It went a similar way with South African apartheid. It took decades of things getting worse before the rest of the world even took notice - the first segregation laws were passed in 1908. It was first 40 years later the official Apartheid laws came into force. In the 1960’s, more than half a century after segregation started, the ANC gave up being peaceful. In the late 70’s they went from sabotage to starting to kill people. In the 1980’s ANC was consider a terrorist organization by the US and UK governments, and in 1987 Mandela was explicitly called a terrorist by Thatcher.
In 1990 the regime gave in.
Because the pressure had finally built to an unsustainable level, despite the fact that just a few years prior some of the most powerful countries in the world were still calling their main opponents terrorists.
This, by the way, is not intended to compare Hamas with ANC; ANC did also carry out terror, but not at nearly that scale, and of what they did carry out it’s unclear which parts of the leadership approved what
The point is the timescale. How long it took before people started giving more than lip service to turning their back to an Apartheid regime that had gotten worse for their entire lives while they ignored the oppression, and how rapidly it snowballed once it first became accepted to turn your back on the regime, and then expected, and then a necessity to prevent people from turning their backs on you.
I agree with you there’s more open criticism of Israel this time. In part, I think because there’s been a slow drip of increasingly prominent organisations applying the Apartheid label in recent years from sources that are harder and harder to dismiss, and particularly the slowly growing acceptance that Gaza and the West Bank functions as bantustans. It makes it harder to just shout down critics.
And this can, and likely will, turn really fast once things truly starts to accelerate. A couple of big PR missteps and Israel will risk the opposition to BDS crumbling as well, and then the regime will be well and truly fucked.
It went a similar way with South African apartheid. It took decades of things getting worse before the rest of the world even took notice - the first segregation laws were passed in 1908. It was first 40 years later the official Apartheid laws came into force. In the 1960’s, more than half a century after segregation started, the ANC gave up being peaceful. In the late 70’s they went from sabotage to starting to kill people. In the 1980’s ANC was consider a terrorist organization by the US and UK governments, and in 1987 Mandela was explicitly called a terrorist by Thatcher.
In 1990 the regime gave in.
Because the pressure had finally built to an unsustainable level, despite the fact that just a few years prior some of the most powerful countries in the world were still calling their main opponents terrorists.
This, by the way, is not intended to compare Hamas with ANC; ANC did also carry out terror, but not at nearly that scale, and of what they did carry out it’s unclear which parts of the leadership approved what
The point is the timescale. How long it took before people started giving more than lip service to turning their back to an Apartheid regime that had gotten worse for their entire lives while they ignored the oppression, and how rapidly it snowballed once it first became accepted to turn your back on the regime, and then expected, and then a necessity to prevent people from turning their backs on you.
I agree with you there’s more open criticism of Israel this time. In part, I think because there’s been a slow drip of increasingly prominent organisations applying the Apartheid label in recent years from sources that are harder and harder to dismiss, and particularly the slowly growing acceptance that Gaza and the West Bank functions as bantustans. It makes it harder to just shout down critics.
And this can, and likely will, turn really fast once things truly starts to accelerate. A couple of big PR missteps and Israel will risk the opposition to BDS crumbling as well, and then the regime will be well and truly fucked.
Fantastic breakdown, and history refresher. Thanks for taking the time!
It will certainly be interesting to see how closely these two situations will ultimately parallel one another as time goes on.