This piece was written by the president of the CCAP (CAMERA Supported) group Claremont Students for Israel, Elliott Hamilton. The full version of this piece is available on The Times of Israel, and the link is below.
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an organization that consistently preaches anti-Semitism on college campuses, frequently compares the security situation in Israel to South African apartheid. Anti-Israel propagandists use images of the security barrier and the checkpoints to demonize Israel as an “occupying power” and to equate it to one of the worst instances of state-sponsored segregation in the 20th century. The comparison is seen as so atrocious that even citizens of South Africa find it morally reprehensible.
“The comparison is disgusting,” says Nkosi Kennedy, a native of Johannesburg. “It brings out the emotions and the trauma that South Africans do not wish to revisit and does so in a very unacceptable way.”
Kennedy represents the first generation in his family in over a century not to live under the brutal regime that separated people on the basis of skin color. His grandfather and father, for example, were born in one-room shacks because the apartheid regime did not allow black South Africans into hospitals. Those were reserved for the white minority.
“My entire family was oppressed throughout the apartheid era and my parents were freedom fighters. The stories they tell about the brutal oppression and the poverty levels they faced are incomparable to what is happening in Israel,” Kennedy continues.
Kennedy’s parents were politically active and took part in active protests against the apartheid system. He grew up hearing about the brutal conditions his family and his people went through, as well as learning the story of how the African National Congress (ANC) eventually brought down the state-sponsored segregation. For him, even though he was born during the twilight years of the regime, he knows what separates the former reality in South Africa to the current situation in Israel and the disputed territories.
Read more: The Unbecoming Appropriation of “Apartheid” | Elliott Hamilton | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel