Hour interview by Meg Hewings, April 2009.

Photo: Ehab Lotayef. Egyptian soldiers at Rafah border crossing into the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli-Palestinian crisis is one of the most radioactive issues of our day, but it was conspicuously absent from the official program of this week’s Durban Anti-Racism Review Conference in Geneva.

Yet on Monday, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened the conference by stating that Israel is a “racist government.”

No matter what you think of Ahmadinejad, he has a talent for getting to the crux of the matter. For Arab state leaders in the region, Israel’s military actions in Lebanon and Gaza and the country’s new far-right-leaning government are seen as the real issues hampering any future prospects of peace with the Palestinians.

Ahmadinejad’s speech was a fittingly uncomfortable beginning to a conference organized to help “heal the wounds” left by the first racism conference held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, when the U.S. and Israel walked out after Arab states sought to define Zionism as being racist.

But healing would now seem an almost impossible task, given that after the first Durban conference a consensus of international NGOs strongly condemned Israeli apartheid policies and recommended an international campaign of isolation towards Israel’s institutionalized “brand of apartheid and other racist crimes against humanity.”

For former South African politician and long-time anti-apartheid activist Ronnie Kasrils, Zionism is the problem. As the keynote speaker for Anti-Apartheid Week here in Montreal back in March, Kasrils denounced Israeli apartheid policies and military action with a speech entitled “Boycott Israel: The Apartheid State.” His talk was met by a sizable (and peaceful) crowd at McGill University’s Shatner Centre Ballroom on March 4.

As a South African of Jewish origin, Kasrils believes he has a moral obligation to speak out against Israel’s unacceptable policies and Zionism’s racist tenets. He believes that supporting the Palestinian people’s plight for justice and national self-determination is the only way to secure lasting peace and security for both Israeli and Palestinian peoples.

But that’s not necessarily a popular position. The Israeli lobby writes Kasrils off as an Islamic apologist or a self-hating Jew, but in reality, there are few as well-positioned to talk about apartheid. In 1960, Kasrils joined the African National Congress (ANC) and was a member of the ANC’s military wing at its inception in 1961. As the chief of military intelligence, Kasrils operated from exile in neighbouring African states and clandestinely in South Africa. Later, after being appointed Deputy Minister of Defence in South Africa’s first democratic government, Kasrils became Minister of Water Affairs. Last year he retired from politics. He is the co-founder, along with Palestinian Ambassador to South Africa Ali Halimeh, of the broad-based End the Occupation committee and founder of a South African solidarity group for Palestine called Not in My Name.

Hour met with Kasrils in Montreal for an in-depth interview in March (this Q&A also includes responses from a press scrum Kasrils did with campus papers prior to his talk) to discuss notions of apartheid in his lifetime.

Hour You fought apartheid in South Africa, and have long claimed Israel is an apartheid state. Why?

Ronnie Kasrils I became involved in the South African liberation struggle in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre. Only one year later Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd – widely regarded as the father of apartheid – and the then-prime minister of South Africa, rather amazed me when he made a statement to deflect criticism of South Africa. He said: “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” At the time, he was angry at the way South Africa was being criticized both among South African media, a section of the South African ruling class, as well as internationally. In contrast, Israel was regarded in a very positive light.

Much as I disagree with the late Dr. Verwoerd, who was a very cruel, evil man, the one thing I came to agree with him about was this: Verwoerd understood that like South Africa, Israel was established in 1948 as a state exclusively for an ethnic race group. Both were established as privileged supremacist states. Israel was reserved for Jews, whether they had come to settle there from the late 19th century, after World War II, or whether they lived anywhere else in the world and were Jewish. I’m from that origin, so I have the right of return.

Hour How is “apartheid” the right word in the case of Israel?

Kasrils The first and main plank is who can be a citizen and what rights they have. In Israel, citizenship is for Jews alone and citizenship gives you rights in terms of health, education, property, where you can trade, do business, have your home. Twenty per cent of Palestinians in Israel proper only have access to two per cent of the land where they can build. What happens when their kids grow up and want to get married? They can’t even build another room on an upstairs floor because they are prohibited. Rights for Palestinians are eroded by all kinds of rules and laws, forcing them into positions as second- and third-class citizens. And this is what we saw under apartheid, hundreds of such rules.

[Ed. note: Palestinian/Arab citizens of Israel are allowed to vote in national elections and there are a dozen Arab Muslim members of the Knesset. Many Israeli laws, however, do discriminate against non-Jewish citizens, including: the “Law of Return,” which gives a Jewish person automatic citizenship (other prospective immigrants must wait three years) and denies Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 to return to their homeland and properties; laws that govern the prohibition of Palestinians living in Israel from residing with their spouses who come from the occupied territories; and illegal settlement policies. The country’s security wall has annexed some of the most valuable lands in the West Bank, while a series of checkpoints in the occupied territories has severely restricted Palestinian freedom of movement.]

Hour Historically, Canada was one of the forerunning states to implement apartheid policies: The Indian Act of 1876, imposed the reserve system. First Nations live in poverty and land claim issues persist today. Context clearly matters. When did it become apartheid in the Middle East?

Kasrils From the onset of Zionism, founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897, this doctrine was an ethnic, racist doctrine, with an objective to supplant an indigenous people. They soon focused/targeted Palestine. Zionism is a racist, colonialist paradigm. The word “apartheid” hadn’t existed then, of course – it came into being in South Africa after 1948 and hence its use now. It’s quite useful to bear in mind that at that time, many Jews found Zionism an anathema: The rabbis opposed it on religious biblical grounds, saying that the Bible did not talk about a state.

