Quibbling Over Cruelties: Human Rights Watch, Israel and Apartheid
DATE: 4 May 2021
AUTHOR: Modern Ghana
Former Justice of the South African Constitutional Court Richard Goldstone signalled that point in chastising the misuse of the term. This is despite the view of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, which found in 2009 that Israel’s control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories “with the purpose of maintaining a system of domination by Jews over Palestinians … constitutes a breach of the prohibition of apartheid.” In opining on the activities of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, Goldstone considered the apartheid accusation to be a “particularly pernicious and enduring canard”. Accepting that the word might have a wider meaning, Goldstone was stubbornly insistent that it remain anchored in the pre-1994 soil of South Africa. “It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.”