoint or one tunnel with
a gate on it.

Then at a certain
point there is going

to be, when there's
not enough work

and not enough food, more
and more pressure built up.

Obviously a lot of
people will leave, and

I think that’s part
of the intention.

(music)

Now in the South
African context, the

attempt by the
Apartheid government

was to take away
citizenship from more

than 80% of the South
African population,

and then give them
new citizenship

in some kind of a
fantasy entity:

Bophuthatswana, Transkei, etc.
So

the South African
state could say,

“You have no claims here. You’re
a citizen of Bophuthatswana.

Social benefits,
etcetera, are what

you should be
looking for there.”

The godfather of the system was
Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd.

- "In South Africa
you can only achieve

peace by separating
the nations."

And he spelled out the whole
Bantustan concept.

He said: “The black
people have got

to be given their
own countries.”

They embarked upon
this remarkable

experiment of trying
to cut up the country

into Bantustans, and
these were created,

at least on paper,
ten of them, and the

move began to advance them
towards independence.

(trumpet)

My government would
like to continue as we

are, an autonomous and
independent country,

preferably with
extended borders,

continued friendly and cordial

relations with our
neighbors and, if

possible, international
recognition.

Most of them were
stooges and really

puppets of the Apartheid state.

To give some veneer of
reality to the fantasy

of the Bantustans, the
Afrikaner government

threw money at them,
built elaborate

parliaments, housing
for ministers,

built airports, sports stadiums.

It was to create
separate states.

It was not so much a two-state

solution as a
multi-state solution.

When I look at Israel, when I
traveled through the West Bank,

I was looking at
Bantustans, totally

unviable, impossible states.

In many respects, it
struck me as being

significantly worse
than Apartheid.

Bantustans, as much as
we abhorred them in

South Africa, Bantustan
leaders actually

had more power and more control

than the Palestinian
Authority has.

What the Oslo did was create an

authority,which allowed
Israel to still

control the occupied
Palestinian territory, but

control it through a
Palestinian authority.

Ostensibly, there’s some
kind of Palestinian

authority that’s
controlling, that’s in power

of the occupied territory.
But in

fact, Israel controls
the borders.

Israel controls taxes.
Israel controls all kinds

of things, access in
and out of that area.

To me, the big analogy
was that South

Africa, in taking
these two choices

where you’ve got two
or more nationalisms

laying claim to
the same country,

you’ve either got to find
a way to live together,

or you’ve got to have
a fair partition.

The big similarity
between Apartheid

South Africa and the
Israeli/Palestinian

situation is that both
decided to have a

partition solution,
and, in both cases,

it was a grotesquely
unfair partition.

And this is why Israel says,
“Well, Gaza is not our problem,

Gaza is a foreign country.
It’s not a state.

It’s not part of any other
country. It’s just not us.”

Just like South
Africa, it’s the same

logic. We need a
Palestinian state,

because we can’t digest
the Palestinians.

We can’t give them citizenship,

because then it wouldn’t
be a Jewish state.

We have to create a
Palestinian state,

because that’s the
only way we can

get them off our
hands, but it has

to be a minimized
state on as little

territory as possible
that leaves us

in control of the
entire country.

In South Africa,
they left 13% of

South Africa for the non-whites.

In cantons, locking
them inside cantons.

Here, when you look
at the map, what

they have created
is leaving to the

Palestinians about 12% of our
historical land.

This is the ghetto
state, ghetto system

that they are creating,
and it's totally

disconnected from each other.
We have

one, two, three, and
the fourth is Gaza.

(explosions and drums)

(siren)

(drums and ambient sounds)

Since 2006, Israel
has imposed a deadly

siege on the Gaza
Strip, prohibiting

most goods and people from
entering or leaving the enclave.

The siege has caused an
economic standstill in

Gaza. The unemployment
rate hovers around 40%.

On the more ridiculous end
of spectrum of goods not

allowed into Gaza are things
like pasta and chocolate.

Recently obtained Israeli
government documents

show this to be a
deliberate policy.

Mathematic formulas were
created which defined

the minimum caloric needs
of the 1.5 million

people in Gaza. As well
as the upper limit, so

that food items cannot
become too plentiful.

