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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/07/teaching-palestine-in-south-africa/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/07/teaching-palestine-in-south-africa/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Teaching Palestine in South Africa</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/diana-block/"
rel="nofollow">Diana Block</a> - June 7, 2019</span></div>
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<p><em><strong>Reaffirming Internationalism in the
Twenty-first Century</strong></em></p>
<p>In March 2019 I traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa
to attend a conference – <em>Teaching Palestine:
Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice.</em>
The conference was co-sponsored by the <a
href="https://amed.sfsu.edu/"><em>AMED</em></a><em> (</em>Arab
and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies) program of
San Francisco State University (SFSU), <a
href="https://www.amec.org.za/">AMEC</a> (Afro-Middle
East Centre) in Johannesburg, the <a
href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/facultyofeducation/cert/Pages/The-Education-Rights-Project.aspx">Centre
for Education Rights and Transformation</a> at the
University of Johannesburg, and <a
href="https://www.najah.edu/">An-Najah University</a>,
in occupied Palestine.</p>
<p>Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, Director of the AMED program, had
initiated the <a
href="https://amed.sfsu.edu/content/teaching-palestine-pedagogical-praxis-and-indivisibility-justice"><em>Teaching
Palestine </em>project</a> in 2016, ahead of the
hundredth anniversary of Britain’s imperialist <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/balfour-declarations-many-questions/22216">Balfour
Declaration</a>, as an emancipatory pedagogical and
advocacy project that would be conducted in multiple
sites over a number of years around the world. An
integral concept of the project is the “indivisibility
of justice.” This framing affirms the integral
connections between the struggle for Palestinian freedom
and other current struggles against oppression
worldwide. It offers a basis for engaging
internationalism holistically in an era when global
struggles are too often siloed or artificially separated
by narrow organizational missions. Since it was
initiated, <em>Teaching Palestine </em>has organized
workshops and symposia in the U.S. ,Cuba, Seville,
Spain, and Montreal. The first <em>Teaching Palestine </em>conference
took place in 2018 at Birzeit and An-Najah National
Universities in occupied Palestine. Given their closely
interconnected histories and ongoing solidarity
relationships, it made sense to hold the second
international conference in South Africa.</p>
<p>I had traveled to Southern Africa nearly forty years
earlier, in April 1980, for the celebration of
Zimbabwean independence. I had been part of
organizations working with the Zimbabwean African
National Union (ZANU) in the United States. ZANU was
fighting for the national liberation of the Zimbabwean
people from the white supremacist regime that held power
in what the settlers called Rhodesia, after colonist
Cecil Rhodes. The victory over Ian Smith’s regime was a
thrilling culmination of years of struggle by the
Zimbabwean people who were supported by a vigorous
international solidarity movement. To those of us in
that movement, Zimbabwe’s independence signaled the
inevitable future downfall of apartheid in South Africa.
And the struggles against white supremacy in Zimbabwe
and South Africa were part and parcel of the struggle
for Black liberation against white supremacy within the
borders of the United States. Southern Africa was a
focal point for anti-imperialist struggle throughout the
seventies and eighties in the U.S. and worldwide.</p>
<p>Forty years later Zimbabwe and South Africa, in
different ways, are still struggling to fulfill the
liberatory promises of independence. Given the
consolidation of the neoliberal world order under U.S.
hegemony in the final decades of the twentieth century
and the collusion of the new national ruling parties and
elites with neoliberalism, these newly independent
African countries have faced monumental external and
internal challenges. Within the U.S., Southern Africa
has largely disappeared from the movement’s political
map.</p>
<p>Yet anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial/neoliberal
struggles have inevitably continued against a global
regime of imperialist dispossession, appropriation and
exploitation in the twenty-first century. Now Palestine
has in many ways become the epicenter of
anti-imperialist struggle as it has continued, across
the century mark, to confront the Israeli settler
colonial, apartheid state and its U.S. partner-in-chief.
