Gilad Isaacs, an NYU student who grew up in South Africa, spoke at NYU two weeks ago at an Israeli Apartheid Week event. Lately he posted a version of his speech. In these excerpts, he recovers some interesting history:
On the 3rd of February 1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech in the South African parliament referring to the Winds of Change - the anti-colonial independence movement - that was sweeping through Africa. He urged the white minority government of South African to recognize this change, saying:
The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.
Then South African President Hendrik Verwoed, often called "the architect of apartheid", replied:
And the white man came to Africa, perhaps to trade, in some cases, perhaps to bring the gospel; has remained to stay. And particularly we in this southern most portion of Africa, have such a stake here that this is our only motherland, we have no where else to go. We set up a country bare, and the Bantu came in this country and settled certain portions for themselves, and it is in line with the thinking of Africa, to grant those fullest rights which we also with you admit all people should have and believe providing those rights for those people in the fullest degree in that part of southern Africa which their forefathers found for themselves and settled in. But similarly, we believe in balance, we believe in allowing exactly those same full opportunities to remain within the grasp of the white man who has made all this possible....
Martin Luther King Jr... and then African National Congress President Albert Luthuli, in 1962 issued a call, a section of which read:
The apartheid republic is a reality today only because the peoples and governments of the world have been unwilling to place her in quarantine.
Translate public opinion into public action
We, therefore, ask all men of goodwill to take action against apartheid in the following manner:
Hold meetings and demonstrations on December 10, Human Rights Day:
Urge your church, union, lodge, or club to observe this day as one of protest;
Urge your Government to support economic sanctions;
Write to your mission to the United Nations urging adoption of a resolution calling for international isolation of South Africa;
Don`t buy South Africa`s products;
Don`t trade or invest in South Africa;
Translate public opinion into public action by explaining facts to all peoples, to groups to which you belong, and to countries of which you are citizens until AN EFFECTIVE INTERNATIONAL QUARANTINE OF APARTHEID IS ESTABLISHED.
RE: “Winds of change took 25 years’ – Weiss
MY COMMENT: I sent an E-mail urging my representatives to support the Obama Administration’s call to end Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. You can send your own E-mail today by clicking on this link – link to aaper.org
P.S. What is AAPER? The American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights (AAPER) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to inform the American public about the human and national rights of the Palestinian people and the role of the United States in the Middle East.
I still remember the exuberance I felt when the Berlin Wall was brought down by crowds of West Germans and East Germans chipping at the wall, brick by brick, hammering at it with anything they could get their hands on, iron pipes, sledge hammers and utility poles used like battering rams.
The world was changing fast, the Cold War was coming to an end, the Soviet Union dissolved after a three-day revolution and there was a sense of euphoria in the air. This current impasse too, will come to an end, for the winds of change are blowing….
link to youtube.com
“There ain’t too much I can say about this song except that the answer is blowing in the wind. It ain’t in no book or movie or TV show or discussion group. Man, it’s in the wind—and it’s blowing in the wind. Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is but oh I won’t believe that. I still say it’s in the wind and just like a restless piece of paper it’s got to come down some …But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not too many people get to see and know …and then it flies away I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong and know it’s wrong. I’m only 21 years old and I know that there’s been too many …You people over 21, you’re older and smarter.”
–Bob Dylan 1962
Two decades later, in 1983, Mister Dylan, older and smarter, sang a different tune; it was called Neighborhood Bully. It is pure Zionist hasbara, and never even mentions the Palestinians at all–of course the Bully is the Arab world, all anti-semites everywhere, and the innocent victim, is plucky little Israel:
link to ellissharp.blogspot.com
Note any unintended lyrical echos of President Hendrik Verwoed’s defense of apartheid.
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