In 2009 Israel
bombed Gaza’s sewage

treatment facilities
and electricity plants

and now won’t allow
the necessary

parts in to repair them.

Restrictions on fuel
imports further limit the

ability of critical
infrastructure to function.

while also causing daily,
prolonged blackouts.

Blackouts can be deadly for
patients in hospitals.

But more so is the
lack of medicine,

specialized care,
and clean water.

In the worst times
of Apartheid in

South Africa, we
never had in any of

our townships
helicopter gunships

flying overhead or
F-16 type bombers

flying over townships and firing

or dropping bombs
into a township.

It didn’t happen.

The problem is we don’t have
other examples to look at now.

You could look at
perhaps the Warsaw

ghetto as one example
of that kind of

walled-in and then attacking a
walled-in community like that.

Maybe a better example
is hundreds and

hundreds of years
ago where you had

walled city-states that were
completely besieged by armies

where no one could
get out and food was

denied, and if there
wasn’t a spring within

the city, no one had
water, and people died.

Just like in Gaza,
people died from

insufficient access to medicine,

to insufficient water, all those

reasons, as well
as by air strikes.

There are a number of people and
some governments who claim that

because Israel
withdrew its settlers

and soldiers from the Gaza Strip

unilaterally in 2005,
that it’s no longer

the occupying power,
but that is actually

not the case. In
international law,

occupation refers to the control

of territory by
another government,

not the indigenous
government there.

That’s precisely
what exists with

Israel and the Gaza
Strip right now.

Israel still
controls the land of

the Gaza Strip,
which, many people

don’t know, is completely
surrounded by a

wall very similar to
the wall that snakes

through the West Bank. It
is completely surrounded.

The Israeli Navy controls
the seas off the coast of Gaza.

(gunfire)

The airspace is
controlled by Israel,

which has prohibited
the Palestinians

from reopening their airport.

So Gaza is completely under the
control of the Israelis.

The Palestinian
Authority can’t issue

identity documents,
passports, permission

for people to come
and go, independent

of the Israeli
Interior Ministry.

If you don’t exist in
the Israeli Interior

Ministry database, you
don't exist period.

If you look at a
blueprint of a prison,

it looks like the
prisoners own the place.

They have 95% of the
territory, right?

They have the living areas,
they have the exercise yard,

they have the cafeteria,
they have the work

areas. It all belongs
to the prisoners.

All the prison authorities have
is maybe 5%. And you know what?

If it’s a minimal
security prison, maybe

they have 1%. That’s
all you need.

You need the walls
around, cell bars,

you have some
corridors, you have

a few locked doors, and that’s
it. With 1% of the territory,

you can absolutely
control the inmates,

and that helps you
make the switch.

The issue here isn’t how much
territory the prisoners have.

The issue is, can they get out
of the prison?

When the majority
of world leaders

and people who have the power

to change things talk about a
two-state solution, nowadays

what they talk about
is a Palestinian

state that is made of Bantustans

separated from each
other, a state that has

no sovereignty, no
independent policies,

and has a very much
similar economic

infrastructure to
the ones that the

Bantustans had in South Africa.

The main thing for
the world and for

the Israelis is to
get this issue off

the plate, and
that’s where Israel

thinks it can get away with a

Bantustan in the way
that South Africa

couldn’t. You know,
you can push a

two-state solution that's
Apartheid.

If it doesn’t have
borders, it doesn’t

have water, doesn’t
have access to its

greater economic resource,
which is Jerusalem.

It’s carved into little islands.
There’s no freedom of movement

there's no freedom of commerce.
It’s a prison state.

Therefore, the essential idea
of a two-state solution

has to be not only the state
itself, but a viable state.

The Israelis have
rendered the West Bank

and Gaza unviable,
hopelessly unviable.

I’m saying Israel no longer has
that solution as an option.

It has made a two-state
solution impossible.

Physically, morally impossible.

- It is time for us to go
ahead and move forward

on a two-state solution,
so thank you very much.

