Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
9 February
APARTHEID TWINS CO-OPERATED CLOSELY
On this day in 1994, Mandela became president of South Africa and said, "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians". The close military-diplomatic alliance between Israel and South Africa had come to an end. In 1975 Israeli PM Shimon Peres discussed the sale of nuclear weapons to South Africa. The National Party, South Africa’s apartheid-era ruling party, did not admit Jews, had many leaders with pro-Nazi sympathies until 1945, and was strongly pro-Israel.
تعاون وثيق بين توأمي الأبارثيد
9 فبراير
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1994 ،عندما أصبح مانديلا رئيسًا لجنوب إفريقيا قال: "نحن نعلم جيدًا أن حريتنا غير مكتملة بدون حرية الفلسطينيين". لقد انتهى التحالف العسكري الدبلوماسي الوثيق بين إسرائيل وجنوب إفريقيا. في عام 1975 ناقش رئيس الوزراء الإسرائيلي شيمون بيريز بيع أسلحة نووية إلى جنوب إفريقيا. لم يقبل الحزب الوطني ، الحزب الحاكم في جنوب أفريقيا في حقبة الفصل العنصري ، اعضاء يهود ، وكان لديه العديد من القادة المتعاطفين مع النازية حتى عام 1945 ،بالرغم من ذلك كان الحزب مؤيدًا بشدة لإسرائيل.
There are no public statues in Israel of Mandela, no street however humble named after him, unsurprising in a country whose Minister of the Interior, Eli Yishai, insisted to Israeli daily Maariv that “Israel belongs to the white man”, and senior government figures whip up Jewish mobs to launch pogroms against African refugees.
Palestinians in April 2016 inaugurated a giant statue of Nelson Mandela, donated by the South African city of Johannesburg, at their political capital in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The six-metre, two-tonne bronze statue was a gift from Johannesburg with which Ramallah is twinned.
Israel had offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime
"Top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for nuclear warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister, 1994 Nobel Peace Prize winner and later Prime Minister and president of Israel, responded by offering nuclear warheads "in three sizes". Israel and South Africa signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.
The two apartheid states carried out joint nuclear weapoins development. On 27 February 1980, President Jimmy Carter confided to his diary his diary, "We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa."
The explicitly Nazi ethos, including the extreme anti-semitism, of the ruling South African National Party during the years of its alliance with Israel:
"When Hitler's attacks upon German Jewry led to the immigration of several thou- sand German Jews, Nazi-inspired elements within the Nationalist Party openly advocated that South Africa adopt similar measures. Dr. Hendrik F. Verwoerd, Malan's close associate and eventual successor as prime minister, also launched his political career in the same period of anti-Semitic outpourings. One of Verwoerd's first political actions was to lead a deputation to Prime Minister Hertzog to ask that he refuse admission to Jewish refugees. In 1936 an Aliens Act instituted a new system of controlling immigration which in effect meant that until the end of the War no more than fifty Jews per year entered the country. The blatant anti-Semitic policy of the Nationalist Party continued until 1945. Through its attacks on "Jewish democracy" and "Jewish capi- talism" the Party clearly indicated that Jews were not far behind "kafirs" in terms of its defined prejudices. During this period some Afrikaners favored the disfranchisement of all "un-assimilable" groups and Jews were specifically included in this category. Rarely was a person of Jewish background admitted to the Nationalist Party and through its recognized organ, Die Transvaler, edited by Verwoerd, the "Jewish imperialistic war machine" and Jewish immigration were attacked. The anti- Jewish policies of the Nationalist Party were officially proclaimed in its election manifesto of 1938 and reaffirmed three years later. Not even the defeat of Nazi Germany in April, 1945, brought an immediate end to Nationalist support of Nazi principles."
Final word from Ronnie Kasrils on the racist twins:
"I fought South African apartheid. I see the same brutal policies in Israel. I was shut down in South Africa for speaking out, and I’m disturbed that the same is happening to critics of Israel now. Ronnie Kasrils was a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era and former government minister."
4-minute video - Mandela on Palestinian freedom