Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, the McGill University law professor and former minister of justice, once served as the legal counsel for South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela.
He had a close-up view of the horrors of apartheid and has long believed that Israel was being unfairly tarnished with the false accusation of being an “apartheid state.”
During a recent visit to South Africa, he told MPs, political leaders and members of the Jewish community that the allegation of apartheid levelled at Israel demeans the real struggle for equal rights in South Africa.
He also urged South African leadership to use their moral authority to advocate for human rights abuses around the world, in places like Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Cotler, MP for Mount Royal, was in South Africa to take part in events marking the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, what he called “the iconic moral compass of the anti-apartheid movement that inspired the creation of a free, democratic, egalitarian and non-racial South Africa, with Nelson Mandela, an honorary Canadian citizen, as its first president.”
During his recent South African visit, Cotler met with Susan Shabangu, the country’s minister responsible for women, Tshililo Michael Masutha, the minister of justice, and Jeff Radebe, minister of the presidency. He also witnessed a BDS-Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) rally outside the venue where he was speaking. He met with some of the demonstrators, and found many had been bused in and didn’t even know why they were there.
But in his meetings with South African leaders, both secular and Jewish, he made the case that “IAW demeans the real authentic anti-apartheid struggle. It betrays the real anti-apartheid struggle,” which he called central to his own identity.
“Israel is responsible for human rights violations,” he said. “No one is saying Israel is above the law, only that it should be held to the same standard as all other countries. Nobody is saying human rights standards should not be applied in Israel. But they should be applied equally to everyone.”
Cotler said “the shame of the anti-apartheid movement” is that it is discriminating by singling out Israel for condemnation while invoking anti-apartheid rhetoric to justify it. “It gives the real human rights violators exculpatory immunity. It shames the real anti-apartheid legacy, and is hypocritical,” he said.
Cotler said he thought the South African MPs “were receptive” to his position.
He also urged them to make speaking out against resurgent anti-Semitism a priority and he called on South African leaders to speak out about human rights abuses in Iran.
He noted in particular the case of Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi, an ayatollah who has received an 11-year sentence for insulting Islam. Boroujerdi had called for the separation of religion and state and he had condemned anti-Semitism.
Boroujerdi is known as the Mandela of Iran, making his cause particularly significant for South Africa, Cotler pointed out.
As to Venezuela, he said the country is morphing from an authoritarian state into a dictatorship. The democratic opposition is being jailed and one-third of the country’s mayors are in prison, he said.
In Saudi Arabia, blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in jail, fined the equivalent of $266,000 (US) and given 1,000 lashes in 50-lash instalments, for insulting Islam, cybercrime and disobeying his father.
Those are the kinds of human rights cases South Africa should be addressing, he suggested.