You hear all this talk
about the two-state

solution. You see opinion
polls that say a

majority of Israelis are
willing to accept it,

and a majority of
Palestinians are willing to

accept it, but that
consensus disappears the

moment you try to actually
flesh it out in detail.

That’s why all the
two-state solution

proposals are extremely vague,

because Palestinians
say, “The West Bank and

Gaza are only a fifth
of historic Palestine.

Why should we give up
anymore?” Israelis

say, “Well, there’s
450,000 settlers

in those areas,
several generations.

Why should they leave?”

The only thing more difficult
than trying to live together,

would be trying to
force a separation.

(music)

Israel’s overall goal
has been to create

a Jewish state. In
1948, 75% of the

population, the
non-Jewish population,

Christians and
Muslims, were expelled

from their homeland and never
allowed to return.

For one reason, and
only one reason,

which is that
they’re not Jewish.

The 5 to 6 million
refugees living in Lebanon

and Syria and Jordan, etc.
those are people

that should be Israeli
citizens, that Israel

has kicked out and
refused citizenship.

Over a million
Palestinians became

refugees in the
1948 and 1967 wars.

By natural population
growth, they

now number over 5 million people

who still await their
right to return.

Some Palestinians
managed to stay

inside what became
Israel in 1948,

and today make up 20%
of Israeli citizens.

So in the Israeli state,
what kind of rights

and privileges and
resources are allocated

to you are entirely dependent on

which ethnic group
you come from.

You’re either Jewish
or you’re Palestinian,

or Arab, as they
prefer to call them.

And so you have a
situation where welfare

benefits for people,
for example,

are dependent on whether
they’re Jewish or not.

You have a situation where
a Jew can’t marry a

non-Jew in Israel. For
us South Africans, we

remember the Mixed
Marriages Act, for

example. You have a
situation where people

from one ethnic group,
Palestinians, are not

able to freely live in
areas that are majority

Jewish, similar to
old Group Areas Act.

Now one of the criticisms
people make when

you start accusing
Israel of being an

Apartheid state inside its own
borders is that they’ll say,

“Well, Palestinians
can sit next to Jews

inside restaurants.
They sit on the same

buses. They go to the same
cinemas,” and that’s true,

but that’s not really the
significance of Apartheid.

The idea of Apartheid
isn’t really about

the fact that people
can't sit on the same

park bench. It was
about controlling

resources, making
sure that one ethnic

group had control of resources
and the other didn't.

And, in that sense,
Israel has been

very, very effective
at doing this,

what we might call
grand Apartheid

rather than petty Apartheid.

In the key areas of
people’s lives, their

education, their
employment, owning land,

Palestinian citizens
are treated entirely

differently from
Jewish citizens,

and I think that’s one
of the reasons why

this Apartheid
comparison can be made.

By far, the most
fundamental element of

Apartheid with both
South Africa and Israel

is control of the land.
In apartheid South

Africa, a slew of
laws were enacted

that designated 87% of
the land for whites only.

This introduced the
oxymoronic term

"Foreign Natives"
into the language

of parliament to
describe blacks given

permission to live
in white areas.

Israel’s complex and
creative web of

apartheid laws
introduced equally

oxymoronic terms such
as "Present Absentee"

into its parliamentary language.

This was used to
describe Palestinians

who are actually
present inside Israel,

but legally declared absent in
order to confiscate their land.

Through these colonial
and apartheid style

laws, over 90% of
the land of Israel

is effectively reserved
for Jews only.

Aside from the few mixed
cities like Haifa

and Akko, most of
Israel’s communities are

segregated along ethnic lines.
Israel’s

1.3 million Palestinian
citizens are

restricted to 120
communities that existed

before the creation
of Israel in 1948,

and which have been unable to
expand since.

By contrast, Israel
has created and

developed more than
700 exclusively

Jewish towns since
1948, but not one

new town for
Palestinian citizens.

Land laws in Israel
are very clearly

Apartheid kind of laws.
You can belong

in the state of
Israel, you can be a

Palestinian, or you
can be a Jew, but

if you want to have
rights in the state,

really you need to be
a Jew to have rights.

