In international law Palestinians, living under a brutal occupation, have a legal right to all forms of resistance – including that of armed struggle. It is argued that in designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation Britain’s actions are politically motivated and have rendered them complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas only operates within Israel and has never been a threat to Britain. Designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation within the U.K. will likely have come at the behest of Israel, US and Zionist organisations who openly support Israel’s racist, colonial settler aspirations to establish a Jewish State over all of historic Palestine and beyond.

During the free and fair elections in 2006, Palestinians, in both Gaza and the occupied territories of West Bank, overwhelmingly voted for Hamas as their government. While the Palestinian Authority has retained power in the West Bank, Hamas is the recognised government within Gaza and is responsible for all public services in Gaza, including schools, police and hospitals. As such, anyone working in the public sector is deemed by Israel to be ‘Hamas’ and is regarded by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force, as a legitimate military target. As the genocide of Palestinians has continued into its third calendar year, several Israeli officials have stated that all of the civilian population are legitimate military targets because of the wide support Hamas received from the people. This mass criminalisation of a civilian population, including its children and babies, is used by Israel to justify the slaughter that we are witnessing on a daily basis. The ethnic cleansing that began with the establishment of Israel in 1948, is in its final stages of clearing the land of its native Palestinian population.

The submission presented by the legal team makes reference to Nelson Mandela, who during his resistance of South Africa’s racist apartheid policies, was labelled as a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher’s British Government. The comparison is apt. These politically motivated labels serve to justify the criminal behaviour of oppressive brutal regimes. In South Africa the racism and labels led to the displacement of millions of blacks and the imprisonment and slaughter of those who stood up for freedom and dignity. Today Nelson Mandela is considered to be a hero and before his death, was welcomed into Britain as an honoured statesman. In the U.K. racism, discrimination and incitement to violence through ‘hate speech’ is now deemed to be a crime.

Zionism is Israel’s official racist policy. Palestinians are regarded as lesser beings, frequently subjected to military incursions, detention, murder and humiliating checks in the occupied territories of the West Bank. The refugees of 1948, who fled into Gaza, having had their land and homes stolen, are imprisoned in a small enclave without adequate support for life. For almost 20years there has been a growing crisis where potable water, food and medicine have become scarce commodities resulting in starvation and chronic disease amongst its most vulnerable – the old and the young. The people of Gaza have been subjected to ongoing displacement, bombing raids and military incursions, since 2006. This current Israeli crime of genocide – ‘Sending Gaza back to the stone age’, has left hundreds of thousands dead, families without shelter and is seen as Israel’s final extermination of an honourable people whose crime is to be the rightful ancestral inhabitants of the land.

After a case was brought by the Government of South Africa, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is guilty of plausible genocide. This means that governments and individuals are charged with a responsibility to do everything within their power to bring a halt to the genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for their participation in war crimes. Other non-governmental organisations have attempted to bring about further charges of complicity to war crimes and genocide, against several Western leaders.

People around the world have watched in horror as this holocaust is being played out in real time. This legal case is of immense importance in a first step toward putting things right. Britain has a special responsibility toward contributing to a just closure to this tragedy because of its historical role in the setting up of this hundred year plus, colonial settler project. Continuing to be subservient to Israel, US and Zionist power groups, the British Government is not acting in the interests of the British people. They are acting in the interests of a foreign state. By taking a leadership role in de-proscribing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Britain would go some way toward public recognition of the historical harm Britain has done to the Palestinians.The Government’s continued support of Israel’s crimes by military assistance and cover by giving ‘legal legitimacy’ to an otherwise murderous enterprise, must end. It is a violation of human rights and a violation of sovereignty that brings shame down upon all of us.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Heather Stroud.

The 1981 Springbok Tour was one of the most controversial events in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history. For 56 days, between July and September, more than 150,000 people took part in more than 200 demonstrations in 28 centres.

It was the largest protest in the country’s history.

It caused social ruptures within communities and families across the country. With the National government backing the tour, protests against apartheid sport turned into confrontations with both police and pro-tour rugby fans — on marches and at matches.

• READ MORE: 100 children killed or wounded every day since Gaza ceasefire broken
• Other war on Palestine reports

The success of these mass protests was that this was the last tour in either country between the two teams with the strongest rivalry among rugby playing nations.

This deeply rooted antipathy towards the racism of apartheid helps provide context to today’s growing opposition by New Zealanders to the horrific actions of another apartheid state.

Understanding apartheid
Apartheid is a humiliating, repressive and brutal legislated segregation through separation of social groups. In South Africa, this segregation was based on racism (white supremacy over non-whites; predominantly Black Africans but also Asians).

For nearly three centuries before 1948, Africans had been dispossessed and exploited by Dutch and British colonists. In 1948, this oppression was upgraded to an official legal policy of apartheid.

Apartheid does not have to be necessarily by race. It could also be religious based. An earlier example was when Christians separated Jews into ghettos on the false claim of inferiority.

In August 2024, Le Monde Diplomatic published article (paywalled) by German prize-winning journalist and author Charlotte Wiedemann on apartheid in both Israel and South Africa under the heading “When Apartheid met Zionism”:

She asked the pointed question of what did it mean to be Jewish in a country that saw Israel through the lens of its own experience of apartheid?

It is a fascinating question making her article an excellent read. Le Monde Diplomatic is a quality progressive magazine, well worth the subscription to read many articles as interesting as this one.

Relevant Wiedemann observations
Wiedemann’s scope is wider than that of this blog but many of her observations are still pertinent to my analysis of the relationship between the two apartheid states.

Most early Jewish immigrants to South Africa fled pogroms and poverty in tsarist Lithuania. This context encouraged many to believe that every human being deserved equal respect, regardless of skin colour or origin.

Blatant widespread white-supremacist racism had been central to South Africa’s history of earlier Dutch and English colonialism. But this shifted to a further higher level in May 1948 when apartheid formally became central to South Africa’s legal and political system.

Although many Jews were actively opposed to apartheid it was not until 1985, 37 years later, that Jewish community leaders condemned it outright. In the words of Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

“The Jewish community benefited from apartheid and an apology must be given … We ask forgiveness.”

On the one hand, Jewish lawyers defended Black activists, But, on the other hand, it was a Jewish prosecutor who pursued Nelson Mandela with “extraordinary zeal” in the case that led to his long imprisonment.

Israel became one of apartheid South Africa’s strongest allies, including militarily, even when it had become internationally isolated, including through sporting and economic boycotts. Israel’s support for the increasingly isolated apartheid state was unfailing.

Jewish immigration to South Africa from the late 19th century brought two powerful competing ideas from Eastern Europe. One was Zionism while the other was the Bundists with a strong radical commitment to justice.

But it was Zionism that grew stronger under apartheid. Prior to 1948 it was a nationalist movement advocating for a homeland for Jewish people in the “biblical land of Israel”.

Zionism provided the rationale for the ideas that actively sought and achieved the existence of the Israeli state. This, and consequential forced removal of so many Palestinians from their homeland, made Zionism a “natural fit” in apartheid South Africa.

Nelson Mandela and post-apartheid South Africa
Although strongly pro-Palestinian, post-apartheid South Africa has never engaged in Holocaust denial. In fact, Holocaust history is compulsory in its secondary schools.

Its first president, Nelson Mandela, was very clear about the importance of recognising the reality of the Holocaust. As Charlotte Wiedemann observes:

“Quite the reverse . . .  In 1994 Mandela symbolically marked the end of apartheid at an exhibition about Anne Frank. ‘By honouring her memory as we do today’ he said at its opening, ‘we are saying with one voice: never and never again!’”

