In a speech he gave over the weekend at a pro-BDS conference in London, UK, MK Yousef Jabareen (Hadash-Ta’al) publicly called for a boycott of Israel, Kan news reported.
“The international community has all the tools to deal with war crimes – to boycott settlers, to boycott settlement products, to boycott international companies,” said Jabareen at the Palestine Expo, which claims to be “the biggest Palestine event in Europe.” It is organized by Friends of Al Aqsa, which was behind the attempts to banish Israel from FIFA.
According to the Expo’s schedule, MK Ahmad Tibi (Hadash-Ta’al), Ben-Gurion University Professor Neve Gordon, and Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy also spoke.
In his speech, Jabareen accused Israel of being an apartheid state, and urged more “mobilization” against the Jewish State.
“There need to be more mass mobilization of our people on the ground, in Gaza but also in the West Bank,” Jabareen suggested, claiming Israel is “exactly like the South African Bantustan. And it’s a combination of apartheid and occupation.”
Bantoestan, an Afrikaans word meaning homeland, were twenty territories set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as part of the policy of apartheid. The Bantustans were generally poor, with some opportunities for advancement for blacks in education, and some improvements in the infrastructure. About 85% of their budget came from the white government in Pretoria. Their single most important home-grown source of revenue were casinos and strip clubs, which were illegal in white South Africa.
The Bantoestans were extremely unpopular among the urban black population, although many of them, too, lived in squalor in slum housing. Many urban blacks were banished to the Bantustans randomly and against their will.
In short, other than depicting a vastly unequal relationship between a largely white government and darker skinned subjects, there are no factual comparisons that can be made between the PA and the Gaza Strip and Bantoestan, especially since there was no migration of whites into Bantoestan at all.
But it sounds as if it stands for something bad the Jews are doing, so, yes, it’s useful. As in the fact that Im Tirtzu’s Director of Policy, Alon Schvartzer, announced that allowing the Arab MK to participate was “a black day for the Knesset.”
Black is beautiful, for sure, but Schvartzer talking about a black day is sooo uncomfortable…