I have no doubt it’s
a Jewish state, but

I do question very
strongly whether

it’s a democratic state.
If we talked

about an Afrikaner and
democratic state,

I think most of us
would find that

rather an oxymoronic
phrase to use.

So why is Jewish and democratic
not equally troubling to us?

There are more than a
million Palestinians

inside Israel today,
and that's a major

concern for Israel. It’s
very concerned about

the demographic growth,
as it calls it,

the demographic time bomb, of
the Palestinians inside Israel.

I came to realize
that when they talk

about the elimination of Israel,

it’s a demographic thing.

That Israel will
cease to exist when

it no longer has a
Jewish majority.

In other words, your
nationhood depends

upon your having
either an ethnic or

a specifically
religious majority,

permanently entrenched.

Because of the
experience I’ve gone

through in this
country, where I saw

terrible injustice
committed in the name

of the Afrikaners’
need to survive,

I became ashamed of my country,
grievously ashamed of it.

The reason Israel has
a Jewish majority

is through entirely
artificial means.

The whole framework of
Israeli law is designed to

prevent the growth of the
non-Jewish population

and maintain Jewish
numerical and political

supremacy, and that’s
the framework in which

we can understand
everything we see inside

Israel, as well as in
the West Bank and Gaza.

(music)

(rain and ambient sounds)

(chatting)

(shouting)

In Occupied East Jerusalem,
the battle for control

of territory is happening
on a house-by-house basis.

(shouting and arguing)

(shouting)

Israel goes to
incredible lengths

to manipulate demography,

as can be seen in the
stark but complicated

case of the city of Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem differs
from the rest of

occupied Palestinian
territory in that Israel

unilaterally declared it
a part of the state of

Israel after the 1967
occupation of the city.

No country in the world
has ever recognized

that annexation, and
it is still considered

occupied territory
by the Palestinians

and by international law.

But by building the wall and the

vast settlement
blocks around it,

Israel has illegally
severed it from the

West Bank. Over
250,000 Palestinians

now find themselves on the
Israel side of the wall.

Palestinians of East
Jerusalem are not

citizens of the
country, cannot vote

in national elections and cannot
live in Jewish West Jerusalem.

A Palestinian can have
lived in Jerusalem

all his life, been
born here, his father,

grandfather, and generations

before, but he will
be a resident.

A Jew from Russia can
come today to Israel,

not even knowing one
word of Hebrew,

and in the same day,
he becomes a citizen.

There are many,
many conditions to

be a resident. If
you, for example,

live in Jerusalem but
you work in Ramallah,

Bethlehem or elsewhere
in the occupied

terriroties they say
the center of your

life is there, and
we can take your ID.

This is one of the
strategies to make

the number of
Palestinians smaller.

This is an official booklet,
from the municipality

of Jerusalem, from the
Department of Planning.

I mean, from the first
point here, They

say: "Is to keep
the ratio between

Jews and Palestinians as
it was in 1967 at..." Look

at this: "70 to 30" As
the government decided.

You must understand,
if in any democratic

country in the world,
someone says that

the Jews will be no more than
40 percent of the population,

we would say that this
is anti-Semitism.

It's clear that it would
be anti-Semitism.

So why is it
anti-Semitism in Europe

or America if someone does this,

and in Israel, it's permitted.
Why?

The politicians are
hysterical over

this issue, and they
try to implement

a policy of segregation,
in order to make

the lives of the
Palestinians so bad,

that they will decide to
voluntarily leave the city.

(music)

One of the harshest
methods used to

force Palestinians
to leave Jerusalem

is Israel’s house
demolition policy.

(machinery and crumbling rubble)

This policy affects
all Palestinians

living within Israel’s
stated borders,

and even within the
rest of the West

Bank, but it is
starkest in Jerusalem.

(machinery)

House demolitions are
part of a system

of discrimination
that does not enable

Palestinians to
actually build legally.

It’s fair to say
that it’s virtually

impossible to receive
a building permit,

a legal permit to build a house

in East Jerusalem if
you’re a Palestinian.

(sniffing)

Wednesday, July 22nd 1962, The

Afrikaners are breaking
down our house.

