June 6, 2007

The following is a speech given to the South African Parliament by Minister Ronnie Kasrils, MP, an anti-Zionist Jewish Minister of the South African Government on the 40th Aniversary of Israel's victory in the Six Day War. This speech and the article found at this link help to debunk many of the propaganda myths that have formed public opinion on the Six Day War in the last 40 years.

Madam Speaker, Honourable members, this speech is dedicated to the
memory of David Rabkin, South African freedom fighter, who died in Angola.

*Forty years ago this week Israel's military unleashed lightning attacks
against Egypt, Jordan and Syria, alleging provocations as justification
for its strikes.
*
Within six days the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East
Jerusalem, and Golan Heights had been captured.

Apart from the Sinai from which Israel withdrew in 1977, the other areas
remain under Israeli military occupation and control to this day.

*Whilst some justify Israel's actions on the grounds of pre-emptive
self-defence, the obverse was the truth. From the horse's mouth we learn
whom the aggressor was:

Israel's military Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin stated: "I do not
believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on
May 14 [1967] would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against
Israel. He knew it and we knew it." [1]

Menachem Begin, later Israel's Prime Minister, reminisced that the
Egyptian army deployment in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was
about to attack Israel. "We must be honest," he explained. "We decided
to attack him." [2]

General Moshe Dayan explained that "many of the firefights with the
Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel." He said that the kibbutz
residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights ... did
so less for the security than for the farmland ..." [3]

These are clearly statements of an aggressor. Nevertheless, some claim
that Israel is justified and obligated, from its birth as a state in
1948 in fact, to defend its land and people by force whenever necessary.
But where is the morality in this? Fortress Israel, a militarist
aggressive state, defends a stolen land that belonged to another people.

Moshe Dayan unabashedly explained:

"Before [the Palestinians'] very eyes we are possessing the land and
villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived ... We are the
generation of colonizers, and without the gun barrel we cannot plant a
tree and build a home." [4]

Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, stated in the 1950s:

"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never
make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their country.
Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them. Our God
is not theirs. We come from Israel, its true, but two thousand years
ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis
... but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and
stole their country." [5]
*
Such statements contextualise Israel's position and show it has not been
interested in real peace terms. In 1897 the founding father of Zionism,
Theodor Herzl, stated that once in power the aim would be to: "Spirit
the penniless population (the Palestinians) across the borders." [6]

Therein lies the fundamental cause of the conflict -- lest anyone
remains unclear. It stems from the Zionist world view -- its belief in a
perpetual anti-Semitism that requires that Jewish people around the
world -- a faith group -- should have a national home of their own. The
biblical narrative was evoked to proclaim Palestine as the promised land
reserved exclusively for God's "chosen people" and their civilizing
mission. It sounds all too familiar as a vision the Voortrekkers had in
this country. It gives rise to racism, apartheid and a total onslaught
on those who stand in your way, whether blacks or Arabs or red Indians.
Many Jews do not agree with this Zionist world view, and declare that
being anti-Zionism and critical of Israel does not equate with
anti-semitism.

Far from being a land without people, as Zionist propaganda falsely
proclaimed, to attract and justify colonial settlement, the fact was
that an indigenous people -- the Palestinians -- lived there, developed
agriculture and towns since the Canaanite Kingdom over 5,500 years ago.

Indeed a delegation of skeptical Vienna rabbis traveled to the Holy Land
in 1898 to assess the Zionist vision and cabled home: "The Bride is
indeed beautiful but already married." [7]

This did not deter the Zionists who plotted to abduct the bride and
murder or expel the groom by whatever means necessary; and then defend
what they had stolen at all costs by creating a supremacist Fortress State.

That exactly sums up the bloody and tragic history that befell the
Palestinian people, and their Arab neighbours, at the hands of a
rapacious, expansionist Zionist project that has been the source of war
and untold suffering in the Near East for the past sixty years, and is
the root cause of the conflict that threatens the entire region and beyond.

With the adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan of November,
1947, a Jewish homeland was accorded 56 percent of the territory
although they owned only seven percent and were one-third of the
population (most of whom had recently arrived as Holocaust refugees from
Europe). The Palestinian majority were given 44 percent and were never
consulted nor had they anything to do with the abominable suffering of
the European Jews. The Zionists accepted partition with alacrity but
never intended to honour the decision.

According to the Zionist's strategy, which has become public record with
the declassification of documents, the intention was to roll-out a
systematic reign of terror, massacres, dispossession and expulsion. This
drove out the Palestinian population in a horrific episode of ethnic
cleansing that saw over 750,000 or two-thirds of the indigenous people
at that time becoming penniless refugees, as Herzl had promised. By the
1949 Armistice the Israeli state had expanded to 78 percent of the
territory.

