Elders Visit Gaza; Call for Lifting of Blockade

The Palestinian News Agency WAFA reports on the current visit of three of ‘The Elders’ to Gaza.

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace-building and help address major causes of human suffering.

The Elders are Martti Ahtisaari, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahimi, Gro Brundtland, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu (Chair).  Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi are honorary Elders.

Mary Robinson: a young elder from Ireland

Delegation leader, former Irish President, Mary Robinson, said:

“I was last here in 2008, just before the Gaza war. The situation has deteriorated to a shocking extent since then. This is not a humanitarian crisis – it is a political crisis and it can be solved politically. It is unconscionable and unacceptable that Israel and the international community have not lifted the blockade fully to allow Gazans to rebuild their lives and be part of the interconnected world that we take for granted. The easing of the blockade may mean more goods can be imported, but people are not free to come and go, reconstruction materials are still highly restricted, there is no real economy to speak of, and I have no doubt that things are not just stagnant – they are going backwards.”

India’s Ela Bhatt, a Gandhian pioneer in the field of non-violent resistance and women’s economic empowerment, who visited Gaza as a student in 1968, said:

“People cannot continue to live in an atmosphere of fear – no good can come of it. The people have the right to develop their economy – every other place in the world is being supported to meet the Millennium Development Goals. In Gaza, education, health, sanitation and socio-economic indicators are getting worse. I am especially concerned about the situation for women in Gaza – they have much to contribute to a peaceful future and I urged leaders here to enable them to play a much greater role in the peace process.”

Former Algerian Foreign Minister and former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said:

“Holding 1.5 million people in what is effectively an open prison is deepening the sense of anger and injustice of the Palestinians. We are here to show solidarity with them. This situation is a disaster. It is creating a generation of young people who have little to lose. This is not in anyone’s interest.”

After their Gaza visit, the three leaders will join ex-US President Jimmy Carter in Cairo.

Earth Elders Round Table

How long will it take before the current crop of world leaders put real pressure on Israel to end this cruel and utterly illegal blockade of the tiny Gaza strip?

During Israel’s blockade, Israel has actually been admitted to the OECD, making a travesty of the self-imposed rules for the rich countries club.

The absolute opposite sould have happened: after Israel began its illegal blockade, civilized countries should have suspended diplomatic relations pending the blockade’s lifting.

Nations acquiescing in the brutal injustice of Israel’s strangulation of Gaza accept a world where peace is impossible. The blockade simply MUST end. It was outrageous from the outset. It has become evil beyond words.

The Elders see that clearly. What’s wrong with their juniors? Why are the self-styled leaders of the ‘Free World’ so out of step with these loved and respected elder statesmen?

Until Gaza is free, the focus of the world will remain on “the world’s largest prison camp“. That will happen whether Rupert Murdoch and other obnoxious Zionist plutocrats like it or not.

Keeping the Gaza blockade in force will continue the torture of one and a half million people. But from a broader geopolitical perspective, it will only accelerate global boycott – led by civic society – of the worse-than-apartheid Israeli rogue state.

A series of explosive reports today’s Guardian newspaper (from Britain) details the almost romantic relationship between the governments of South Africa and Israel in the decades preceding the collapse of South African Apartheid in the late 1980s.

Shimon Peres

The major focus was military collaboration, including nuclear weaponry.

More later – but for now head over to the Guardian for a feast of ‘Top Secret’ memos from the Apartheid era which highlight the deep and longstanding collaboration between racist Israel and apartheid South Africa: The memos and minutes that confirm Israel’s nuclear stockpile: Documents reveal how then-defence minister Shimon Perez tried to sell South Africa’s apartheid government the bomb.

Here’s a gem – a 1974 personal note from Shimon Peres, then Defence Minister of Israel (currently Israel’s President!) to the South African Minister for Information. It includes a sentence that even the world’s smoothest old liar will not be able to explain away:

“…cooperation is based not only on common interests and on the determination to resist equally our enemies, but also on the unshakeable foundations of our common hatred of injustice and our refusal to submit to it.”

Joan Armstrading: pretty voice for sale to Apartheid?