Two bulldozers,
and of course the

house crumbled. I felt the pain.

It was my blood, my bones, our

flesh that was
being broken down.

No book can describe,
no poem can describe

the horror, because
our houses were not

houses, they were human beings.

I saw bone and blood
and veins and brains.

And, of course,
when the demolition

finally happens, I
can't even begin to

convey to you the
trauma, you know,

and the home is
your sacred space;

your whole intimate
sphere is in the house.

Men, women, and
children react very

differently. To the
men it's humiliating;

they can’t protect
their families.

It’s an entire financial loss.

For women, most
Palestinian women

don’t work outside the house.

Domestic space is their world,
so when a woman loses that,

I’ve seen women
go into states of

mourning. The trauma
is tremendous.

The demolition of
a home is really

the demolition of the family.

We estimate that
in East Jerusalem

there are at least 10,000

demolition orders outstanding.
Houses

that can be demolished
at any time.

That doesn’t include
thousands that

have been demolished
inside Israel.

Inside Israel there’s still
a campaign of demolition.

There are about 40,000
homes of Israeli citizens

who are Arabs that are
slated for demolition

in the next few years,
and this is on the

background of 1948
when more than

half the villages of Palestine,

more than 400 villages, were
systematically destroyed.

After the state was
created, Israel

continued to forcibly
remove thousands

of its Palestinian
citizens off of their

lands onto small
concentrated areas.

Their villages were bulldozed to
make way for Jewish-only towns.

This policy still
continues inside Israel

today, with over 45
Palestinian villages

that the government
refuses to recognize,

and which are slated
to be forcibly

removed in order to construct
new Jewish-only towns.

The Apartheid authorities
had what they

called “black spots”.
Incidents where

black people were
occupying land where the

white people actually
wanted to occupy.

And what they,
therefore, did was to

send in the police,
send in the military

with heavy trucks to
demolish people's

homes, and then would
remove families

that have been staying
on land for decades

and remove them, and
just dump them.

It was nice in
Sophiatown until the

Afrikaners started harassing us.

They said we are staying too
near to town. We are blacks.

We are not supposed
to stay there, so

they started moving
us to Meadowlands.

Because they said we
couldn’t stay near the

white people, so they
must separate us;

we mustn’t be together.
So they take the

place, and they give
it to the whites.

They gave us only
one day’s notice.

“Tomorrow you are moving.”

The truck will wait
outside, and then the

soldiers will go into
the house, and remove

the furniture into the truck.

(airplane noise and
radio chatter)

Then take the children
and put you in

the truck, and the
mother and father.

They just bulldoze
it to the ground.

They take the family out and
the bulldozer comes.

(shouting)

(crushing noises)

Land is more than
just a possession.

Land is something
integrally bound with

your identity. It’s
about your ancestors.

It’s about a sense
of knowing who and

where you are from,
and in South Africa

that’s where the biggest
damage has been done.

The removal of
people off the land

and they’re put in these god
forsaken places with nothing,

and they have to start
all over again.

You can shave off my hair.
New hair will grow.

You can spit in my face. I
will find water to wash it.

You can take away my
clothes and leave

me naked. I will find a blanket.

But if you take
away my house, and

my dignity, where can I go?
Where?

There is no pain
quite like being

unloved, unwanted in
one's own land among

one’s own kind.
The Jewish people

come from that experience.

Jews will always have the right,
and I would support that right

for memory and
perpetuation, but now

I feel it for the Palestinians.

I feel it for them,
because they are

stateless, homeless,
vanquished, exiled.

You take away my house;
you take away my dignity.

You take away my love,
and you replace

it with bitterness,
anger, and revenge.

(music)

There have been at least 100,000
Palestinians, if not more, that

have gone through
house demolitions.

There’s a psychologist
in Gaza in the

Palestinian mental health center

who’s done research that says
that 55% of the suicide bombers

are kids whose houses
have been demolished.

The house demolition
issue is one of the

most painful parts
of the occupation.

If you deny Palestinians
a home, and

connected to that is a
concept of homeland,

on two levels you’re
denying them a home, on

the individual level and
the collective level.

