Pioneer Jewish South African Freedom Fighter Calls Israel 'Apartheid State'
Denis Goldberg, aided by Israel in 1985 release from S.A. prison, says even Israel's treatment of Arab citizens counts as apartheid.
By Haaretz | Jul. 28, 2015 | 5:58 PM
Veteran Jewish anti-apartheid activist Denis Goldberg, whose release after two decades in a South African prison was aided by Israel, and who then lived briefly in the Jewish state before leaving in protest, told a Johannesburg gathering that Israel is an apartheid state, the Middle East Monitor reported on Tuesday.
Noting that critics of this view protest that Palestinian citizens of Israel, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa, vote and serve in their country's parliament, Goldberg said, "You don't need to be like South Africa to be an apartheid state, there is a definition in international law through the UNESCO declaration on apartheid," he said.
Apartheid exists, he said, in states that enforce laws and policies that discriminate between people on the basis of race or religion, and this holds true in Israel proper as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. He was one of a panel of anti-apartheid activists discussing the lessons that struggle holds for the Palestinian cause.
Goldberg, 82, one of the original members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, was sentenced with Nelson Mandela and other activists to life in prison in the 1964 Rivonia treason trial. He was released in 1985 with Israel's intercession, then went to live on a kibbutz, but moved to London months later, denouncing Israel's war in Lebanon, its occupation of the Palestinian territories, and its close ties with South Africa.
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