Word: africas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Israel and South Africa are two different countries with two vastly different histories. A simplistic rhetorical linking of the two countries' policies of discrimination is generally fruitless and ill-advised. Nonetheless, in looking at specific similarities between Israel's proposed "Third Amendment" and South African "emergency legislation," we can see why analysts feel justified in raising the comparison...
Professor Donna Arzt of Syracuse University has studied in some detail the resemblance between the bill currently before the Knesset and the recently enacted "Disclosure of Foreign Funding Act" in South Africa...
...South Africa, it turns out, has already enacted an eerily exact analogue to what Israel is now considering. It has legislated an end to foreign funding of social, educational, and health services--as well as political organizations--when the funding is deemed not to be "in the public interest...
...South African law and the proposed Israeli legislation both rely on such vague language. Both grant sweeping powers to the police, and strictly limit court supervision. Both allow search and seizure of property without warrants. And both bypass important elements of due process-in South Africa, suspects are required to give oral evidence with out a lawyer's assistance, while in Israel the normal rules of evidence would be bypassed...
SUCH a comparison may in the end not be all that productive. One could just as easily compare the United States to South Africa on the basis of our lack of a national health insurance system...