In a 1997 speech, on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela also reaffirmed his support for Palestinian rights:

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

There is a useful account of Mandela’s relationship with and support for Palestinians published by Middle East Eye.

Mandela’s identification with Palestine was recognised by Palestinians themselves. This included the construction of an impressive statue of him on what remains of their West Bank homeland.

Comparing apartheid in South Africa and Israel
So how did apartheid in South Africa compare with apartheid in Israel. To begin with, while both coincidentally began in May 1948, in South Africa this horrendous system ended over 30 years ago. But in Israel it not only continues, it intensifies.

Broadly speaking, this included Israel adapting the infamously cruel “Bantustan system” of South Africa which was designed to maintain white supremacy and strengthen the government’s apartheid policy. It involved an area set aside for Black Africans, purportedly for notional self-government.

In South Africa, apartheid lasted until the early 1990s culminating in South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994.

Tragically, for Palestinians in their homeland, apartheid not only continues but is intensified by ethnic cleansing delivered by genocide, both incrementally and in surges.

Apartheid Plus: ethnic cleansing and genocide
Israel has gone further than its former southern racist counterpart. Whereas South Africa’s economy depended on the labour exploitation of its much larger African workforce, this was relatively much less so for Israel.

As much as possible Israel’s focus was, and still is, instead on the forcible removal of Palestinians from their homeland.

This began in 1948 with what is known by Palestinians as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”) when many were physically displaced by the creation of the Israeli state. Genocide is the increasing means of delivering ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing is an attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas by deporting or forcibly displacing people belonging to particular ethnic groups.

It can also include the removal of all physical vestiges of the victims of this cleansing through the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship.

This destructive removal has been the unfortunate Palestinian experience in much of today’s Israel and its occupied or controlled territories. It is continuing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Genocide involves actions intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

In contrast with civil war, genocide usually involves deaths on a much larger scale with civilians invariably and deliberately the targets. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

Today the Israeli slaughter and destruction in Gaza is a huge genocidal surge with the objective of being the “final solution” while incremental genocide of Palestinians speeds up in the occupied West Bank.

Notwithstanding the benefits of the recent ceasefire, it freed up Israel to militarily focus on repressing West Bank Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Israel’s genocide in Gaza during the current vulnerable hiatus of the ceasefire has shifted from military action to starvation.

The final word
One of the encouraging features has been the massive protests against the genocide throughout the world. In a relative context, and while not on the same scale as the mass protests against the racist South African rugby tour in 1981, this includes New Zealand.

Many Jews, including in New Zealand and in the international protests such as at American universities, have been among the strongest critics of the ethnic cleansing through genocide of the apartheid Israeli state.

They have much in common with the above-mentioned Bundist focus on social justice in contrast to the dogmatic biblical extremism of Zionism.

Amos Goldberg, professor of genocidal studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is one such Jew. Let’s leave the final word to him:

“It’s so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained.”

This is a compelling case for the New Zealand government to join the many other countries in formally recognising the state of Palestine.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A litmus test of Israel’s commitment to abandon genocide and start down the road towards lasting peace is whether they choose to release the most important of all the hostages, Marwan Barghouti.

During the past 22 years in Israeli prisons he has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken.

What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian — a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation and resist the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.

• READ MORE: Marwan Barghouti profiles
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Marwan Barghouti has the moral, political and popular stature to reach out to the Israelis, to see past their crimes and to sit down with them. If only. If only. If only.

The horrible reality is Israel and the US have been led by war criminals who fail to grasp the fact that peace is only possible if they abandon the vilification of the Palestinian people and their leaders; that a better world is only possible if the Palestinians are finally given freedom and dignity.

It will be a relief to everyone to see the remaining few dozen Israelis held by Hamas and other groups released.  They deserve to be home with their families.

It will be a relief that thousands of Palestinian hostages be freed, many of them, according to Israel’s leading human rights organisation B’tselem, victims of torture, sexual violence and medieval conditions.  Hundreds of Palestinian child hostages — all of them traumatised — will be returned to their families.

All these are welcome developments.  Strategically, however, Marwan Barghouti stands apart.

Uniquely suited to lead Palestine
Long considered the “Palestinian Mandela” — not least because of his 22-years continuous imprisonment — the former Fatah leader, the former military leader, has attributes that make him almost uniquely suited to lead Palestine to freedom — if Israel and the US are prepared to abandon the Greater Israel project and accept peace can only come with justice for all.

That’s a big “If”.

Barghouti, returned to jail in 2002, after being convicted in what is considered by many scholars an illegal and deeply flawed Israeli show trial on five counts of murder.  He denies the charges and does not recognise the court.

He has lived for more than 22 years in conditions far more barbaric than the great South African leader had to endure on Robben Island.  According to Israeli human rights groups, family and international lawyers, Barghouti has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken.

What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian – a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation and resistance to the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.

Marwan Barghouti is the same age as me — 65 — and it fills me with horror that a man who has spent decades fighting for freedom, and, if possible, peace, has been subjected to the horrors of an Israeli gulag for so long.

I am not sure I would have had the physical or mental strength to endure what he has but — like Mandela — he kept his humanity and has remained an advocate for peace.

We should never forget that seven million Palestinians remain as hostages held in brutal conditions by the US and Israel.  Most are hostages without human rights, political rights, territorial rights.

As Palestinians have pointed out: imprisonment is now part of Palestinian consciousness. But — as Marwan Barghouti has shown with his iron will, his human decency, his determination to continue to be an advocate for peace with Israel — you can imprison the Palestinians but not their struggle.

I’ll give the last word to his son, Arab Barghouti who told Mehdi Hasan on Zeteo this week, “My father used to always tell me that hope is sometimes a privilege, but being ‘hope-less’ is a privilege that we can’t have as Palestinians.”

In the same interview he also said:

“If any Israeli leader really wants an end to this and to have peace for the region, they would see that my father is someone that would bring that and is someone who still believes in the tiny chance left for the two-state solution.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

He is the most popular Palestinian leader alive today — and yet few people in the West even know his name. Absolutely no one in Gaza or the West Bank does not know him.

That difference speaks volumes about who dominates the media narrative that we are spoon-fed every day.

Marwan Barghouti — known to many as “the Palestinian Mandela” — has spent more time in captivity than Nelson Mandela did.

• READ MORE: Imprisoned Fatah politician Marwan Barghouti and the Palestinian presidency

Barghouti, the “terrorist”, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as “a man of the street”. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords.

Barghouti, the 15-year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat. Barghouti, once a member of Parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.

Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.

Marwan Barghouti is also that most powerful thing: a living symbol of an oppressed people. Why do so few in the West even know his name? He declared:

“Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation.

“Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”

Prison a defining part of Palestinian national consciousness
Researcher-writer Emad Moussa says imprisonment has become a defining part of the Palestinian national consciousness. In a 2021 article for The New Arab, he says that Marwan Barghouti proves you can imprison the Palestinians but not their struggle.

It’s not hard to understand why imprisonment is a central part of Palestinian consciousness.

Norman Finkelstein describes October 7 as more like a slave revolt than a terrorist attack.

Fellow Jewish scholar Masha Gessen likens Gaza to a Nazi-era Jewish ghetto.

In fact, all 7.5 million Palestinians are prisoners of the Zionist state. They are all prisoners of the history imposed on them by the powerful white nations of the West. Between 1967 and 2015 over 850,000 Palestinians had been detained by the Israelis.