The growth of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) movement since 2005, modeled on the South African
boycott movement, demonstrates how the Palestinian
movement has skillfully learned from the successful
tactics that helped to bring down the South African
apartheid regime. A conference on Palestine in South
Africa was a means of reaffirming the historic
importance of South African struggle and learning about
the continuation of efforts to build a different, more
equitable and just South African society.</p>
<p>The conference and subsequent study tour addressed the
critical role of internationalism for Palestine and
South Africa, examined lessons of the South African
experience during and after apartheid, and exposed the
expanding scope of Zionist assaults on all forms of
speech and action in support of Palestine globally.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.jacana.co.za/component/virtuemart/current-affairs-history/armed-and-dangerous-detail?Itemid=0">Ronnie
Kasrils</a>, the opening speaker at the conference,
was a founding member of <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe"
target="Umkhonto we Sizwe" rel="noopener noreferrer">Umkhonto
we Sizwe</a> (MK), the armed wing of the African
National Congress (ANC), and the Minister of
Intelligence in the South African government between
2004-2008. A South African of Jewish descent, he has
also played a leading role throughout his political
history in building solidarity with Palestinian
liberation. He spoke to the critical importance of an
internationalist perspective for the ANC historically.
He described their careful study of the Vietnamese
national liberation struggle and its strategy of
people’s war; the influence of victorious movements in
Algeria and Cuba on ANC development; and the material
support which other national liberation struggles were
able to offer South Africa.</p>
<p>Kasrils pointed out the closely intersecting histories
of South African and Israeli apartheid. The apartheid
government was first elected in South Africa in 1948,
the same year as the Israeli Zionist project expelled
the Palestinians from their land in the catastrophic <em>Nakba.</em>
He highlighted the ways in which the <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/israel-treatment-palestinians-apartheid-south-africa">international
boycotts and disinvestment campaign</a> became a key
pressure tactic against South Africa’s apartheid regime.
In 1986 the U.S. Congress adopted the Comprehensive
Anti-Apartheid Act, contributing to South Africa’s
isolation as an outlaw state. While the majority of the
world distanced itself from South Africa, Israel
cemented its role as one of South Africa’s main
strategic military allies. In 1975 Israel offered to
sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime and in
1979 <a
href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4890545,00.html">Israel
and South Africa collaborated on the test of a nuclear
bomb in the Indian Ocean</a>.</p>
<p>Robin Kelley, distinguished scholar of African-American
history and a professor at UCLA, brought the long
history of solidarity between the Black radical movement
in the U.S. and the Palestinian liberation movement to
the conversation. He argued that solidarity was rooted
in a politics of shared principles and that it was
important for the U.S. movement today to go beyond the
politics of “analogy” based solely on a shared
experience of oppression. He pointed out that in the
1960’s, it was not enough to have a common experience of
oppression. In fact, Black center/right politicians
supported Israel while radical Black forces aligned with
organizations such as the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and its vision of radical
Third World nationalism and a democratic socialist
state. “It is not the conditions of captivity, but the
critique of captivity and shared visions of liberation
that form the basis for real solidarity,” Kelley
insisted.</p>
<p>Rabab Abdulhadi contextualized the significance of
holding the Teaching Palestine conference in South
Africa. “The heroic struggle of the South African people
must be learned from despite critiques of the current
political situation,” she insisted. She also spoke to
the importance of the <em>Teaching Palestine</em>
initiative as a means of shifting how Palestine is
framed – a departure from a narrative of subjugation,
submission and defeat to one of resistance, liberation
and solidarity. Though this was the intellectual project
she initiated, <em>teaching Palestine</em> has been the
praxis of Palestine transnationally as long as the
Palestinian resistance has been around. Through
education, Palestinians could affirm their history, land
and struggle in the face of dispossession and
displacement. Today, it is not only critical for
Palestinians to know their own history but to also learn
from and stand in solidarity with other struggles for
liberation.</p>
<p>The need to speak the truth about South African history