That was almost 60 years ago. The result of Israel's war of aggression
of forty years ago this week, an extension of 1948, saw Israeli military
occupation of the remaining 22 percent of the land.

The people within the West Bank and Gaza are literally imprisoned under
the most unjust conditions suffering hardships and methods of control
that are far worse than anything our people faced during the most
dreadful days of apartheid. In fact any South African, visiting what
amount to enclosed prison-ghettoes -- imposed by a Jewish people that
tragically suffered the Nazi Holocaust -- will find similarity with
Apartheid immediately coming to mind; and even more shocking,
comparisons with some of the methods of collective punishment and
control devised under tyrannies elsewhere. An Israeli cabinet Minister,
Aharon Cizling, stated in 1948, after the Deir Yassin Massacre:

"Now we too have behaved like Nazis and my whole being is shaken." [8]

If anyone has any doubt what the 1948 and 1967 wars were about, listen
to *Ben Gurion* who stated in 1938: *"after we become a strong force, as
the result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and
expand into the whole of Palestine."
*
And mark these words of *Moshe Dayan:*

*"Our fathers had reached the frontiers which were recognized in the UN
Partition Plan of 1947 [56 percent of the land]. Our generation reached
the frontiers of 1949 [78 percent of the land]. Now the Six Day
Generation [of 1967] has managed to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan
Heights. This is not the end." [9]

*Indeed the saga of agony for the Palestinians continues, inevitably
creating insecurity for Israelis as well; because as we know from our
own South African experience -- injustice and repression generates
resistance. It is no good blaming the victims when they hit back.

*The Palestinian people's fate clearly reflects that of South Africa's
indigenous majority during the colonial wars of dispossession of land
and property, and the harsh discrimination and suffering of the
apartheid period classified as a crime against humanity and violation of
international humanitarian law. Israel is as guilty as the Apartheid
regime. Israel's conquest and occupation, with the latest land grab
caused by its monstrous Apartheid Wall and continued construction of the
illegal settlements has reduced the West Bank into several disconnected
pockets amounting to 12 percent of former Palestine. No wonder that
Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Tutu and others compare the situation to
Apartheid and the infamous Bantustans -- which gave 13 percent of land
for South Africa's indigenous people.
*
*This people's Parliament should be unanimous in calling for Israel's
immediate withdrawal from the occupied territories -- lifting the
physical, economic and financial blockade and siege of Gaza and the West
Bank -- removing the physical impediments to the freedom of movement of
Palestinians including the Wall and over 500 check-points - dismantling
the illegal settlements -- releasing 10,000 political prisoners (113
women and children amongst them*) -- negotiating a just solution with
the elected representatives of the Palestinian people and implementing
the UN Resolutions, including Resolution 194 of 1948, concerning the
Right of Return of the Refugees. These are necessary steps to create
lasting peace, justice and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike,
reinforced by international guarantees, so they may live in harmony.
Since 1988, when Chairman Yasser Arafat and the PLO agreed to accept 22
percent of historic Palestine in the interests of peace they show they
have been ready for negotiations.

Let us unanimously extend our solidarity and support to the forty-two
members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, including the Speakers
of the West Bank and Gaza, who together with ten Ministers have been
summarily detained without trial, most for nearly a year, by the Israeli
security forces. This is a shocking illustration of Israel's disrespect
for parliamentary democracy, the law and basic human rights so
reminiscent of what we suffered under apartheid. We call for their
immediate and unconditional release; and all prisoners held by both sides.

In support of these demands let us join with the people of our country,
and the international community, in the solidarity marches, rallies and
demonstrations this week, the 40th anniversary of Israel's unjust
occupation. And we make it clear to our Jewish community, these peaceful
and disciplined actions, are aimed solely at that government. The
struggle for freedom and justice is against a system and not a people.

Let me conclude with the words of *President Mandela,* who declared in
1998 during the visit to South Africa by Chairman Yasser Arafat:

*"We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of
the Palestinians." [10]

**Endnotes

[1] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch
[2] Naom Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle
[3] New York Times, 11 May 1977
[4] Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins: Reflections
on the History of Zionism and Israel
[5] Nathan Goldman, The Jewish Paradox
[6] The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, Vol 1, p 86
[7] Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall
[8] Tom Seger, The First Israelis
[9] London Times, 25 June 1969
[10] Speech by Nelson Mandela at the Banquet in Honour
of President Yasser Arafat of Palestine on 11 August
1998*

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