According to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem more than 8000 Palestinians are held by the Israelis. Many are held in secret Israeli Defence Force (IDF) facilities and there have been verified cases of torture, sexual abuse and limb amputations due to prolonged shackling.

Many children are also held in grim captivity.

Denies the charges
Barghouti, returned to jail in 2002, and was convicted by an Israeli court on five counts of murder in 2004. He denies the charges and does not recognise the court.

Like many who see all non-violent avenues to peace shut off, Barghouti watched the Israelis relentlessly steal more and more Palestinian land and Palestinian homes, build hundreds of illegal settlements in defiance of international law and strangle his people with draconian controls — all while America and the powerful Western countries turned a blind eye.

“How would you feel if on every hill in territory that belongs to you a new settlement would spring up? I reached a simple conclusion. You, Israel, don’t want to end the occupation and you don’t want to stop the settlements — so the only way to convince you is by force.”

Lawyer and activist Fadwa Barghouti, Marwan’s wife, says: “Marwan’s goal has always been ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

“Marwan Barghouti believes in politics. He’s a political and national leader loved by his people.

“He fought for peace with bravery and spent time on the Palestinian street advocating for peace. But he also believes in international law, which gives the occupied people the right to fight for their independence and freedom.”

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy at Haaretz agrees: “Marwan was not born to kill . . .  because he is not a violent person, but Israel pushed him and the entire Palestinian people.”

‘The ultimate leader’
Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, proposed freeing Barghouti because he is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”

He is not alone in this view. Jerome Karabel, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, details Netanyahu’s support for Hamas (for example, facilitating money via Qatar to Hamas) as a way to neutralise the threat posed by pro-peace, pro-two-state figures like Barghouti to the Zionists’ own single Jewish supremacist state solution.

“In this context, the popular and charismatic Barghouti has posed a unique threat to Israel and its persistent claim that it had no plausible interlocutor with whom to negotiate,” Karabel says.

Was Barghouti involved in terror attacks? Quite possibly.

He rejects such a label: “My crime is not “terrorism” — a term apparently only used to describe the deaths of Israeli civilians but never the deaths of Palestinians. My crime is that I insist on my freedom, freedom for my children, freedom for the entire Palestinian people.

“And if indeed that is a crime, I proudly plead guilty.”

The standard he is held to — five life sentences — bears no comparison with the impunity that Israelis enjoy — settlers who kill Palestinians are often rewarded with stolen land, through to political leaders greenlighting mass killings, even genocide, with the support of the US and the white Western countries.

Abandon the myth
“Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace and occupation at the same time; that peaceful coexistence is possible between slave and master.

“The lack of Israeli security is born of the lack of Palestinian freedom. Israel will have security only after the end of occupation, not before.”

Beaten and abused in captivity, now being shunted from prison to prison and held in solitary confinement, Barghouti’s name only grows in stature as the US-Israeli violence against his people becomes clearer and clearer to a hitherto uncaring world.

According to a March 2024 poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, “In presidential elections against current president Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh, Barghouti wins the majority of those participating in the elections.”

It is the strange fate of the Palestinian people that most of their leaders — those that haven’t already been murdered — are either in Israeli jails, hiding from Israeli death squads or living in exile.

One of the most incredible — and for Westerners virtually unknown — political moments in the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the creation of The Prisoners’ Document in 2006 – a break-through in negotiations, led by Barghouti, between the fractious factions that divide the Palestinian polity.

In 18 points, the document calls for the unification of Palestinian factions and a revival of the PLO as the representative organisation of Palestine. It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the 1967 borders, the right of return, and the release of prisoners.

Freedom fighter and the options
“The Palestinian Mandela” is a useful shorthand and there is some merit to the comparison. Nelson Mandela visited Gaza in 1999 and raised his voice to condemn racist, apartheid Israel.

The freedom fighter who was jailed for terrorism in his own country made clear what options lay before the Palestinian people. He told his audience, which included Yasser Arafat:

“Choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.”

“I was called a terrorist yesterday,” Mandela once said, “but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.”

Barghouti said: “Once Israel and the rest of the world understand this fundamental truth, the way forward becomes clear: End the occupation, allow the Palestinians to live in freedom and let the independent and equal neighbours of Israel and Palestine negotiate a peaceful future with close economic and cultural ties.”

The Mandela comparison has its limits. Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the organisers of the Great Marches of Return in 2018 and 2019 in which thousands of peaceful Palestinian protesters were shot and hundreds killed by Israeli snipers, replied when asked, ‘Where is the Palestinian Mandela?’: “The simple answer to that is that the Israelis have killed many Mandelas.”

Marwa Fatafta, a policy director at Access Now also dismisses the need for a Palestinian Mandela: “I don’t subscribe to the mythology. I don’t think Palestinians need a ‘saviour’ or one man to run the show. This Mandela idea dismisses the fact that Israel has one goal and one goal only: to establish an ethno-nationalist Jewish state — and that stands in complete contradiction with the idea of co-existence, peace and justice.

Building from ground up
“What we need on the Palestinian side is to build a movement from the ground up,” Fatafta said in 2022.

That said, Barghouti has an immense standing in the Palestinian community and, in a slightly kinder, saner world, could play a significant role.

In the racist narrative of Israel and the West, the only hostages are those held by Hamas. It’s time to free the Palestinian hostages, starting with Marwan Barghouti — the longest-suffering of thousands of hostages. All of the hostages should be freed — including the remaining 100 held by Hamas.

To riff on The Specials 1984 song ‘Free Nelson Mandela’:

“27 years in captivity

“His body abused but his mind is still free

“Are you so blind that you cannot see?

“Free Marwan Barghouti, I’m begging you”

Republished from Eugene Doyle’s website Solidarity with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza.

All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave.

However, organisers received word of an “administrative roadblock” initiated by Israel in an attempt to prevent the departure.

• READ MORE: Nelson Mandela’s grandson joins Gaza flotilla, slams ‘genocide complicit’ leaders
• Other Gaza Freedom Flotilla reports

Israel is reportedly pressuring the Republic of Guinea Bissau to withdraw its flag from the flotilla’s lead ship — Akdeniz (“Mediterranean”).

This triggered a request for an additional inspection, this one by the flag state, that delayed yesterday’s planned departure.

“This is another example of Israel obstructing the delivery of life-saving aid to the people in Gaza who face a deliberately created famine,” said a Freedom Flotilla statement.

“How many more children will die of malnutrition and dehydration because of this delay and an ongoing siege which must be broken?”

Israeli tactics
This is not the first time that Israel has used such tactics to stop Freedom Flotilla ships from sailing.

“We have overcome them before and are diligently working to overcome this latest attempt,” said the flotilla statement.

“Our vessels have already passed all required inspections and we are confident that the Akdeniz will pass this inspection provided there is no political interference.

“We expect this to be no more than a few days delay. Israel will not break our resolve to reach the people of Gaza.”

‘Freedom flotilla’ defying Israel’s Gaza blockade.       Video: Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera reports that lawyers, aid workers and activists are on board the ship in preparation for efforts by the flotilla to break the Israeli air, land and sea blockade of Gaza.

About 100 media people are on board as well, hoping to provide a more global eye on what is happening in Gaza.

Chief Mandla Mandela, the grandson of former South African President Nelson Mandela, is part of the flotilla that plans to soon set off for Gaza.

“For us South Africans, the Palestinian issue has always been close and dear to our hearts,” Mandela said, noting that this grandfather had also said, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.”