Co-incidentally, I wrote to Joan Armatrading yesterday via her website.

Apparently the British singer is booked to perform in Apartheid Israel next month.

How this artiste could even contemplate performing in the Sun City of our era is utterly beyond me. I told her so, as politely as I could.

If she goes ahead with the tour, I may write her once more to suggest she changes her name to Joan ArmsTrading.

Perhaps she has debts worse than Sarah Ferguson‘s?

In Israeli-South African Relations : On the Mend?, written in 2004, Kristin Nelson discussed some of the historical background to lingering tensions between the South Africa’s Australian National Congress (now in Government, once a hunted organization) and the Israeli regime.

Here’s an extract (emphasis added):

At the height of Apartheid Israel ignored international sanctions against South Africa, citing its own vulnerability to such tactics. It continued to sell roughly (US$) 600 million worth of arms per year to the white minority government before eventually banning further military contracts in 1987.

Nelson Mandela: when he was younger, Israel collaborated with his jailers

Before the early 1990s and the release of Mandela, mutual aid between the two governments evolved out of a natural fraternity: both were technologically advanced, militarily powerful nations that felt surrounded by hostile neighbours. During the 1970s this affiliation extended into the field of nuclear weaponry when Israeli experts helped South African to develop at least six nuclear warheads.

Although the extent of their covert collaboration is not entirely clear, Israel is known to have supplied technical assistance to South Africa in exchange for no less than 300 tons of uranium. Several Israeli nuclear scientists, including Ernst David Bergmann (the “Oppenheimer of Israel”), visited South Africa in 1967, and evidence of increasingly close relations accumulated throughout the 1970s.

Collaboration between South Africa and Israel over nuclear weapons was well-known 20 years ago – and strongly opposed by the world community as a whole.

Menachim Begin and Yitshak Shamir: an earlier generation of Israeli terrorist leaders, traded nuclear technology with Apartheid South Africa

Resolution A/RES/42/23 was passed by the 77th plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on 20th November 1987. Part D, entitled Relations between Israel and South Africa, said:

The General Assembly,

Reaffirming its resolutions on relations between Israel and South Africa,

Having considered the special report of the Special Committee against Apartheid on recent developments concerning relations between Israel and South Africa,

Taking note of the declarations of the International Conference on the Alliance between South Africa and Israel and of the Second World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination,

Alarmed at the increasing collaboration by Israel with the racist regime of South Africa, especially in the military and nuclear fields, in defiance of resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council,

Considering that such collaboration is a serious hindrance to international action for the eradication of apartheid, an encouragement to the racist regime of South Africa to persist in its criminal policy of apartheid and a hostile act against the oppressed people of South Africa and the entire African continent, and constitutes a threat to international peace and security,

1. Again strongly condemns the continuing and increasing collaboration
   by Israel with the racist regime of South Africa, especially in the military
   and nuclear fields;
2. Demands that Israel desist from and terminate forthwith all forms of
   collaboration with South Africa, particularly in the military and nuclear
   fields, and abide scrupulously by the relevant resolutions of the General
   Assembly and the Security Council;
3. Calls upon all Governments and organizations to exert their
   influence to persuade Israel to desist from such collaboration and abide by
   the resolutions of the General Assembly;
4. Requests the Special Committee against Apartheid to publicize, as
   widely as possible, information on the relations between Israel and South
   Africa and especially the Declaration of the International Conference on the
   Alliance between South Africa and Israel;
5. Requests the Secretary-General to render, through the Department of
   Public Information and the Centre against Apartheid of the Secretariat, all
   possible assistance to the Special Committee in disseminating information
   relating to the collaboration between Israel and South Africa;


Modechai Vanunu: the heroic Israeli nuclear whistleblower - still denied his freedom by Apartheid Israel

6. Further requests the Special Committee to keep the matter under
   constant review and to report to the General Assembly and the Security Council as appropriate.

One of the greatest achievements of Israeli/Zionist PR over in recent decades has been persuading a majority of ‘left-wing’, ‘progressive’ westerners that Israel shares their values.

The historical record shows what a grotesque myth this has been.