Open letter to Minister Naledi Pandor and our government
12 December 2023
Hamas’s attack on 7 October revealed the incompetence of the Israeli army. Israel immediately and falsely claimed 40 babies had been beheaded, that women been raped, etc. Those lies have been disproved and, politically, Israel has already lost the war it has unleashed on Gaza.
Many of the 1 200 Israeli casualties (perhaps even most) were actually murdered by the Israeli Defence Force, which panicked and opened fire on anything that moved. An Israeli helicopter pilot opened fire on the music festival where almost half of those Israeli civilians were killed. Tanks and artillery destroyed buildings in Israeli kibbutzes. Cars plus human bodies were so badly burned that they could not be identified. The Hamas fighters were equipped with firearms, not with helicopters, tanks or artillery.
That Israel is guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza is glaringly obvious. Even highly militarised apartheid South Africa was never so barbaric. Our country during the 1980s was on a path to civil war and a racial bloodbath.
That prospective disaster was averted by the nonviolent New York banking sanctions initiative that was launched at the United Nations by Bishop Desmond Tutu, Dr Beyers Naude and myself in October 1985. South Africa relatively peaceful transition after February 1990 from apartheid to constitutional democracy was hailed by the international community as a “miracle”.
The Israeli economy is now in severe decline. SWIFT sanctions imposed on Israeli banks could quickly bring this war to an end. Accordingly, I have on Saturday written to DIRCO Minister Naledi Pandor to suggest that the UN General Assembly should vote for the immediate imposition of SWIFT sanctions against all Israeli banks. Herewith my letter to her, which I hope Business Day will now publish as an open plea to our government to take the international lead in support of the people of Palestine.
***
Dr Minister Naledi Pandor
Department of International Relations & Cooperation
Pretoria
9 December 2023
SWIFT Sanctions Against Israeli (IL) Banks
URGENT
Dear Madam Minister
The United States, yet again, has last night abused its powers at the UN Security Council, and vetoed the resolution for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The matter is now expected to be referred to the General Assembly during the next few days. Accordingly, I am writing to you to propose that the General Assembly should vote for the immediate imposition of SWIFT sanctions against all Israeli (IL) banks via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT).
SWIFT is headquartered at La Hulpe, just outside Brussels, and falls under the jurisdiction and oversight of the Belgian central bank, the National Bank of Belgium. You will be aware that, unlike most EU governments, the Belgian government had already, prior to the Security Council’s meeting, called for sanctions against Israel.
As an international banker with Nedbank, and with [then] Bishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Beyers Naude, I launched the New York banking sanctions campaign at the United Nations in October 1985 as a last nonviolent initiative to avert a civil war and prospective racial bloodbath. We targeted the seven major New York banks and their New York Inter-Bank Payment System because of the role of the US dollar as settlement currency in foreign exchange markets. Our demands then were:
The End of the State of Emergency
Release of Political Prisoners
Unbanning of political organisations
Repeal of apartheid legislation
Constitutional negotiations towards a nonracial, united and democratic South Africa
We also circulated our statement within the US Congress, and many of our provisions were incorporated a year later into the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (C-AAA). President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Bill was overturned in October 1986 by the US Senate, and following which it became increasingly recognized internationally that the apartheid government was particularly vulnerable to banking sanctions.
I attended a United Nations meeting on sanctions convened in Geneva in September 1989, which set 30 June 1990 as the deadline to abolish apartheid. Meanwhile, the Black Congressional Caucus in Washington was already drafting amendments to the C-AAA to prohibit all South African financial transactions in the US.
The day after a meeting with Archbishop Tutu in Washington in October 1989, the US government issued an ultimatum to the South African government demanding compliance with the first three of our five demands when Parliament was scheduled to reconvene in Cape Town on 2 February 1990.
President FW de Klerk “saw the writing on the wall”. He realized that without access to the major New York banks and the role of the US dollar as settlement currency in foreign exchange markets, South Africa would be unable to trade with almost all countries in the world.
Both De Klerk and President Nelson Mandela subsequently acknowledged that the New York banking sanctions campaign was the single-most effective initiative in overcoming apartheid. Having for years anticipated a racial bloodbath in South Africa, the world hailed our relatively peaceful transition to constitutional democracy as a “miracle”.
Four decades later, the “pressure point” is no longer in New York, but in Brussels. SWIFT is essentially a giant computer that daily authenticates more than 20 million inter-bank financial transactions, and links over 10 500 institutions in more than 200 countries around the world. Every bank has a SWIFT code. The letters IL designate Israeli banks, just as ZA identifies South African banks.
In addition to the critical roles of banks during wartime, all Israeli banks are highly complicit in funding the illegal occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In calling yesterday’s meeting of the UN Security Council, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked article 99 of the UN Charter on the basis that Israel’s war on Gaza constitutes a dire threat to international peace and security.
Israeli war crimes and genocide of Palestinians confirm the imperative for urgent international intervention in the cause of peace. A quick and simple SWIFT computer programme could suspend/exclude all transactions with IL banks, and would immediately stop Israel’s international payments and receipts. And without access to the SWIFT system, the Israeli economy will quickly collapse.
SWIFT sanctions can then also be reversed as soon as the Israeli government complies with specified conditions to be established by Palestinians. The purpose is not to destroy the Israeli economy, but to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine by balancing the scales between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators so that meaningful negotiations actually become possible.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is modelled after South Africa’s sanctions experience, and BDS’s three stated objectives could bring emphasis to the urgency, namely:
An end to the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the west Bank including East Jerusalem, and that the “apartheid wall” must be demolished,
Recognition of the fundamental rights of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality,
Acknowledgement of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
Madam Minister, you will recall that the US in 2022 prevailed on SWIFT to apply SWIFT sanctions against Russia following the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The US and EU had anticipated that SWIFT sanctions would quickly collapse the Russian economy. Instead, they backfired.
This failure was a) because of Russia’s major oil production and b) because US threats to both China and Russia had prompted both countries to develop alternatives to the SWIFT system. Neither case however applies to Israel, which is now highly vulnerable to banking sanctions imposed by virtually the entire international community.
I offer my assistance, as a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign but also the local organizing secretary when the Russell Tribunal on Palestine met in Cape Town in 2011 to consider whether Israeli government conduct towards Palestinians meets the legal criteria of apartheid as a crime against humanity. I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely
Terry Crawford-Browne
