Author of New Study on Apartheid in Israel and Elsewhere Decries Lack of Freedom of Public Expression in the Anglo-American World

Vienna, October 24, 2006-- The author of an investigation into apartheid, which compares South Africa under white domination with 21 other societies, says his book has faced rejection by dozens of publishers because they fear accusations of anti-Semitism.

Written by Dr. Anthony Löwstedt, the study reaches the conclusion that of the 21 societies, modern Israel and Egypt under Graeco-Roman rule during the late antiquity are the closest parallels to South African apartheid. Löwstedt, who has taught at universities on three continents and worked as a senior consultant for the United Nations Development Program in the occupied West Bank, says that publishers are wary of his critical views of Israel.

Of commercial publishers and university presses contacted in dozens of countries, only two expressed interest in the book, though on the explicit condition that at least 67 percent of the text be removed. They also told Löwstedt that releasing this book would be difficult, as publishers are fearful of being accused of anti-Semitism.

The study views apartheid as a system of gross human rights violations, in line with the findings of international legal bodies. It identifies apartheid as attempts by an invading ethnic minority to take total control over violence, repopulation, citizenship, land, work, education, language, thought, and access to health care, water, and other social rights and privileges in the targeted society.

This results in recurring or continuous gross human rights violations. The study is meant to provide a well-documented basis for an International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of the ethnic minority elites in past and present apartheid societies, and also contains substantial criticism of gross human rights violations – less systematic and fewer in numbers but also indictable before the ICC – committed by members of the indigenous ethnic majorities.

"Apartheid is a crime against humanity under international law," Löwstedt says.

The study finds that systems of apartheid give rise to the phenomenon of demographic warfare, which includes the victimization of indigenous women by members of their own ethnicity, and the ungendered sacrifice and targeting of civilians on both sides of the apartheid divide, such as through Palestinian militant suicide attacks.

However, the apartheid minority elites are also responsible for these crimes. Their ethnicist immigration policies and practices result in intensifying patriarchal pressures on indigenous women to produce a maximum number of offspring, which then becomes the only legal way for women to resist apartheid. Women who choose to opt out of this desperate strategy, or those who encourage other women to opt out, are then victimized.

Aside from these violent acts, and some dehumanizing and inciting elements of resistance ideology, the overwhelming majority of gross human rights violations remain the responsibilities of the ethnic elites, e.g. Whites in South Africa or Jews in Israel and Palestine. Löwstedt maintains that there is nothing anti-Semitic about this book, as it deals with human rights in an objective and even-handed way.

"The freedom of public expression in the Anglo-American world faces formidable threats, without parallel since the McCarthy era over half a century ago," says Löwstedt, who has worked for an international press freedom organization for over ten years.

"Some aspects of the current systematic silencing of English-language criticism of Israel and its closest ally, the USA, are even more oppressive than the McCarthyite measures were," he adds. Löwstedt predicts that a new book similar to his, 'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid', by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, set to be released on November 14, will also run into trouble, despite the high profile of its author.

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