“As a South African who has lived and suffered under apartheid and spent nearly thirty years of my adult life in its jails for resisting it, I can and do humbly claim to know something about the meaning of apartheid.”  Ahmed Kathrada, Cape Town, South Africa.

Graffiti artist in Johannesburg, South Africa.  (Photo: Minhaj Jeenah/BDS South Africa)

Adri Nieuwhof, consultant and human rights advocate, reports on the recent Israeli Apartheid Week in South Africa, for The Electronic Intifada:

This year’s Israeli Apartheid Week in South Africa created a stir nationwide.  BDS South Africa and other Palestine solidarity groups teamed up with trade unionists, political parties, student bodies, churches, youth organizations and activists in Gaza to reach a wide audience.

Huge billboards announced Israeli Apartheid Week.  Durban-based GangsOfGraffiti inspired fellow street and graffiti writers to create works with “Free Palestine” as the theme.  On walls in several cities, artwork appeared in support of IAW and boycott activism.  The film Roadmap to Apartheid was screened in cities and towns across the country.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli “Public Diplomacy Ministry” had sent a delegation to South Africa to “battle the apartheid label,” but Israel’s messengers failed to change the perception of many South Africans that Israeli apartheid is very similar to apartheid in South Africa.

Fatima Gabru of the Palestine Solidarity Forum described the Israeli public relations exercise as “a stalling technique so that they [Israel] can continue with what they are doing: throwing Palestinians off their land, building walls, continuing human rights abuses.”

Broad support

The Israeli Apartheid Week events in South Africa were part of a global effort to bring attention to Israel’s apartheid policies.  Last year, Palestinian students called on students around the world to “put BDS at the forefront of your campaigns and join together for Israeli Apartheid Week, the pinnacle of action across universities worldwide.”

Israeli Apartheid Week received broad support across a diverse range of political groups and national organizations in South Africa, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Students’ Congress, the African National Congress, the Young Communist League of South Africa, the South African Council of Churches, Kairos Southern Africa, Kaleidoscope LGBTIA Youth Network and South African Artists Against Apartheid.

The South African Council of Churches called on all South Africans to participate in Israeli Apartheid Week.  In a press statement, SACC reminded church leaders that “Israel remained the single supporter of apartheid when the rest of the world implemented economic sanctions, boycotts and divestment to force change in South Africa.”  The statement added that Israel continues to “share a similarity with the old South Africa in implementing apartheid where all non-Jews of Palestine are discriminated against, displaced of their land and homes, and subjected to refugee camps and a permanent state of violent military rule.”

The South African Students Congress, the biggest student body in South Africa, commented: “Israel is an apartheid state that daily tramples on the rights and dignity of Palestinians.”  SASCO has officially endorsed the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. “History has taught us that boycotts were instrumental in the defeat of the murderous and oppressive apartheid regime in South Africa and we believe that boycotting apartheid Israel is key to overthrowing the oppression of Palestinians.”

SASCO branches initiated a range of activities and called on students not to accept scholarships and “opportunities” for cultural exchanges of young and promising black South Africans to study in Israel, just as students rejected the tactics of co-option by the South African apartheid regime.

On an Israeli Apartheid Week speaking tour in Europe, SASCO member and BDS South Africa board member Mbuyiseni Ndlozi told European audiences about the striking parallels between apartheid in South Africa and Israel-Palestine.   He called on Palestine solidarity activists to apply similar BDS tactics to Israel until it respects the rights of the Palestinian people.

From complicity to resistance

Muammed Desai, spokesperson of BDS South Africa and co-organizer of Israeli Apartheid Week, told The Electronic Intifada that he was “thrilled, really impressed, there was such a sense of energy.”

He added: “In Port Elizabeth they packed a room of 300 people.  The mayor of Port Elizabeth, Zanoxolo Wayile, attended the event.  It is unheard of in the Eastern Cape.  Students at Stellenbosch University held a rally on Palestine — it is a step forward.”

In the past, Stellenbosch University was a bastion of support for apartheid in South Africa.  Last year the vice-rector for research acknowledged the university’s “complicity with the injustices of apartheid.”