Published in collaboration with Kia Ora Gaza.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Chief Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has joined the Freedom Flotilla in istanbul as the ships prepare to sail for Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza.

Mandela is also the ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine.

When he met with flotilla participants yesterday, including the Kia Ora Gaza team from Aotearoa New Zealand, he said: “It was not only our efforts in South Africa that defeated the apartheid regime, but it was also efforts in every corner of the world through international solidarity of the anti-apartheid campaign.”

• READ MORE: Other Kia Ora Gaza and Freedom Flotilla reports

Chief Mandla Mandela talks to the Freedom Flotilla.   Video: Freedom Flotilla/Palestine Human Rights

Mandela said that while his grandfather was incarcerated for life imprisonment on Robben Island, he drew “immense inspiration” from the Palestinian struggle.

He added that Palestine “was the greatest moral issue of our time, yet many governments choose to remain silent and look away”.

“Many have been complicit in the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the war crimes, and crimes against humanity that have been meted out on a daily basis against our Palestinian brothers and sisters — not just the 7th of October, but for the past 76 years.”

— Chief Mandla Mandela

Incredible to see Mandla Mandela address Gaza Freedom Flotilla participants in Istanbul today.

He spoke of his grandfather Nelson Mandela’s deep love for the Palestinian struggle and how Palestine inspired generations of South Africans in their fight for freedom. pic.twitter.com/6aVwwB4fIu

— Aamer Rahman (@aamer_rahman) April 24, 2024

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Last Friday foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly tweeted, “I spoke with Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism Irwin Cotler today, where I congratulated him on his Israel Presidential Medal of Honour. Irwin, Canada is stronger because of your work to advance human rights everywhere.”

Cotler was one of 13 individuals recently given a prize by President Isaac Herzog for making “an extraordinary contribution to the State of Israel, the Jewish people, and all humanity.”

The apartheid state is right to celebrate Cotler. Married to a “close confidant” of Likud founder Menachem Begin, Cotler has committed his adult life to promoting colonialism. The former Liberal justice minister continues this work even as fascistic, Jewish supremacist extremists, have taken the reins of power in Israel.

In a sign of his devotion to apartheid, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism recently co-wrote a National Post commentary in support of blocking the World Court from releasing a legal opinion on Palestine. In “Canada must continue to defend Israel against baseless United Nations attack”, Cotler responded (indirectly) to criticism of the Trudeau government submitting a statement opposing an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion as per a UN General Assembly resolution titled “Israeli Practices Affecting the Human rights of the Palestinian People in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”. The resolution requested the UN legal authority deliver an advisory opinion on “the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” Cotler and the Trudeau government don’t believe the ICJ should assent to the General Assembly’s request to provide its legal opinion!

Previously, Cotler pressed the International Criminal Court to ignore Israeli war crimes and for Ottawa to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem. He’s attended events put on by the racist Jewish National Fund and met with far-right colonists seeking to cleanse occupied East Jerusalem of Palestinians. In May 2021 the former president of the Canadian Jewish Congress rallied behind Israel’s violence and earlier defended its shooting of ‘march of return’ protesters in Gaza as well as the 2014 and 2009 attacks on Gaza that left nearly 4,000 dead. Just after Israel killed 1,200 Lebanese in the summer of 2006 Cotler spoke to a conference of top Israeli military officials on the importance of managing the message in modern war.

As part of his government’s multifaceted contribution to Palestinian dispossession, Justin Trudeau made Cotler Canada’s inaugural special envoy three years ago. The envoy has $1.1 million to spend annually promoting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism and protecting Israel from growing criticism. (A recent Ekos poll found that 38 per cent of Canadians with an opinion believe Israel maintains a system “similar to apartheid” and 20 percent labelled it a state that “restricted minority rights” while only 11 per cent consider it a “vibrant democracy.”). In a sign of his comfort with crying victimhood to enable supremacism, Cotler took on probably the only Canadian named by an official university inquiry to have fabricated claims of antisemitism to smear Palestine solidarity activists. Despite a 2017 McGill University inquiry concluding as much about Noah Lew, Cotler hired Lew as a policy and program analyst.

A Canadian Jewish News article about Cotler receiving the Israeli presidential prize offers some insight into Cotler’s commitment to denouncing human rights violations by enemies of the US empire. “I am feeling delighted at the recognition of my father for his tremendous work advancing human rights and doing so while making it very clear that it is synonymous with upholding the right of the State of Israel”, said Michal Cotler-Wunsh, a former member of the Israeli Knesset. Recently made Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, Cotler-Wunsh’s comment suggests her father’s human rights campaigning is designed to build establishment credibility to better promote Jewish supremacy in Israel.

In a concrete example, Cotler’s Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights invited the new Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, to deliver its 2023 Elie Wiesel Distinguished Lectureship in Human Rights. According to the information available online, the May meeting wasn’t specifically about Israel. But does anybody believe the lecture wasn’t partly designed to influence the ICC prosecutor as part of the apartheid lobby’s aggressive campaign to have the court ignore Israel’s war crimes?

Another example of Cotler using his ‘human rights’ standing to advance Jewish supremacy is his response to calling Israel an apartheid state. Prior to all the major human rights groups finding that Israel was committing the crime of apartheid, Cotler repeatedly responded to activists’ claims that Israel was an apartheid state by invoking his role in challenging the “real” version in South Africa.

Cotler has succeeded in getting the dominant media to relay the idea he was central to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s lawyer, which is a distortion well detailed in “Irwin Cotler And The Mandela Effect”. As being against South African apartheid has taken on greater mainstream status, Cotler has increasingly sought to identify as a leader in that struggle despite the fact he has a well-known association with the party that refused a House of Commons request to condemn Mandela’s imprisonment (Lester Pearson in 1964) and opposed taking action to lessen Canadian complicity with the racist regime (Pierre Trudeau 1968 – 84).

Cotler’s tale about struggling to oppose South African apartheid garners him moral standing to deflect criticism of Israeli apartheid. It also helps obscure the links/similarities between Israel and the South African regime.

When Cotler received the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice prize – named after arch Zionist former Democrat Congressman Tom Lantos who promoted both US invasions of Iraq – the Globe and Mail published a story headlined “Canadian Irwin Cotler, who helped free Mandela, given prestigious human-rights award.” Even though the August article had nothing explicitly to do with the Middle East, Canadian for Justice and Peace in the Middle East pushed the Globe to correct their headline. CJPME understands that Cotler’s Mandela tale serves his anti-Palestinian agenda.

Israel has great interest in developing ‘human rights’ activists and groups that defend it (or at least ignore its crimes). Liberal minded supporters of Israel don’t want to feel that they are backing oppression and Cotler is among those who help do that.

Objectively, Cotler’s human rights campaigning in service of US imperial aims has helped defend Israeli apartheid. Any honest person who agrees that all human beings have equal rights, including Palestinians, will understand that.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) in which about 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians (57% of the Indigenous Palestinian population) were expelled from their homes and villages by Zionist colonizers.

From 16 September to 27 October 2023 there is a very moving Nakba 75th Anniversary Exhibition at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in central Melbourne (diagonally opposite to Flinders Street Railway Station).