The term we use
in Hebrew for our

form of Apartheid is "nishul".

Nishul means displacement
or dispossession.

That’s the Israeli
form of Apartheid.

(music)

(music)

The escalation of
Israeli measures in how

they treated the
Palestinians before the

first Intifada, make
it difficult for

the people to accept oppression.

In 1987, as the occupation
rolled into its third decade,

the first Intifada – or
uprising – erupted.

People protested,
went on strike,

threw stones,
organized themselves

into groups, and challenged the

Israeli occupation
in different ways.

Things came from
the ground up in

the first Intifada
where everyone,

no matter who you are, man or
woman, young or old,

you are connected to certain

groups, working
in this Intifada.

It was amazing how the people
were organized.

The people took a stand.
They had a slogan:

No taxation without
representation.

The Israeli occupation
closed down

all the education institutions

from the universities to the

kindergartens for two
and a half years.

(kids shouting)

They were very strong
in their reaction.

(crying)

The number of the
people that were

killed, children, youth, women,

thousands of people were killed.
This was the Israeli reaction.

If you visit any
family in Palestine,

West Bank, and Gaza Strip,

you will find at
least one person

that experienced jail.
To go to jail,

I don’t want to say it’s
normal, but just being

Palestinian is reason
enough to be put in jail.

It’s part of daily
life in Palestine.

Over 700,000 Palestinians have
experienced jail since 1967.

Proportionately there
are more political

prisoners there than
existed in South Africa.

In South Africa
we had a campaign

against child detainees.

In Palestine you have over 350

children who are
political prisoners.

They would take very many of our

children away from
parents and try

to use that to coerce parents to

appear at police
stations to deport.

I remember in 1988 you
see prisoners coming

in like crazy. In a
few months we became

6,000 political prisoners
in one jail. And 95%

of them were under
administrative detention.

Administrative detention
is the detention of

people, usually for six
months, but you can

extend it, based on no
legal procedure aside

from issuing an
administrative order.

People are arrested without
knowing what they are

in for. They've never been
charged with anything.

The way it’s been done
by Israel is absolutely

in contravention of
international law.

I remember a famous
Palestinian political

prisoner in the ‘70s.
He spent around

seven years under administrative

detention. It’s
really scary, because

you don’t know
anything, and they

use it as part of the torture.

For example it’s the day
after six months or

one year in jail, and
this is your last day,

the day you are released.
They come to the jail,

they call your name. you
collect all your stuff.

You are released.
You say bye-bye to

the prisoners, and
you move outside,

and the officer comes,
“Sorry, another

six months” and you
go back to jail.

Administrative detention,
very similar to the

detention without trial
in South Africa.

When you are about
to be released,

they will release you
and let you walk

a few steps and re-arrest you.
Which is,

by the way, is another
form of torture,

because you never
actually are sure as

to whether you will
be totally released.

I was arrested in 1985,
and there was nothing

illegal about what it
was that I was doing,

and they knew that they could,
therefore, not take me to court

and charge me with anything.
They basically

detained us because
they could do it.

Why did Mandela become the hero

of the political
prisoners issue?

He spent 27 years
in the Apartheid

system jail. Right now
we have prisoners

that have spent
more than 30 years

in jail, more than Mandela.

Why doesn’t the international
community pay attention to that?

(gunshots)

Within one year of each
other, both Israel and

South Africa launched
“Operation Iron Fist”,

brutal and overwhelming
campaigns to crush

opposition to their
respective polices.

With the “Iron Fist”
policy, they used

to open the handcuffs
and take people's

arms like this and break the
bone in this way.

I still remember the sound of my
friend when they broke his arm.

The sound is still in my ear.
I will never ever forget that.

They went as far as killing very
many of our comrades brutally,

acts that you can never imagine.

The South African
Defense Forces, as they

were called, their army
and navy was almost

totally outfitted by
Israel, because South

Africa couldn't get
weapons from other

countries. Israel
was one of the only

countries willing to
break the arms embargo.