During IAW at Stellenbosch, students organized a peace march and set up a checkpoint at the main gate of the faculty of theology.  A copy of “The Bethlehem Call” in Afrikaans was handed over to the Beyers Naudé Centre. The Bethlehem Call is an urgent appeal to take action against Israeli apartheid and support BDS activism.

The ANC and Palestine

During Israeli Apartheid Week, ANC officials spoke out against the oppression of the Palestinian people.  The African National Congress played a leading role in overthrowing apartheid in South Africa.

Ebrahim Ebrahim, deputy minister of international relations and an ANC National Executive Committee member, spoke about “Palestine and South Africa: Partners in a struggle for a better world” at an event in Cape Town.

On the occasion of the ANC’s 100th year, two ANC veterans spoke in a panel discussion on the parallels between the ANC’s history and South African solidarity with Palestinians resisting Israeli apartheid.  Speakers included Dennis Goldberg, veteran of the military wing of the ANC, and Ahmed Kathrada, former political prisoner who spent nearly thirty years in detention.

Kathrada told the audience: “As a South African who has lived and suffered under apartheid and spent nearly thirty years of my adult life in its jails for resisting it, I can and do humbly claim to know something about the meaning of apartheid.  You do not get to journey as far and as long as I have with the ANC and leaders such as Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela and not recognize apartheid when you see and experience it.”

At the Russell Tribunal on Palestine session in Cape Town last year, Kathrada said that Palestinians are “experiencing life akin to — and in many respects far worse — than what we had under apartheid in South Africa.”  He called on the ANC to further its support for the Palestinian struggle for justice and self- determination.

“We are saying that if you [Israel] continue along the road of apartheid and we cannot stop you, at the very least you will do so without our consent, our investments, economic and cultural, and without our political agreement.”

In dark times, exhilarating news from Seattle, Washington.

Stephanie Fox, Director of Grassroots Organizing at Jewish Voice for Peace:

I have been an activist since I was 13 years old, and last night is one of the most powerful moments I’ve ever experienced.  I will never forget the feeling of jumping up and down and shouting for joy outside Seattle City Hall.  [MR: I know such moments.  They are rare, often fleeting, and so all the more thrilling.]

Rainbow flag over Seattle.  Source: Dan Con/Flickr

Last night, 6 brave members of Seattle, Washington’s LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) Commission did the simple, honest and right thing.  And it took my breath away.

And because the backlash is sure to be fierce, if you feel as I do, then I want you and everyone you know who is part of or ally to the LGBT community to thank them.  Today.  This very moment.

What happened?

In my region of the United States, the Israeli Consulate and militant pro-Israel group Stand With Us partnered to promote a tour of Israeli LGBT activists—not to advance gay rights, but to divert attention from Israel’s occupation and abuses of human rights.  Their well-documented strategy to rebrand Israel as a “safe haven” of tolerance, even as millions of Palestinians live under Israeli control without the right to vote, as second-class citizens inside Israel or as refugees—is called Pinkwashing.

People throughout the northwest had been organizing for weeks.  Groups were hosting teach-ins, organizing protests, writing letters, and making phone calls, and it was working.  Activists had already mobilized to successfully cancel events in Olympia and Tacoma earlier in the week. Change was in the air.  But the City of Seattle LGBT Commission event was the headline of the whole tour, and in spite of all the organizing, we knew it would be hard for the Commission to stand up for what was right.

And then, at an open hearing last night, Seattle LGBT commissioners heard several hours of ground-breaking testimony — from queer Jews who cleared away the debris of anti-semitism accusations, and queer Palestinians who brilliantly detailed the racist and violent effects of Israeli policy in their own lives, and the way that Pinkwashing has furthered that violence by invisibilizing their lives, identities, and communities.

