They were both born in 1948 from the womb of European colonialism. Like conjoined twins, apartheid South Africa and Zionist Israel thrived on Western patronage and structures of racism. Three decades after the 1994 demise of South Africa’s apartheid regime, Zionist Israel is hurtling toward a similar inglorious end.

While the immediate catalyst for this dramatic turn of events has been the genocide in Gaza, a key turning point in this process was set in motion in July 2005 when the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was launched.

In the beginning, critics and naysayers claimed that it was wishful thinking to repeat what was accomplished in South Africa. They spared no effort to emphasize the specific differences between the two struggles instead of highlighting their commonalities.

Looking back at the South African experience, the end of the 1980s marked a defining period in their history. International outrage over the atrocities committed by the apartheid regime had reached a crescendo, to the degree that the political classes in Britain and the United States could no longer support the regime without jeopardizing their political and economic interests.

Their initial light ‘sanctions’ seemed sufficient to save face but not far-reaching enough to harm the investments of their multinational........

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