Well, the alliance
started in earnest

in 1973. By 1979, 35%
of Israel's arms

exports were going to
South Africa, so they

became a crucial
client, and a crucial

source for export revenue that
Israel couldn’t give up easily.

It involved everything
from tanks to

aircraft to ammunition
and you name it.

After 1977 there’s
a mandatory U.N.

arms embargo.
Israel violated the

U.N. arms embargo openly,
and many Israeli

officials are happy
to admit that.

If you talk to South
African defense

officials, especially
people from the

air force, they tell you that

Israel was an
absolutely vital link

and was a lifeline for them
during the 1980s.

After 1977, the ideological
component becomes much stronger.

The top brass of the
two militaries really

felt that they were in
a similar predicament

and that they faced a
common enemy. They also

had a very similar
conception of minority

survival. They felt
that Afrikaner

nationalists were
similar to Israelis,

beleaguered
minorities surrounded

by a hostile majority.

If you look at the
documents from the South

African defense archive,
you see dozens of

South Africans were
going to Israel on a

regular basis to attend
a variety of courses

that involved submarine
operation, anti-tank

technology, counterinsurgency
techniques,

you name it. They
really see the PLO

and the ANC as one in the same.

The reaction of the government
ordering a general mobilization,

arming the white
community, arresting

tens of thousands of Africans,

a show of force
throughout the country,

closed a chapter as
far as our methods

of political struggle
are concerned.

There are many people
who feel that it

is useless and futile
for us to continue

talking peace and
nonviolence against

a government whose reply is only

savage attacks on an unarmed
and defenseless people.

"Bombs have exploded
almost daily

in the run-up to
Wednesday’s poll,

the latest a huge
car bomb, which

devastated shops in
the central town

of Witbank. The blasts
have been officially

blamed on the African
National Congress".

After decades of
non-violent struggle,

Nelson Mandela formed
the armed wing

of the African
National Congress.

They turned first
to sabotage, then

to civilian bombings
in order to have

their political
aspirations recognized.

"If this was the work
of the ANC, it’s their

boldest attack to date,
and demonstrates the

organization’s determination
to carry the guerilla

war to South Africa's
major city centers."

(music)

"The explosion
tore apart the bus

in the very heart of Jerusalem,

killing many of those on board.
It was the

mirror image of last
week’s suicide bomb."

I am pained when I
read the story of a

65-year-old Palestinian
woman who became

the carrier of a
suicide bomb, and in a

note she indicated that
she had to do that

because she was
trying to save her

grandchildren from being killed,

and we’re saying what unfair
choices to put before people.

(music)

Security and terrorism
are important issues,

but they’re symptoms.
They’re not independent

variables. Israel is
the strong party. Once

you bring the occupation
into the picture,

there isn’t any more symmetry.
There’s no

more both sides—us
and them—the balance

that everybody loves.
Palestinians

aren’t occupying Tel Aviv.

We are pleading that we do not

wait for more people
to be killed.

It is quite apparent
that the political

authorities will on
their own not act.

We need to pressurize them.

(singing)

(singing)

Despite all this
repressive machinery,

there’s a general kind
of agreement that

it was the international
dimension and the

internal resistance,
the South African

Intifada, if you
like, that really

brought an end to Apartheid.

You had a mass of
people, people’s

movements, and resistance
organizations etc.

that were in terms
of numbers of people

quite large, but
weak, taking on very

sophisticated structures
of repression.

So, a really
powerful opponent on

one hand, and a weak
one on the other.

It was the international
isolation campaign

that brought a sense of balance
between the two.

At that point, the South
Africans actually

seek out advice
from the Israelis

on how to sell themselves in the

West and how to
improve their image.

The South Africans
looked to Israel as a

sort of beacon, and
they didn't understand

why Israel had
managed to withstand

criticism for decades
and survive,

and why South
Africa was failing.

A lot of Israelis fear
that they may one

day be delegitimized
in the same way

South Africa was.

(hip-hop music)

What we would like
is for the public

to realize that they
actually have a

real positive role to play. They

can actually boycott
these goods,

and we’re only individuals, but

together when we
act holistically

such as the protest
today, and even

on an individual
day-to-day basis,

we can have a real
impact in challenging

the occupation on a
long-term level.