and dispel sanitized distortions was asserted throughout
the conference and study tour. Salim Vally pointed out
that the end of apartheid and the first democratic
elections in April 1994 were a result of a long
multi-dimensional struggle. However, the victory is
often attributed to a “politics of negotiation and
forgiveness,” that gained sway in the period leading up
to and after the elections. Such politics are now held
up as a model for other struggles such as Palestine
despite their problematic impact on South Africa.</p>
<p>As Vally and Jeenah assert in their edited book <a
href="http://amec.org.za/portfolio/books/item/1345-pretending-democracy-israel-an-ethnocratic-state.html">Pretending
Democracy</a> , “For ordinary working-class South
Africans, the development of the constitution and the
process of ‘reconciliation’ such as it has been, have
contributed little or nothing to ending their lives of
struggle, misery, poverty and racism.” In his article <a
href="https://thoughtleader.co.za/naeemjeenah/2008/01/31/martyrs-and-reconciliation/"><em>Martyrs
and Reconciliation</em></a>, Jeenah points out that
Zionists often manipulatively advise Palestinians to
learn from South Africa’s history of non-violent and
peaceful resistance. “<a
href="https://thoughtleader.co.za/naeemjeenah/2008/01/31/martyrs-and-reconciliation/">We
were not peaceful; our struggle was not peaceful! We
fought hard, we lost much and we offered up many
martyrs in order that we might liberate the people of
this country — both black and white.”</a></p>
<p>Many presenters from South Africa, Palestine and
elsewhere reiterated this critique, pointing out that
the negotiations that resulted in the 1994 elections
involved multiple compromises and the acceptance of a
neoliberal economic framework which precluded wealth and
land redistribution. Speakers talked about the deep
problems of the governing ANC party over the past
twenty-five years, exemplified by the pervasiveness of <a
href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-05-07-livestream-popo-molefe-testifies-before-state-capture-commission">state
capture</a>, the term commonly used for government
corruption. Within the ANC itself there is a continuing
effort to challenge these endemic problems.</p>
<p>Trevor Ngwane, a scholar activist who teaches and
conducts research at the University of Johannesburg,
pointed out in his presentation during the study tour
that the South African constitution exemplifies some of
the best aspects of liberal bourgeois legal principles,
including democratic and human rights for all, same sex
marriage and the legalization of cannabis. Yet when it
comes to the socio-economic realities, South Africa is
one of the most grossly unequal societies in the world
today with unemployment at 40%, land ownership
overwhelmingly dominated by whites, and gender violence
at crisis proportions.</p>
<p>In <a
href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/zyx3c4gMeDdj568npN72/full">a
recent article</a>, Ngwane characterizes South Africa
as an <em>insurgent democracy</em> because of the
ongoing intense level of social movement disruption and
protest against the governing status quo by multiple
sectors of the South African people. Significant recent
protests include the <a
href="https://marikana.mg.co.za/">Marikana mineworkers</a>
strike of 2012, the <a
href="https://mg.co.za/article/2015-10-22-editorial-feesmustfall-is-shaking-us-up">#FeesMustFall</a>
movement to decolonize the system of higher education,
and the <a
href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-08-02-thetotalshutdown-memorandum-of-demands">#Total
Shutdown</a> movement in 2018 to confront rampant
gender violence.</p>
<p>Solidarity with Palestine is also a contested issue in
post-apartheid South African society although the
government position on Israel is very different than
that of the apartheid regime. The ANC and the government
it leads have pledged solidarity with the Palestinian
struggle and have repeatedly condemned Israeli
settlement expansion in the West Bank and the relentless
attacks on Gaza. In 2018, South Africa recalled its
ambassador from Israel after Israel’s brutal attacks
against the Gaza Great March of Return.</p>
<p>The South African government has also played a role in
resisting what Matshidiso Motsoeneng described as
Israel’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/will-south-africa-push-back-israels-charm-offensive-africa">charm
offensive in Africa</a>, a strategy to normalize
relationships with African countries across the
continent by offering economic support, technological
development and military training. South Africa has led
the rejection of Israel’s attempts to gain observer
status in the African Union which Israel has sought in
order to wield more influence in the region.</p>
<p>Civil society and grassroots organizations as well as
members of the ANC have consistently pressured the South
African government to support the Palestinian struggle.
