Apartheid

34
professionals. In a nutshell: the indigenous ethnic majority was needed by the apartheid elites
to do the dirty work, although the latter did not want members of the former group anywhere
in the vicinity. This is a basic contradiction, which has led every apartheid society so far to
collapse – with the notable, but thus far comparatively short-lived exception of Israel.
The elite ethnicity needs the conquered ethnic majority as a construction. The borders
between the ethnic groups in an apartheid society are not unlike borders between nationstates.
They are ultimately based on arbitrary decisions by the holders of power. But on the
other hand the elite ethnicity also needs to destroy this group on a symbolic level. As we shall
see in Section II.9, it needs to dehumanize, or at least to ‘sub-humanize’, the conquered
population. And its ethnicity is most of all an effect of the resistant representation of that
ethnic majority, which takes place nonetheless.
Yet another instance of apartheid’s inner tension, related to the previous ones and no
less crippling to apartheid societies, is the continuous resentment and physical resistance of
the subjugated indigenous majority. That resistance takes many forms, active as well as
passive, violent as well as non-violent, and this all contributes to making the upkeep of
apartheid very expensive indeed. As the Palestinian-American intellectual, Edward Said,
observed soon after the outbreak of the Second Intifada:
Fanciful ideas of Israeli power today as embodied in the people who
like Sharon are at best a postponement, and a bloody one at that, of the
inevitable realization that apartheid can only work if two peoples
accept the notion of separation with inferiority that the strong imposes
on the weak. But since that is not the case (and has never happened in
history), it will always be unlikely that people will cheerfully accept
their enslavement. Why are Israelis en masse fooling themselves into
thinking that it will work in so small an area and so historically
saturated a geography as Palestine’s? 25
Even South African apartheid, with its very formal and legalistic definition of
apartheid, which the National Party defined and kept redefining from the 1940s until the
1990s, must not be reduced to a phenomenon contained in the state apparatus. To do so would
be to exonerate the business community and other members and institutions of civil society, as
well as all the numerous foreign beneficiaries, from any responsibility whatsoever for
apartheid human rights violations. With regard to de facto criminal liabilities, this is
unfortunately already the case. Today, the only way to receive justice with regard to most of
apartheid’s perpetrators in South Africa is through the civil court systems, i.e. through suing
for damages. And due to the huge profits made by apartheid perpetrators, they have better
chances in civil courts, because they can afford clever lawyers and teams of lawyers, and also
because of the precedent-setting de facto amnesty extended to them by the lack of criminal
liability for these crimes against humanity. Moreover, they have the state against them as
South Africa is today reluctant to scare away foreign investors. Economic globalization works
in favor of apartheid impunity.
When in early September 2001 the United Nations World Conference Against Racism
failed to condemn Israel for apartheid, despite an overwhelming majority of delegates in favor
of such a condemnation, mainly because of intense pressure from Israel and the USA, a small,
but largely unnoticed fault was contained in the wording that made Israel an apartheid state.
As I shall attempt to show, Israel is indeed an apartheid state, but many crucial upholders of
Israeli apartheid practices and apartheid institutions would have been left unmentioned in such
a condemnation, and thus beyond the reach of criminal courts. (See Chapter III.2, below.) A
strong and sovereign state is indeed necessary for apartheid to function, but it is certainly not
sufficient. To view apartheid as essentially a kind of state-run oppression will in my opinion
25 Said: Where Will Sharon Take Israel? 2001