The global call came in
2005 from Palestinian

civil society
organizations, and the idea

was to craft a strategy
that would be a

non-violent means of
pressuring Israel

to abide by international law
using economic pressure.

These campaigns are taking root.
They’re

gaining new
supporters every day.

The churches have taken
the lead in saying,

“We want socially
responsible investment,

and that means we
want to be sure that

none of the companies
we invest in

are profiting from occupation.”

There are many, many,
many initiatives going

around the world for
boycotting Israeli goods

boycotting Israeli
institutions and so on,

so it’s growing, in the
cultural, academic,

medical, even trade unions.
In South

Africa COSATU, the
main trade union

body in South Africa,
which has about 2

million members,
supported the boycott.

There are so many.
They’re mushrooming

really in the last two years.

This is happening more and more.
In North

America you have
the Canadian union

of postal workers.
Prior to that, the

Canadian union of
public employees.

The incredible growing
movement, I mean, I’ve

traveled to literally
dozens of campuses

around the United
States, and there

are active divestment groups.

There are church
divestment movements that

are starting and really
gaining strength,

and facing incredible
resistance, but

they’re not being
deterred by it.

As our South African
comrades and

colleagues remind us,
their first call for

boycott was issued
in the late 1950s.

Europe and the West
started listening

in the ‘70s, early
‘80s, so it took them

30 years to get anybody
to listen to them.

So we’re doing much
better they tell us.

You’re going much
faster than we did.

(hip-hop music)

The idea of a one-state solution
begins with the notion that

no matter how they
got there, no matter

the competing
historical narratives,

the country belongs to all who
live in it.

Let 100% of the people
live in 100% of the land,

Since nobody can agree
on how to divide it.

Israel’s going to
have to stop being a

Jewish state. It can't
be an ethnocracy,

and it has to become
a democracy, whether

it’s a one-state or
a confederation,

or whatever the
arrangement is, that’s

what’s going to have to happen.

And it doesn’t mean,
I try to tell

Israelis, that
everything’s lost.

In South Africa, people
still talk Afrikaans.

They still have an
Afrikaner university.

You know, nobody’s going to stop
speaking Hebrew here.

You’re restructuring.
It’ll be in a

different, healthier
environment.

That's the challange, That’s why
I like this one-state idea.

You know, it wasn’t
only blacks who

were freed when Apartheid ended.

I was freed. We all were freed.
We were

liberated from this
terrible corrosive

vision of trying to build an
ethnically pure state.

And decades of Apartheid regime
propaganda, like decades of

Zionist propaganda,
said to the people: “If

you give up control,
you will be devoured.

You will be thrown into the sea.
You will be killed.”

And so it was very
important for the

anti-Apartheid
movement to offer to

ordinary white citizens
a credible alternative

message. To say: “You
will not be devoured.

You give up the system, and you
will have a place in the future,

and it’s an inclusive future.”

There’s already a one-state.
It’s already

one state, but it’s
a one-state living

under Apartheid. It’s
how to transform it

from Apartheid to
democracy where people

get equal rights based
on citizenship, not on

ethnicity, religion, gender,
or any other identity.

(singing)

In South Africa saying
that the country

belongs to all who
live in it doesn't

magically solve the problems.
There are

still massive political
struggles in South

Africa over resource
allocation, over

the speed of land
reform, the speed of

economic reform, over
affirmative action.

Those struggles for
social justice

continue, but they have to start

from the premise that everyone
is entitled to equal rights.

But you know the world
doesn’t stand still.

There are people I meet
today in South Africa

who don’t understand
what Apartheid

was about. They've come into a

whole new world, so
it’s not impossible

to think of other generations.

We must have the ability
to think beyond our

own generation, to
think into the future.

What does it matter
if a man is white

or black? What does
it matter if he’s

a Jew or he’s an Arab?
It is possible.

Israel, it is possible.

It is possible to have peace
with Jews and Arabs

if the heart is ready,
if the soul is ready,

if we can transcend these petty
foibles of power and pomposity,

and we say to this world: “It
is possible.”

It is possible.