Ronnie Kasrils’s letter of September 7 (“Palestine tribunal will help Israelis too”), rather than providing a coherent defence of the credentials of the forthcoming Russell Tribunal on Palestine, reveals instead why there is so much scepticism surrounding it.
Critics of the tribunal believe that it is little more than a highly politicised kangaroo court of the “verdict first, trial afterwards” kind, one that does not proceed on the basis of investigating all relevant facts and then reaching a considered conclusion but rather of assuming the conclusions beforehand and then working backwards to “prove” that they are true.
These concerns will only have been confirmed from what Kasrils writes.
For him, and presumably for his fellow tribunal members, it is taken as a given that Israel is indeed guilty of practising apartheid.
He writes in this regard that “the Arab masses – Palestinians among them – are far more passionate about democratic rights than the much-vaunted Israeli example where democracy is for the privileged Jewish population – as was the case with white South Africans under apartheid”.
But is the situation of non-Jews in Israel really comparable to that of the non-white majority in apartheid South Africa? As we know, in the latter case the right to vote and stand for election to Parliament was exclusively confined to the white minority. Those classified as “coloured” or Asian were fobbed off with separate representative councils devoid of any meaningful decision-making authority.
Those classified as “black”– the majority of the population – only had voting rights within one or other of the “independent homelands” to which they had been assigned, regardless of where in the country they actually lived.
The situation in Israel is that all citizens of 18 and over can vote. Political rights have never been denied to any citizen on the basis of race, creed, ethnicity or sex. Members of minority groups are free to form their own political parties (and do so) and speak freely against the government.
Israel is one of the only Middle Eastern states where Muslim women can vote.
Israel’s ethnically diverse legislature reflects the country’s multiracial and multi-ethnic population.
Its Knesset (parliament) includes European, Oriental and African Jews, Arab Muslims and Christians, Druze and Circassians, among others.
Three Arab political parties (Hadash, Balad and United Arab List-Arab Renewal) are represented in the Knesset.
Arabs have held key positions in other Israeli government sectors, serving as deputy ministers, judges, diplomats and ambassadors in the Foreign Service.
It is hard to see from this how more different Israel could be from apartheid South Africa. The claim that democratic rights in Israel are accorded to the privileged Jewish population only is therefore demonstrably false.
If this is a representative example of the mindset of those constituting the tribunal, and if there is to be no process of subjecting these and other pre-conceived notions to rigorous examination in the course of its proceedings, then it is hard to see how it can be claimed to be anything other than an anti-Israel propaganda stunt.
David Saks
Associate director, SA Jewish Board of Deputies