Key numbers about the 1948 Nakba: Palestinians expelled (about 800,000 or 57% of the 1,400,000 total Palestinian  population), massacres (over 70), people killed (15,000), villages emptied (over 530), and mosques eventually destroyed (120). A further mass expulsion of 400,000 Arabs occurred in the 1967 Naksa (Setback) in which the colonizers seized all of Palestine plus parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Today’s 14.5 million Indigenous Palestinians: Exiled Palestinians (7 million, a big part of world refugees); Occupied Palestinians (5.5 million and deprived of basic human rights under military occupation including the right to vote for the government ruling them (i.e. subject to egregious Apartheid); 3.3 million in ever-dwindling  West Bank ghettoes and 2.2 million in the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp); and Israeli Palestinians (about 2 million; able to vote but subject to 60 race-based, discriminatory laws). Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Israel total 7.5 million, 51% of total Israeli Subjects (Jewish Israelis 47%).

Today GDP per capita is a deadly $3,500 (Occupied Palestinians) versus $55,500 (Occupier Israelis). Each year  Israel violently kills about 500 Occupied Palestinians (active killing) and kills a further 4,000 Occupied Palestinians through imposed deprivation (passive killing). In the Occupied Palestinian Territories Israel is the world leader for “journalists killed per million of population” and is among world leaders for “children killed per million of population” (for a very detailed, documented  and alphabetically-ordered compendium of information see 75th Nakba Anniversary.)

Palestine has been known as such (with linguistic variants) for 3 millennia. Palestinians have continually inhabited that land for millennia. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (Al Quds) is the third holiest Muslim shrine, is the first major mosque, and was the progenitor of 1,400 years of brilliant Islamic architecture. However Zionist colonizers actively deny and  seek to erase the very terms “Palestine” and “Palestinian”. So far about 90% of Palestine has been ethnically cleansed by Apartheid Israel.

World anti-Apartheid hero and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela:

The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

I am a genocide-impacted, anti-racist Ashkenazi Jewish Australian scientist and humanitarian from a famous Jewish Hungarian family and with a sole allegiance to Australia. The key messages from the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (and indeed from all genocides and holocausts) are “zero tolerance for lying,” “zero tolerance for racism,” “bear witness,” and “never again to anybody” (including the sorely oppressed Indigenous Palestinians and Indigenous Australians). Please inform everyone you can.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gideon Polya.

South African lawmakers voted Tuesday to downgrade the country's embassy in Israel in response to its apartheid, illegal occupation, and other crimes against Palestinians—a move welcomed by human rights advocates around the world.

The resolution to downgrade the status of South Africa's embassy in Ramat Gan, just east of Tel Aviv, to a liaison office was introduced by the center-left National Freedom Party (NFP), which hailed the measure's passage as "a historic moment for our country and a demonstration of our unwavering commitment to justice, human rights, and freedom."

Holding just two seats in the Parliament, the NFP secured the resolution's passage with the support of parties including the dominant African National Congress (ANC), Economic Freedom Fighters, United Democratic Movement, African Independent Congress, Al-Jama-ah, and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania.

"We can no longer stand by while Palestinian human rights are being trampled on."

While Israel's Foreign Ministry called the vote "shameful and disgraceful," NFP Member of Parliament Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam, who introduced the resolution, said after its passage that "this is a moment Madiba would be proud of."

Emam was referring to former South African president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, who advocated for Palestinian rights and for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.

"He always said our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians," Emam said of Mandela, who died in 2013. "Today we took a step closer to the attainment of that freedom for Palestinians."

"We can no longer stand by while Palestinian human rights are being trampled on," Emam asserted. "By passing this resolution, we are sending a powerful message to the world that South Africa remains a beacon of hope and a shining example of what is possible when we come together in pursuit of a more just and equitable world."

Emam continued:

This resolution demands accountability from Israel. It is a courageous move that demonstrates our commitment as a country to justice, human rights, and freedom. The state of Israel was built through the displacement, murder, and maiming of Palestinians. And to maintain their grip on power, they have instituted apartheid to control and manage Palestinians. This institution of apartheid by the state of Israel contravenes international law and is a violation of the human rights of Palestinians.

"As South Africans," he added, "we refuse to stand by while apartheid is being perpetrated again."

Israel—like the United States, United Kingdom, and other Western democracies—supported South Africa's apartheid regime and even helped it develop nuclear weapons. After the fall of South African apartheid and the return to majority rule, the ruling ANC has vocally opposed Israeli crimes against Palestine.

For example, in May 2018 the party responded to Israeli forces' killing of scores of Palestinian protesters by excoriating the actions of "people who continuously remind us all about the hate and prejudice Jews went through during Hitler's anti-Semitism reign [and yet] exhibit the same cruelty less than a century later."

More recently, the ANC last month cheered the expulsion of a senior Israeli diplomat from the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Senior South African officials have consistently condemned Israeli apartheid, which is being acknowledged by a growing number of human rights groups around the world, including in Israel.

Echoing former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Baleka Mbete—who served as South Africa's deputy president, National Assembly speaker, and head of the ANC—in 2012 called Israel "far worse than apartheid South Africa."

Like Carter and other Nobel Peace laureates including Mairead Maguire, Rigoberta Menchú, Jody Williams, Betty Williams, and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the late South African anti-apartheid activist and religious leader Desmond Tutu condemned Israeli apartheid.

The new NFP-led resolution follows last year's call by the South African government for the United Nations General Assembly to declare Israel an apartheid state.

The measure was also passed on the same day that the Palestinian National Authority called on the world "to take immediate, concrete measures to hold Israeli officials accountable for their crimes and continual incitement and threats to commit crimes against the Palestinian people."

"Only the end of Israel's occupation and the dismantling of its apartheid regime will end this violence, racism, and fascism against the Palestinian people," the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said in a statement.

"If not accompanied by action, statements of condemnation will not suffice," the ministry added. "Urgent international intervention is needed to curb Israel's dangerous aggressions against the Palestinian people and to provide necessary protection."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Seven years ago, the South African ambassador to Venezuela Pandit Thaninga Shope-Linney stated plainly that “Irwin Cotler was not Nelson Mandela’s lawyer.” Three years later Max Blumenthal pointed out that “in Nelson Mandela’s memoir, The Long March to Freedom, there is no mention of Irwin Cotler.” Recently Davide Mastracci demolished the claim that the establishment’s human rights darling was a lawyer for the long imprisoned African National Congress (ANC) leader.

On its surface Mastracci’s deep dive into a decades-old biographical anecdote of an 82-year-old former justice minister may appear almost petty. But it actually offers an important window into Canadian media.

According to Mastracci’s search of the Canadian Newsstream database, there were more than 320 results mentioning that Cotler was Mandela’s lawyer. As time has passed, the mentions have grown with 164 stories noting the biographical detail in the 2010s. “Cotler has gotten far more press coverage crediting him with representing Mandela than he ever did while he was supposedly doing the work,” notes Mastracci.

But there’s little evidence for the Mandela lawyer claim outside Cotler’s own somewhat vague statements. In effect, the media is regurgitating a biographical detail that enhances the credibility of someone who challenges the human rights violations of enemy states.

Not only was Cotler not Mandela’s lawyer, thousands of Canadians probably contributed more than him to the struggle against South African apartheid, which played out over three decades of Cotler’s adulthood. I asked Joanne Naiman, author of the 1984 Relations between Canada and South Africa and a leading anti-apartheid campaigner in Toronto about Cotler. Neither her nor her partner remembers interacting with Cotler. “Neil and I discussed this, and we certainly have no memory of Cotler being his lawyer, or, indeed, in any way involved in the anti-apartheid movement,” she emailed. Naiman, who was part of group aligned with the ‘terrorist’ ANC in the 1970s, reached out to Lynda Lemberg, another prominent activist in that struggle. She immediately labeled Cotler’s claim “total bullshit”.