They have called upon the government to sever all
diplomatic, economic and cultural ties with the Israeli
state and to build solidarity in multiple ways. In 2013
Ahmed Kathrada, a leader of the South African Communist
Party and a former political prisoner who spent 25 years
on Robben Island, initiated an international campaign to
free Palestinian leader and political prisoner <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/opinion/palestinian-hunger-strike-prisoners-call-for-justice.html">Marwan
Barghouti</a>. Kathrada commented that South Africans
“<a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/release-of-marwan-barghouti-and-all-palestinian-political-prisoners/?print=pdf">have
a sacred duty to campaign for the unconditional</a>
release of Marwan Barghouti and all Palestinian
political prisoners as an essential step towards the
freedom of the Palestinian people and peace in the
region.”</p>
<p>The Palestine Solidarity Alliance, the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign and BDS South Africa are among a
number of groups that consistently organize for
Palestine through a variety of tactics, including
education and support for BDS. Palestine solidarity
activists described the ongoing struggles regarding BDS
at universities which bear many similarities to that at
U.S. universities. The South African Student Union
endorsed <a
href="http://www.bdssouthafrica.com/academic-boycott/wits-right-to-protest/south-african-union-of-students-statement-on-wits-university-sentencing-students-for-protesting-israeli-concert/">BDS
in 2011</a> and in a landmark decision, the University
of Johannesburg academic senate voted to end its ties
with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University that same year. In
2017, Tshwane University of Technology, the largest
residential higher education institution in South
Africa, officially endorsed the Palestinian call for an
academic boycott of Israel, and imposed a ban on ties
with Israel and Israeli institutions.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Tokelo Nhlapo, a researcher and
former graduate student at the University of the
Witwatersrand (Wits), explained that he was one of
eleven students who were expelled from the University
for disrupting an Israeli-funded concert which violated
the cultural boycott of Israel. A widespread outrage at
this harsh disciplinary action grew at Wits (which
resulted in the suspension of the expulsion order). A <a
href="http://www.bdssouthafrica.com/academic-boycott/wits-right-to-protest/wits-uni-punishes-students-for-protesting-israeli-concert-students-slam-vice-chancellor-for-improper-conduct-and-are-to-appeal-decision/">WITS
student leader explained</a>, “Protest is not only an
expression that should be protected but protests against
Israeli-sponsored events also falls within the principle
of internationalism that our country once benefited
from. Thousands of students, workers and others
protested against Apartheid South Africa sponsored
events in the 1980s often disrupting cricket matches,
rugby games etc. This international movement of boycotts
contributed to our freedom today.”</p>
<p>The <em>Teaching Palestine</em> conference took place
against the backdrop of escalating Zionist attacks
against speaking and teaching about Palestine worldwide.
In the U.S., Zionist groups <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/01/24/what-you-cant-say-about-israel-with-marc-lamont-hill/">have
recently mounted frontal attacks against Black leaders</a>
such as <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/angela-davis-latest-black-target-israel-lobby">Angela
Davis, Marc Lamont Hill,</a> and Michelle Alexander
because of their support for Palestinian freedom.