At one point, Selma, Palestinian-American and LGBTQ rights activist explained:

My life and upbringing in Washington State isn’t a coincidence.  My family settled here after my father’s ancestral home was ethnically cleansed in 1948 Palestine.  He became a refugee as a young person, and it is by this very truth, and the trajectories that follow, that have led me to settling in Washington state and Seattle.  My queer identity is steeped in and inextricably linked to the dispossession of my family and community by the state of Israel…Events like this have become part of a strategic campaign where LGBT culture is exploited and manipulated to promote the idea that Israel  is a great place for all LGBT people.  This strategy has come to be called pinkwashing by those who oppose it. It directly hurts queer people like me, and our entire community.

Local Jewish Voice for Peace activist, Wendy Elisheva Somerson, pointed out that we are not against dialogue, and would be happy to hear stories from Israeli LGBT activists, were they not funded by the Israeli government and Stand With Us:

Any true dialogue on queer issues in the Middle East has to address the Occupation and include queer Palestinian voices.

It was clear that the room was moved by Selma’s and every else’s remarks, but at first it seemed like the event would go on as planned. The chair thanked everyone for coming and informed us that the event would happen anyway.

But then something happened that I could never have imagined.

One of the commissioners, his voice full of emotion and tears in his eyes, told us if it was up to him he wouldn’t let this event happen.  He said it pained him to be invisibilizing the most marginalized LGBT folks in our community.  And then another commissioner said he felt sick to his stomach about going ahead with the event, knowing now that it was not just LGBT individuals but state-funded propaganda.  Then another said this was one of the most difficult weeks of his life – realizing how little he had known and how much harm he was unintentionally doing.  Then another said she didn’t want us to feel silenced.

And then someone made a motion for a vote, and all at once, it had happened: this group of courageous and humble public representatives voted with a clear answer:  No to Pinkwashing, not in this town.  It is not easy to stand up for what is right, and we can’t thank them enough.

You can be sure that the LGBT commission will be hearing an enormous amount of criticism for their brave stand.  Right now, they are already being flooded by emails telling them they are wrong for refusing to spread government-funded propaganda.  Let’s show them that we don’t just protest, we also celebrate.  That we have their back, as they’ve had ours.

Please join me in thanking them for choosing what was hard, and what was right.

“…The people I come from were small scale farmers and garment workers.  Like them, the vast majority of European Jews were in no position to wield any sort of economic power, but in a world where the economic lives of Jews were strictly regulated (my great grandfather had to pay bribes to work at a hardware store in a town where Jews were forbidden) the role of agent to the rulers was one of the few options offered, often under duress….”

The insights are deep and challenging in this commentary by Puerto Rican Jewish writer and historian Aurora Levins Morales.

It was published March 11 by the National Institute for Latino Policy, and forwarded by New Profile, an Israeli feminist group that strives to counter militarism in Israel.

Aurora Levins Morales:

“I am a Puerto Rican Jew, born of Ukrainian Jews fleeing war and repression to become sweatshop organizers in 1910s New York, and landed gentry from Naranjito, turned working class migrants in 1930s Harlem and the Bronx, landing in the same garment shops a generation later.  I’m also a lifelong activist historian who embraces complexity and has spent decades building alliances between people who misunderstand each other.

It is true that there are specific challenges in the relations between Latin@s (those who are not Jewish) and Jews (the ones who aren’t Latin@.) It’s true that these challenges are deeply rooted in the anti-Semitism of the Catholic hierarchy, but the belief system that burned Jews at the stake, accused us of sacrificing Christian babies, and held us responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, long predates the State of Israel. And long before that state was founded out of the ashes of genocide and at the expense of a colonized Arab people, Jews were the shock absorbers of Europe’s class societies, “Middle Agents” drafted into being the local representatives of distant and definitely Christian ruling classes who alternately exploited and persecuted them while squeezing the life blood out of Europe’s peasants and workers.

People are often confused by anti-Semitism.  They see many US Jews accumulating wealth, moving up, gaining positions of influence, and they say, “What oppression?” Anti-Semitism doesn’t work the way racism does. Racism tries to create permanently exploitable groups of workers, people kept in line through discrimination and violence, kept poor and dependent on low wage jobs.