Even according to Cotler’s own telling he was late to the South Africa struggle. In June 1964, NDP leader Tommy Douglas told the House of Commons: “Nelson Mandela and seven of his associates have been found guilty of contravening the apartheid laws … [I] ask the Prime Minister if he will make vigorous representation to the government of South Africa urging that they exercise clemency in this case”? (Lester Pearson rejected the request) Yet, when discussing his involvement Cotler cites events that took place in the early and mid 1980s.

Still, Cotler uses his purported role in the South Africa struggle to defend apartheid today. When members of the Quebec Movement for Peace interrupted his 2019 speech on “Canada as a Human Rights leader” Cotler responded by saying that as someone having “fought against a real apartheid regime, South Africa, it is demeaning to make a comparison [with Israel].”

The Mandela anecdote enables Cotler’s vicious anti-Palestinianism. It also enhances the credibility of an individual who aggressively criticizes “enemy” states while largely ignoring rights violations committed by Canada and the US. Cotler’s activism feeds a propaganda system in which the media considers victims ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ depending on the prerogatives of US and Canadian foreign policy. Because he concentrates on the victims of enemy states while largely ignoring those victimized by friendly governments the dominant media regurgitate sympathetic biographical details. Sometimes they even embellish the former minister’s embellishment as John Ivison did when he claimed Cotler “was instrumental” in Mandela’s release.

The media’s reaction to “Irwin Cotler and the Mandela Effect” has been telling. More than a month after Mastracci published his investigation, I couldn’t find any mention of it by other media.

On Twitter Ivison, who recently published “A tireless pursuer of justice, ex-minister Cotler takes on Putin” on the front of the National Post, complained, “You’re targeting Irwin Cotler in an ‘expose’? Give me a break. If there was an Olympics for good human beings, Irwin would pip the Pope for gold.” Apparently, Ivison doesn’t believe journalists should investigate the claims of powerful figures and instead stick to fawning puff pieces.

At the more liberal end of the dominant media, ‘misinformation’ expert Justin Ling tweeted that Mastracci failed to mention archival articles, which were either in fact mentioned or irrelevant. For his part, the head of media watchdog group CANADALAND, Jesse Brown, called the investigation “pretty thin”. But the 3,500 word story, which includes an interview with Cotler, is anything but “thin”. Brown’s reaction reflects his refusal to seriously address the anti-Palestinian bias in Canadian media or its most flagrant deference to the US Empire. Instead of simply dismissing his work as “thin”, Brown should build on Mastracci’s research by interviewing the many grassroots activists who led the South Africa campaign in Canada to ask if they remember working with Cotler.

Irrespective of his Mandela lawyer tale, it’s long been clear that Cotler is a “fraud”, as I told him during the opening screening of First to Stand: The Cases and Causes of Irwin Cotler in December. Cotler has supported NATO’s destruction of Libya, bloodstained dictator Paul Kagame, and the ouster of Venezuela’s government. A staunch Jewish supremacist, Cotler justifies Israeli colonialism and violence.

Cotler’s a darling of the political and media establishment. At the end of last year NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson met with Cotler twice over a two-week period tweeting, “this afternoon, Professor Irwin Cotler and I spoke about how we can work together to protect human rights in Canada and around the world. I am grateful to him for sharing his wisdom with me.” Previous NDP foreign critics Hélène Laverdière and Guy Caron, as well as Green Party leader Elizabeth May, participated in press conferences organized by Cotler and a number of them joined the Cotler-led Raoul Wallenberg All-Party Parliamentary Caucus for Human Rights. After we interrupted Cotler for about 10 minutes at Concordia University in 2019 Conservative MP David Sweet asked the House of Commons to condemn the disruption and celebrate Cotler (pro-Israel media claimed it was unanimous).

It will be interesting to follow coverage of Cotler’s biographical anecdote in the coming months. With significant recent media interest in politicians and public figures making up biographical details, will an intrepid reporter build on Mastracci’s research? Or will journalists continue to refer to Cotler as Mandela’s lawyer?

My bet is the latter. The ‘Cotler Mandela’s lawyer’ claim is likely to continue appearing since it serves a media sphere steeped in imperialism and Zionism.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

This emotional event took place years before Mandela uttered his famous quote “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.  For us Palestinians Mandela did not need to reaffirm the South African people’s solidarity with Palestine by using these words or any other combination of words. We already knew. Emotions ran high on that day; tears were shed; supplications were made to Allah that Palestine, too, would be free soon. “Inshallah,” God willing, everyone in the room murmured with unprecedented optimism.

Though three decades have passed without that coveted freedom, something is finally changing as far as the Palestine liberation movement is concerned. A whole generation of Palestinian activists, who either grew up or were even born after Mandela’s release, was influenced by that significant moment: Mandela’s release and the start of the official dismantling of the racist, apartheid regime of South Africa.

Even the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 between Israel and some in the Palestinian leadership of the PLO – which served as a major disruption of the grassroots, people-oriented liberation movement in Palestine – did not completely end what eventually became a decided anti-Israeli apartheid struggle in Palestine. Oslo, the so-called ‘peace process’ – and the disastrous ‘security coordination’ between the Palestinian leadership, exemplified in the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Israel – resulted in derailed Palestinian energies, wasted time, deepened existing factional divides, and confused Palestinian supporters everywhere. However, it did not – though it tried – occupy every political space available for Palestinian expression and mobilization.

With time and, in fact, soon after its formation in 1994, Palestinians began realizing that the PA was not a platform for liberation, but a hindrance to it. A new generation of Palestinians is now attempting to articulate, or refashion, a new discourse for liberation that is based on inclusiveness, grassroots, community-based activism that is backed by a growing global solidarity movement.

The May events of last year – the mass protests throughout occupied Palestine and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza – highlighted the role of Palestine’s youth who, through elaborate coordination, incessant campaigning and utilizing of social media platforms, managed to present the Palestinian struggle in a new light – bereft of the archaic language of the PA and its aging leaders. It also surpassed, in its collective thinking, the stifling and self-defeating emphasis on factions and self-serving ideologies.

And the world responded in kind. Despite a powerful Israeli propaganda machine, expensive hasbara campaigns and near-total support for Israel by the western government and mainstream media alike, sympathy for Palestinians has reached an all-time high. For example, a major public opinion poll published by Gallup on May 28, 2021, revealed that “… the percentages of Americans viewing (Palestine) favorably and saying they sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis in the conflict inched up to all-time highs this year.”

Moreover, major international human rights organizations, including Israelis, began to finally recognize what their Palestinian colleagues have argued for decades:

“The Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians,” said B’tselem in January 2021.

“Laws, policies and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power and land has long guided government policy,” said Human Rights Watch in April 2021.

“This system of apartheid has been built and maintained over decades by successive Israeli governments across all territories they have controlled, regardless of the political party in power at the time,” said Amnesty International on February 1, 2022.

Now that the human rights and legal foundation of recognizing Israeli apartheid is finally falling into place, it is a matter of time before a critical mass of popular support for Palestine’s own anti-apartheid movement follows, pushing politicians everywhere, but especially in the West, to pressure Israel into ending its system of racial discrimination.

However, this is where the South Africa and Palestine models begin to differ. Though western colonialism has plagued South Africa as early as the 17th century, apartheid in that country only became official in 1948, the very year that Israel was established on the ruins of historic Palestine.