In terms of the political movements of the day, especially under the Russian empire – where most Jews lived – what was strongest within the Jewish population was rising socialist ideology and the political position of the Jewish Bunt, which was instrumental in the Russian social democratic party, later became the Bolsheviks. So the Zionists had a very tough time, both on the religious side and in the political arena. They became very skilful as agnostics, basically to utilize religion to get control over the minds of Jewish people. It was only with the advent of the horrors of the Holocaust and the persecution of the Jews in the ’30s that Zionists attracted the masses of people. In a historical sense, this is important to remember. We earnestly need to challenge the so-called legitimacy of Zionism and show it as racist. Of course, as it’s developed since 1948, as I’ve already expanded on earlier.

Hour Canada – and Quebec – is a major trading partner with Israel, with ties to the Israeli military and illegal settlement construction. As a former defence minister of the ANC, you’ve stated that Israel can be said to be worse than pre-apartheid South Africa because it uses advanced military technology in the West Bank and Gaza against Palestinian civilians, and South Africa never wielded such a degree of military superiority against blacks. Can you elaborate?

Kasrils Israel is guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes in terms of the munitions that they are using. We saw at the end of the Lebanese invasion, just before they withdrew, they dropped a million cluster bombs on the south of Lebanon. We’ve seen with Gaza now the use by the artillery of 105-millimetre depleted uranium shells, which the Americans and British used in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ve also seen the use of white phosphorous bombs – these are banned in terms of the law of war. The Israelis lie and say they haven’t used anything that’s an armament not allowed in war.

Of all the people who died or were injured in Gaza, there were very few Hamas people. By far, the majority were old people, civilians, women and children. And this is why we would say there must be a war crimes tribunal against Israel for what it is doing. They will continue on with the absolute complicity of the West, without this being condoned. This will only get worse and worse if they are not stopped in their tracks.

Hour What conditions create the demise of an apartheid system?

Kasrils As with apartheid in South Africa, the support for a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS) has to be maximized. We must boycott Israel and introduce sanctions against them – isolate them. Institutions, colleges, trading partners, especially in the arms industry, must divest immediately, as was the case during the anti-apartheid movement’s triumphal campaign in South Africa. There has to be solidarity in isolating Israel, and to make it difficult for Israel’s allies to allow them to continue their repressive tactics and butchering with impunity. This is how change will come.

Hour Given the current position of the U.S. and Western governments in support of Israel, does the BDS campaign against Israel stand a real chance at success?

Kasrils I think the support from the U.S. for Israel won’t change, but sometimes these things don’t last forever. The Western support for Israel does not mean that BDS can’t succeed. We saw this with the apartheid movement in South Africa. We struggled from ’59, when we established the movement and issued the boycott, onward. For 30 years, we had a long, difficult period to develop and galvanize the movement.

There are many writers, Israeli Jews too, who point out that Zionism – and in fact the alliance with America – is actually counterproductive. Some European Zionists from high positions are starting to say that what Israel is doing is counterproductive; that instead of seeing Israel as a client state, a cat’s paw of American imperialism to keep the Arab world under constraints, they should become part of [the Arab world]. There’s historical precedent for this.

It’s also worth remembering both President Reagan in the U.S. and Mrs. Thatcher in Britain were absolutely bitter in their opposition to the ANC. They called Mandela a terrorist! At the time, the apartheid regime projected us the way Israel tries to project notions of terrorists. We in the ANC were projected as terrorists and communists.

Hour But Palestinian leadership is fractious and not nearly as united as the ANC… how does this hinder a solidarity movement?

Kasrils The Palestinians very unfortunately went through a period of suicide bombings, thinking they had nothing else to do. I’m not here to say what could have been done in that situation, but I think there are lots of things to do without blowing yourself up. It takes time to become unified and build such a movement. To figure out what doesn’t work. It is only through unity and determination and struggle that the Palestinian people will prove they are unconquerable. Like people elsewhere, they will learn that unity is indispensable.

Hour How do you respond to charges that you are anti-Semitic? Or that anti-Zionism equates to anti-Semitism?

Kasrils The idea that anyone critical of Zionism or Israel is racist is so worn out that it’s becoming absurd. The Israeli anti-apartheid movement is about justice and peace and security for all those people living in the Middle East: Christian, Muslim and Jew. If fascism was to rise up and anti-Semitism rear its head, the people supporting the Palestinians now would be the first to stand up against that kind of anti-Semitism!

To equate a critique of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism is wrong and false, and we must not allow that to be used as blackmail. It was used for many decades to exploit the victims of the Holocaust in a cynical, hypocritical manner, whereas the actual lesson of the Holocaust is that you should stand against all oppression. There’s a question of sanctity of life, and of justice, and this runs very strong in Judaism. And from that point of view, I would say Zionism is debasing the best qualities and ethics of Judaism as pronounced by their sages.

[…] Zionists who attack me and ask why I am only interested in this topic only read what they want. None of them bother to look at my history, or even read my memoir: Throughout my life I’ve taken up many issues – Vietnam, Chile, Cyprus. And certainly as a government minister, I was trying to help to ameliorate issues in Darfur and Zimbabwe. So, these are completely diversionary tactics.