The whole point of anti-Semitism has been to create a vulnerable buffer group that can be bribed with some privileges into managing the exploitation of others, and then, when social pressure builds, be blamed and scapegoated, distracting those at the bottom from the crimes of those at the top. Peasants who go on pogrom against their Jewish neighbors won’t make it to the nobleman’s palace to burn him out and seize the fields. This was the role of Jews in Europe. This has been the role of Jews in the United States, and this is the role of Jews in the Middle East.

The people I come from were small scale farmers and garment workers. Like them, the vast majority of European Jews were in no position to wield any sort of economic power, but in a world where the economic lives of Jews were strictly regulated (my great grandfather had to pay bribes to work at a hardware store in a town where Jews were forbidden) the role of agent to the rulers was one of the few options offered, often under duress. Continue reading →

An urgent appeal arrived this morning from Israeli activist Sahar Vardi, of Ta’ayush.

Ta’ayush (Arabic for “living together”) is a grassroots movement of Israelis and Palestinians striving together to end the Israeli occupation and to achieve full civil equality through non-violent direct-action.

Many appeals emerge from the bitter struggle for freedom in Palestine-Israel.  Some are more desperate than this one.  Still, I pass this one along for your consideration, partly because I trust Sahar and Ta’ayush, but more because I believe that movements like Ta’ayush represent the only chance for a just peace in Israel-Palestine.  For that very reason, they are under escalating assault by the authorities.  (Read more about Sahar Vardi and Ta’ayush in Our Way to Fight.)

Sahar writes:

“Palestinians in the South Hebron hills face constant violence and harassment by Israeli settlers and the army.  Preventing access to their agricultural lands and water cisterns, house demolitions, setting fire to tents, and physical attacks are common methods in the authorities’ and the settlers’ attempt to push the Palestinian residents out of their homes.

after a home demolition, South Hebron (photo: Villages Group)

The Ta’ayush movement has worked for more than ten years to support Palestinian residents in South Hebron hills in their long struggle to preserve their homes and agricultural lands.

Recently we have witnessed increasing pressure on Ta’ayush itself from state authorities.  In order to discourage our activism, Israeli police have been making more frequent arrests and opening criminal proceedings against activists.

One of our activists currently faces a trial following a non-violent Ta’ayush activity to aid Palestinian farmers in their attempt to reach their agricultural lands.

Two other activists are also facing trial for accompanying shepherds as they grazed their flocks.

Recently, the police issued an indictment against an activist in a fourth case.  She, along with other activists, was accompanying Palestinian farmers to a water cistern that they cannot reach alone because of attacks by Israeli settlers.  These farmers, like the thousands of Palestinian residents in the South Hebron Hills, are not connected to the water grid and rely on these cisterns as one of their primary sources of water.

Ta’ayush is committed to supporting activists who face trial.  However, paying for these court cases is a heavy burden on Ta’ayush’s very limited financial resources; the costs of legal fees are so high that they threaten to curtail our solidarity activities.

For this reason, we are in desperate need of your support.

Donations can be sent via bank deposit to:

Bank Hapoalim
Branch 574 (‘Hapalmach’)
Account no. 160213
Swift code ‘poalilit’
IBAN: IL61-0125-7400-0000-0160-213

You can also send checks by mail, payable to:

Ta’ayush
c/o Yehuda Agus, POB 360
Timrat 36576
ISRAEL

Every donation, no matter how small, will help us to support our activists and continue our work on the ground for equality, justice and peace.

In solidarity and thanks,

Sahar M. Vardi, for Ta’ayush
Jerusalem

On March 8, International Women’s Day, Israeli journalist Haggai Matar reported in +972 magazine:

“Hana Shalabi enters 4th week of hunger strike.”

Palestinian women face Israeli soldiers near Qalandia checkpoint (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Now and then Western media commentators lament: Where, oh where are the Palestinian Ghandis?

Answer:  In several decades of military occupation, thousands of Palestinian Ghandis have either been killed or imprisoned.  Others are currently leading non-violent protests across occupied Palestine.

Hana Shalabi is a Palestinian Ghandi, one of more than 300 Palestinians currently held under “administrative detention,” without trial or charge, and one of more than 5000 Palestinians currently imprisoned by Israel under other forms of military law.