While South African resistance to colonialism and apartheid has gone through numerous and overwhelming challenges, there was an element of unity that made it nearly impossible for the apartheid regime to conquer all political forces in that country, even after the banning, in 1960, of the African National Congress (ANC) and the subsequent mprisonment of Mandela in 1962. While South Africans continued to rally behind the ANC, another front of popular resistance, the United Democratic Front, emerged, in the early 1980s to fulfill several important roles, amongst them the building of international solidarity around the country’s anti-apartheid struggle.

The blood of 176 protesters at the Soweto township and thousands more was the fuel that made freedom, the dismantling of apartheid and the freedom of Mandela and his comrades possible.

For Palestinians, however, the reality is quite different. While Palestinians are embarking on a new stage of their anti-apartheid struggle, it must be said that the PA, which has openly collaborated with Israel, cannot possibly be a vehicle for liberation. Palestinians, especially the youth, who have not been corrupted by the decades-long system of nepotism and favoritism enshrined by the PA, must know this well.

Rationally, Palestinians cannot stage a sustained anti-apartheid campaign when the PA is allowed to serve the role of being Palestine’s representative, while still benefiting from the perks and financial rewards associated with the Israeli occupation.

Meanwhile, it is also not possible for Palestinians to mount a popular movement in complete independence from the PA, Palestine’s largest employer, whose US-trained security forces keep watch on every street corner that falls within the PA-administered areas in the West Bank.

As they move forward, Palestinians must truly study the South African experience, not merely in terms of historical parallels and symbolism, but to deeply probe its successes, shortcomings and fault lines. Most importantly, Palestinians must also reflect on the unavoidable truth – that those who have normalized and profited from the Israeli occupation and apartheid cannot possibly be the ones who will bring freedom and justice to Palestine.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

These differences have proven stark with the late FW de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid president.  “De Klerk,” suggested Mac Maharaj, formerly official spokesperson for President Jacob Zuma, “was a man of the moment and [Nelson] Mandela was a man of history.”  The late Colin Eglin went one better in his observation of the two men.  “A relatively conservative Afrikaner leader decided to negotiate before he had lost, and an imprisoned leader of a liberation movement decided to negotiate before he had won.”

It was De Klerk who began to take the screws out of the edifice of apartheid and open the pathway to negotiations with other parties.  Serving in the governing white National Party, which had introduced apartheid in 1948, De Klerk held ministerial positions till becoming party head in February 1989.  Between 1984 and 1989, he served as education minister, overseeing the notorious Bantu education program.  On replacing PW Botha, De Klerk downgraded the State Security Council, primarily staffed by military and police, and restored civilian rule by cabinet.

De Klerk’s famous announcement to parliament on February 2, 1990 was critical in setting things in train.  But he had little by way of choice.  By the late 1980s, Apartheid South Africa was already unravelling, its furious racial disturbances tearing away at a white supremacist structure increasingly teetering on the edge of oblivion.

He also had encouragement from various sources.  Externally, the Cold War was coming to a close, with Western backers seeing less need to keep an anti-communist proxy in Africa.  The loss of Soviet influence, marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, also meant a diminishing of support for such communist organisations as the African National Congress.

Then came three sets of talks and discussions between Mandela and Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee, between ANC figures and South Africa’s National Intelligence Service, and discussions between Afrikaner intellectuals and the ANC conducted in the UK.  South Africa’s last apartheid leader had been inspired, in no small part, by the propitiatory Harare Declaration, adopted by the ANC as a promise to pursue a democratic transition to transform South Africa “into a non-racial democracy”.  Such organisations as the ANC, Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and the South African Communist Party were unbanned.  A moratorium on the death penalty was implemented.  Within nine days, Mandela walked free.

Difficulties quickly manifested.  The Convention for a Democratic South Africa, presided over by both De Klerk and Mandela, imploded before a background of police, militia and factional violence.  There was mistrust between racial groups and within them.  The Inkatha Freedom Party left early, claiming that Mangosuthu Buthelezi was not granted full scope to negotiate.  ANC revolutionaries still giddy with insurrectionary fervour were not entirely content with the moderating calls of Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Thabo Mbeki.  Mandela, for his part, had called De Klerk the “head of an illegitimate, discredited minority regime … incapable of upholding moral standards”.

The political visions were divergent in vastness.  The ANC wished to pursue a single, centralised state based on one person, one vote; the National Party preferred a looser federal structure with devolved powers that would still preserve a measure of control over the potential excesses of black majoritarianism.  Certain Afrikaners demanded a separate volkstaat.  There was no agreement on what any interim government would comprise, nor what form the new constitution would take.

In April 1993 at Kempton Park, Mandela’s ANC and De Klerk’s ruling white National Party commenced what was called the Multi-Party Negotiation Process (MPNP).  There were representatives from 24 other parties, all steaming with different agendas and suspicions.   The 1994 electoral victory for the ANC did much to affirm their standing, leading to the eventual December 1996 constitution.

De Klerk was left to wrestle with his role, and that of apartheid, which he preferred to call “separate development”.  He remained a creature of his racial and political background, an ideologue of apartheid who found it impossible to intellectually abandon with any degree of confidence.  To have done so would have been to negate genealogy and a social experiment he had not regarded as a total failure.  His uncle, JG Strijdom, was the country’s second apartheid prime minister; his father, Jan de Klerk, was in the cabinet of three apartheid prime ministers.

His memoirs were filled with exculpatory efforts pointing to himself and his fellow NP politicians as “products of our time and circumstances”.  In administering the race classification rules, De Klerk claimed to have done so “in the most humane manner possible.”

De Klerk’s statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee was testy, taking issue with the commission’s alleged bias while deeming efforts to brand apartheid a crime against humanity as “little more than a mobilisation exercise by the ANC and its totalitarian and Third World supporters in the UN General Assembly.”  Victims of “crimes against humanity”, he dismissively asserted “do not generally achieve sustained population growth rates of more than 3% and their social and socio-economic statistics do not improve across the board.”

In 2020, it took irate remarks from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation to remind De Klerk that the law had caught up, with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court declaring the racial policy to be such a crime.  It had been, he stated, “unacceptable” to “quibble about the degrees of unacceptability of apartheid”.  With such attitudes, it is unsurprising that figures such as the human rights lawyer Howard Varney had little time for this “apologist for apartheid”.

A posthumous video from De Klerk did little to elevate him.  It is contrition in search of purpose and acceptance.  “I, without qualification, apologise for the pain and the hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians in South Africa,” he is found stating.  As he exited the world of the living, he was worried about what was happening to his country.  “I’m deeply concerned about the undermining of many aspects of the constitution, which we perceive almost day to day.”

In one fundamental way, his own navigation of apartheid’s train into oblivion was a regretful concession to defeat – that a racial minority could no longer hold on, however vicious, however determined it might be.  By 1996, De Klerk was forced off the train, acknowledging, in part, that he was part of the very legacy he was trying to exorcise.  On receiving the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela, it was clear where he stood.  He had aided in creating the conditions; it was Mandela who would have to make the world anew.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

After his release from prison in South Africa and he became inaugural president of the majority rule government with the abolition of apartheid, Nelson Mandela declared in a speech in 1997: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Founding Halt All Racist Tours (HART) leader John Minto invoked these words again several times in Hamilton on Sunday as veterans and supporters of the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour anti-apartheid protests gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of the historic events.

Starting at the “1981” tour retrospective exhibition at the Hamilton Museum – Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, the protesters gathered for a luncheon at Anglican Action and then staged a ceremonial march to FMG Stadium – known back then as Rugby Park – where they had famously breached the perimeter fence and invaded the pitch.

