Worth knowing how far Israel, Woolies tactics creep

The headline of the Cape Times oped “Anti-Woolies calls about more than Palestine” (September 21) rightly reflects even greater issues.

These include the fundamental question of whether our democracy is being held to ransom by corporate interests. Like the ANC, the DA spuriously refuses to disclose identities of its financial donors.

At issue is whether the DA that controls both the Cape Town City Council and the province is funded by corporate interests such as Woolworths and Sun International to do its “dirty work” to subvert the constitution.

That Israel is an apartheid state is irrefutable, whatever the bleats of Zionists that all criticisms of Israel are “anti-Semitic”. Within “Israel proper”, more than 50 laws discriminate against Palestinian Israeli citizens on the basis of citizenship, land and language and where, like the Group Areas Act here, 92 percent of the land is reserved for Jewish occupation only. These laws mirror the daily humiliations of South African “petty apartheid”.

Beyond the “green line”, the situation in the West Bank (let alone Gaza) is even worse. The Palestine Authority is a discredited “grand apartheid” Bantustan with far less autonomy than Ciskei or Bophuthatswana. In South Africa, we did not have “apartheid walls” or “apartheid roads”, and even the hated dompass was primitive compared to the Israeli permit systems. The crime of apartheid is not restricted to South Africa, and is internationally defined as a crime against humanity.

In contravention of the Geneva Conventions and other international law, there are 700 000 Israeli settlers living on stolen Palestinian land which they irrigate with stolen Palestinian water. In contravention of such laws, Woolworths imports agricultural produce such as citrus from these settlements which are deliberately mislabelled as produce of Israel.

European governments have already warned their citizens of the reputational and financial risks of transactions with the illegal settlements. Tighter European Commission regulations are in the offing.

Woolworths will be well aware of the tricks and mislabelling that apartheid South Africa played to beat sanctions. It is doing its own reputation no favour in colluding with Israeli money laundering, while pretending it does not import produce from the settlements.

Woolworths has also fraudulently prevailed upon Pharrell Williams to collaborate with its defiance of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign. It is modelled after South Africa’s experiences of the 1980s, and the Israeli government and banks are suddenly in a panic as the campaign gathers momentum in Europe and the US.

The international tide is at last turning on apartheid Israel, and no longer are people intimidated by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and other Zionist lobbyists by smears of anti-Semitism and other thuggery. Capetonians will recall the uproar from Zionists in 2010 when Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, at the request of Israeli peace activists, called upon the Cape Town Opera Company to cancel its tour of Tel Aviv and its performance there of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Given the parallels of apartheid in Israel-Palestine with apartheid in South Africa and the civil rights movement in the US, Williams now faces a massive damage control exercise to repair his international reputation.

The Cape High Court ruled emphatically on Saturday that the City’s attempts to limit protests at GrandWest were unconstitutional. It is bewildering that the council blundered into its irrational and unconstitutional position on behalf of Woolworths and Grand West/Sun International.

Clarification from Patricia de Lille in her capacities as mayor and leader of the DA in this province is now urgent.

Terry Crawford-Browne

For and on behalf of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign