>To quote June Jordan: 'What if each time they kill one of us, we kill a
>cop'. I recall the anxiety amongst English speaking white South Africans
>in the 1980s that their children would get blown up by a land mine in
>Angola or Namibia. Of course, it also helped that English speaking whites
>could pretend that it was all the Afrikaners' war.
Too right! I went to an Afrikaans school, where the recurring whinge was 'the rooinek (White Anglophone South African) has the kaffir to work for him and the Afrikaner to protect him'. Which, sadly, did have a compelling note about it.
>After the Sharpeville massacre, investment flowed out of South
>African. Business leaders like the late and unlamented Harry Oppenheimer
>(recently called 'an inspiration to all South Africans' by ex-SACP Central
>Committee member, and South African President Thabo Mbeki) were
>instrumental in shoring up the Apartheid regime at that time and ensuring
>that the investment kept flowing. I suspect the powerful pro-Israel lobby
>internationally might play the same role.
Even US car manufacturers stipulated certain quasi-equitable internationally commensurable work practice and wage standards for their ongoing South African operations (was it called the Sullivan Plan?). My dad was a miner at the time, and he assured me no such standards obtained in Oppenheimer's operations. Mbeki is a great disappointment - but then he's not been alone in this.
>Again, the 'brain drain' was an important psychological factor in South
>Africa - that, and the fact that SAfricans were becoming pariahs wherever
>they went. Not happening (yet) for Israel, though.
Well it's good to grab that 'plucky' tag when you can get it. And it is politically much harder (and more worryingly ambiguous) to make a pariah of an Israeli Jew than a South African Gereformeerde, eh? One could suddenly find oneself in strange company ...
>If - as is likely sooner or later - Israel is forced to make some
>concessions on the Palestinian issue (after all, how necessary is massive
>support for Israel after the demise of Arab nationalism?), there still be
>the massive range of problems for progressive forces. In particular, the
>unionisation situation in Israel is dire, with Histadrut (the Zionist
>union federation) being one of the worst 'bosses unions' in the world -
>with investments solidly embedded in the Israeli economy.
And the likes of Sharon and Netanyahu are in the (re)ascendant, too. Any significant concession is likely (I'm guessing) to complete that resurgence. After which, more dead Palestinians and a corporate Israeli assault on the workforce to go with it ...
Cheers, Rob.