• READ MORE: 1981 Springbok Tour 40 years on: How Hamilton became a city of rage
• 1981 Springbok tour 40 years on: John Minto weighs up the legacy of the Rugby Park pitch invasion
• Stories told about violence: Hamilton during the 1981 Springbok tour

The exhibition features photographs by Geoffrey Short, Kees Sprengers and John Mercer of that day on 25 July 1981 when about 2000 protesters halted the second match of the tour.

“The Kirikiriroa protests were the outcome of months of planning, counter-planning and public discontent,” said curator Nadia Gush.

“1981 documents a period of unrest, with New Zealanders of all ages expressing their solidarity with marginalised black South Africans.”

Their courage and determination led to a tense stand-off in the middle of the park with about 500 protesters huddled together with linked arms and defiantly facing both police squads and a 30,000 crowd baying for their blood.

Match called off
The match was called off by the authorities – interrupting the first ever live broadcast of a South African rugby match from New Zealand. And this triggered unprecedented violent scenes when rugby enthusiasts attacked protesters.

“Amandla Ngawethu!” – “power to the people!” (the cry of the African National Congress) – chanted John Minto, who has lost none of his powerful protest voice, amplified by a megaphone, as the crowd left Garden Place 40 years on.

“Remember racism… Remember Soweto… Remember Mandela,” came other cries from march marshals.

And a fresh addition this time was “Remember Palestine … Remember Gaza. … Freedom for Palestine” in recognition of the new struggle over Israeli apartheid in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and Gaza under military siege.

Marchers were decidedly much slower than in the original protest four decades ago and a cloudburst dampened the straggling ex-protesters. However, they were revived by the sight of a Tristram Street mural at the stadium devoted to the Springbok tour and the cancellation of the game.

Among the stragglers was Invercargill mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt who described the protests against 1981 Springbok Tour as an important historical event for Aotearoa New Zealand.

“I’ll remember those days for the rest of my life,” Shadbolt told Stuff reporter Aaron Leaman.

‘Victory for better NZ’
“It was a victory in a way and changed New Zealand for the better.”

Stuff also quoted Angeline Greensill, who along with her mother, the late Eva Rickard, was among the group of anti-tour protesters who made their way onto the pitch at Rugby Park.

Standing up to the “icon of rugby” took courage, Greensill said.

The group passed around three sides of the stadium in the rain as Minto pointed out the “safe house” across the road – “opened up by a courageous man, Dr Anthony Rogers” – where he, Mike Law, Dick Cuthbert and many others were bashed by rugby supporters. A makeshift ambulance driving injured people to hospital was also attacked.

Twenty three people were treated for injuries in Waikato Hospital and police arrested 73 people.

Minto praised the Waikato Rugby Union for recognising this vital event in New Zealand history.

Then the entourage moved into the stadium’s Bronze Room for speeches and sharing of memories of that fateful day.

Cheered loudly
They cheered loudly as they marked 3.10pm – the exact time that the match between the touring Boks and Waikato had been called off.

Speakers, including Minto, spoke about both apartheid and the 1981 Springbok tour and 70 years of apartheid and Israeli oppression in Palestinian.

Speakers, including Minto, spoke about both apartheid and the 1981 Springbok tour and 70 years of apartheid and Israeli oppression in Palestinian.

“Both Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu said, ‘Our freedom in South Africa will not be complete without the freedom of the Palestinians’,” declared Minto.

“It’s unfinished business.”

“This is the new anti-apartheid struggle,” added Minto, who is also national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSN). He challenged participants to join him in this ongoing campaign.

PSNA’s John Minto talks about the ongoing apartheid struggle over Palestine. Video: David Robie/APR

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

When I was six years old I kissed a girl – we climbed under a desk in the empty classroom.  We held hands and for a brief moment kissed. Her name was Serena. She was an Indian British girl.  She was dark brown with jet black hair, and I loved her. I didn’t care about the fact that she looked different from the other girls. Everything about her was wonderful and fortunately for me she liked me too. Less than a year later I moved to another county, a new school, got on with my life, and I never saw her again.

In 1990 I went to Connecticut, USA to work in a summer camp for 4 months just outside a minuscule rural town. During this time our sports coach, who was black, was refused service in the only decent diner available. Despite the disappointing loss of good food, every single person who attended the camp or worked there boycotted this diner from that day onwards. After the job ended, myself and several friends visited this same sports coach in Harlem at his home, which he had kindly invited us to do. What happened to him was not discussed again. There was no need to. We all understood.

Later that autumn I visited the King Centre in Atlanta – 4 white Europeans, feeling distinctly under-dressed amongst all the otherwise African American and mostly very smartly dressed people. I already knew a fair bit about Martin Luther King and his legacy but that day I learned that there had been 32 attempts to kill him over a 10 year period, the last, of course, which took his life. Despite the full knowledge that he would eventually be killed, MLK continued his work relentlessly for his people and for all people around the world who suffer injustice and prejudice. He refused to succumb to negativity, violence, vengefulness and retained his dignity to the end.

Even those who thought he was misguided such as Eldridge Cleaver and Malcolm X, respected his position. They were not filled with hate either. They sought freedom for the African American and all humanity. Listening to their speeches it becomes abundantly clear that their end goal was the same as King’s – the end of division, hatred, inequality, injustice and a unified future for humanity.

King’s predecessor, Mohandas Gandhi in India, was a exponent of non-violent resistance, which King enthusiastically took up. Years after King’s death, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, came to realise that he could not defeat a stronger enemy through force and went on to achieve his astounding success through non-violent resistance and a peaceful transition.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a crossroads for humanity but it only achieved a partial victory. King and his colleagues demonstrated to America and the world that African Americans were more civilised, more intelligent and more humane than the people that sought to destroy them. They met their oppressors with resistance but a resistance based in love of humanity, not the resistance of vengeance and hatred. The same crossroads was reached in South Africa – as with King, the dignity of Mandela and his colleagues was irrefutable but again this was not a total victory.

We are now at a crossroads once again – the tragic murder of an African American man by police, captured on video, has sparked outrage across the world, not just in America but everywhere and we are at a pivotal point where the civil rights movement could come to its conclusion or remain unresolved.

At this crossroads humanity can choose to tackle this ongoing disgrace or to ignore it. We can choose to tackle it with intelligence, compassion and dignity to achieve a new era of cooperation and understanding through non-violent resolution. We can also choose to tackle this through violent insurrection, looting, rioting, vandalism and murder. While vengeful behaviour may be totally understandable, we must ask will it achieve a fairer and more just future? Or will it just perpetuate negative cycles?

I do not believe that violent solutions will bring anything other than more violence, more hatred and continued conflict. We have an opportunity to make a real change at this point in time. All good people of conscience need to stand up and be counted for what is right and I believe that what is right is non-violent resistance to the failings of the system.  The heroes of the civil rights movement were largely non-violent but they were far from cowards; in fact, they were brave enough to risk their lives for freedom and justice and many of them lost their lives in that fight.

To undermine their work and sully their legacy with a wave of violence and retribution will not help those who suffer from racism or any form of oppression. We need to be smarter than that.  If we want a better future, a better world we need to achieve unity of purpose and mutual understanding. Resorting to the basest instincts of humanity will not elevate us to a better place, it will only bring more pain. This fight against racism must be won, but it can only be won by taking the higher ground and maintaining the dignity that all humans should aspire to.

DIGNITY

RESPECT

COMPASSION

UNITY

LOVE

This article was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020 at 8:25pm and is filed under Opinion, Prejudice, Racism.