Incidents of <a
href="https://palestinelegal.org/news/2019/3/22/trumps-campus-speech-executive-aims-to-squelch-free-and-open-debate">academic
intimidation and suppression</a> regarding support for
Palestine continue to increase. Dr. Abdulhadi initiated
<em>Teaching Palestine</em> while she was being accused
of false charges of antisemitism in a lawsuit filed by
the Zionist Lawfare Project in June 2017. <a
href="https://palestinelegal.org/news/2018/10/30/lawfare-case-thrown-out">The
lawsuit was defeated in October 2018</a> when Federal
Judge Orrick ruled that the charges against her had no
foundation in fact, but other forms of harassment have
continued, including the recent cancellation of AMED’s
study abroad program in Palestine.</p>
<p>As I traveled through Germany to South Africa,
Palestinian activist <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/rasmea-yousef-odeh">Rasmea
Odeh</a> was <a
href="https://samidoun.net/2019/03/last-night-in-berlin-the-attack-on-rasmea-odeh-is-an-attack-on-palestine/">banned</a>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/riri-hylton/under-israeli-pressure-germany-revokes-rasmea-odeh-visa">from
speaking at a public meeting in Berlin on March 19th</a>
marking International Women’s Day after German officials
revoked her visa. The Israeli government claimed credit
for the action and the Berlin Senate denounced BDS
Berlin, one of the co-hosts of the event, as an
“anti-Semitic coalition.” And on March 21, an event
where <a
href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/vienna-museum-cancels-palestine-event-leader-south-african-anti-apartheid-struggle">Ronnie
Kasril’s was scheduled to speak at the Vienna Museum</a>
for Israeli Apartheid Week was canceled for similar
reasons. In response Kasrils stated, <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/israel-treatment-palestinians-apartheid-south-africa">“South
Africa’s apartheid government banned me for life</a>
from attending meetings. Nothing I said could be
published, because I stood up against apartheid. How
disgraceful that, despite the lessons of our struggle
against racism, such intolerance continues to this day,
stifling free speech on Palestine.”</p>
<p>Mandla Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s eldest grandson,
confirmed the comparison with South Africa at the
International Conference on Palestine held in Istanbul
at the end of April. “<a
href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190429-mandela-grandson-south-africa-model-for-palestinians/">We
say it to the world that as we were able to undermine
the apartheid regime in South Africa, we will be able
to do this with the apartheid regime in Israel.”</a>
He also called for the South African government to use
its seat in the UN Security Council to become <a
href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/south-africa-model-for-palestinians-mandela-grandson/1465023">“the
voice of the voiceless and therefore to speak about
the self-determination of Palestine.”</a></p>
<p>For her part, Rabab Abdulhadi is committed to
continuing the work, stating. “We will never be silenced
nor defeated. We will continue linking communities,
critically analyzing the world and advocating for an
indivisible sense of justice. We take our inspiration
from the people who are struggling for their freedom,
dignity and peace in Palestine, South Africa and here in
the United States. This is our community of justice and
this is why we teach Palestine.”</p>
<p><em><strong>Diana Block</strong> is the author of a
novel, Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History
(PM Press, 2015) and a memoir, Arm the Spirit : A
Woman’s Journey Underground and Back (AK Press, 2009).
She is an active member of the California Coalition
for Women Prisoners and the anti- prison coalition
CURB. She writes periodically for Counterpunch and
other online journals.</em></p>
</div>
<p> <em><strong>Diana Block</strong> is the author of a
novel, Clandestine Occupations – An Imaginary History
(PM Press, 2015) and a memoir, Arm the Spirit – A
Woman’s Journey Underground and Back (AK Press, 2009).
She is an active member of the <a
href="http://www.womenprisoners.org/" target="_blank"
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.womenprisoners.org&source=gmail&ust=1463177050177000&usg=AFQjCNG6bf2y3Z0ARzPRIghHmb27ukbk3w">California
Coalition for Women Prisoners </a>and the <a
href="http://www.curbprisonspending.org/"
target="_blank"
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.curbprisonspending.org&source=gmail&ust=1463177050177000&usg=AFQjCNFsrq3c-lEsaHyMf_SQUn7bxifv1w">anti-prison
coalition CURB. </a>She is a member of the editorial
collective of <a
href="http://womenprisoners.org/?page_id=1061"
target="_blank"
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://womenprisoners.org/?page_id%3D1061&source=gmail&ust=1463177050177000&usg=AFQjCNF5kajIIMwWiTOgqG8hNnYfB5F3Zg">The
Fire Inside newsletter</a> and she writes periodically
for various online journals.</em> </p>
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