As Khader Adnan’s recent hunger strike did, Hana Shalabi’s resonates widely as a powerful act of resistance against the injustices of administrative detention, military law, and the occupation.

Haggai Matar’s report follows below.  Haggai is an Israeli journalist and political activist.  In 2002, he was imprisoned for two years for refusing conscription into the Israeli army.  His life before, during and since prison is documented in Our Way to Fight.

Haggai reports:

“Palestinian administrative detainee Hana Shalabi is now on the 22nd day (March 8) of her hunger strike, to protest the torture, assault and degrading treatment to which she has been subjected and her ongoing detention without charge or trial.

Three recent court rulings may mark a shift in the system’s attitude towards her, following the Khader Adnan case.

Lawyers from the Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer report that Shalabi’s physical condition is deteriorating.  After more than three weeks of no food and very little water, Shalabi is beginning to experience pain in her chest and waist, suffers from nausea and dizziness, and is having a hard time talking without gasping for air.

Hana Shalabi was released as part of the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange between October and December 2011.  She was re-arrested by the army on February 16 [MR: a growing number of Palestinians released in the exchange have been re-arrested], and has been held since in administrative detention.  Military authorities claim she presents ‘a threat to regional security,’ but as usual they offer no evidence, no charges.

Like Khader Adnan, Shalabi has declared an open hunger strike until her release.  She is also protesting having been strip-searched by a male soldier and abused by other soldiers after her arrest.  The army announced that military police will investigate Shalabi’s claims of maltreatment.  [MR: Such internal ‘investigations’ almost never lead to any charges against soldier-perpetrators.]

Earlier in the week, the Military Court in Ofer, [MR: where Hana Shalabi is imprisoned], decided to shorten her detention from six to four months, a decision that Shalabi has decided to challenge at the Military Court of Appeals, where her case was heard on March 7.  According to her attorneys, the judge asked the military prosecution to learn from the Adnan precedent and reach a deal with the defense.

After more than sixty days of hunger strike, Adnan was guaranteed he would be released at the end of his current period of administrative detention, that it would not be extended further. Adnan then ended his hunger strike, and has been undergoing intensive medical treatment to help his body recuperate from the trauma caused by the long strike. As to whether a deal will be struck in Shalabi’s case, the judge promised to give his ruling on the appeal by March 12.

A second appeal made in Shalabi’s name was also heard yesterday at the Petah Tikva District Court, dealing with questions of medical attention for prisoners.  Hana Shalabi is refusing to see Israel Prison Service doctors, and demands instead to be treated solely by doctors from Physicians for Human Rights – Israel.

According to both PHR and Addameer, ‘Her request was denied [MR: by prison officials] on the grounds that granting visiting access to an external doctor is based on the right to a second medical opinion, and since Hana (Shalabi) refuses to be examined by doctors from the IPS, she does not qualify as a case where such a visit is granted.’  However, the court rejected this argument, and ordered the IPS to allow PHR representatives into Shalabi’s isolation-ward cell within 48 hours.  [MR: It remains to be seen whether prison officials will comply.]

On 23 February, Hana’s mother, 65, and father, 67, began an open-ended hunger strike in solidarity with their daughter.

Solidarity in the West Bank

“The story of Hana Shalabi, like that of Khader Adnan before her, is in my opinion a remarkable example of a struggle that’s completely non-violent,” says PHR spokesperson Yael Maron.  “It is the last protest a prisoner can make, and I find it brave and inspiring.”

Addameer activists stressed yesterday that in spite of some promising news from the court, Shalabi’s condition is still deteriorating, and said they call upon the international community to intervene and promote the immediate release of Shalabi and all other 300 administrative detainees.

As in the case of Adnan, Shalabi’s hunger strike is causing a surge in acts of protest in occupied Palestine.  Last Friday’s weekly demonstration in the village of Nabi Saleh [MR: violently suppressed by Israeli soldiers] was dedicated to Shalabi, and reports are coming in that more and more Palestinian prisoners will also strike in solidarity with her.”