South African Government Discourages Citizens from Traveling to Israel

South African Government Discourages Citizens from Traveling to Israel

South African Government Discourages Citizens from Traveling to Israel

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following report was issued by BDS South Africa on 11 August 2012.] 

South Africa`s Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation has unequivocally communicated the South African government`s position on "boycott-busting" trips to Israel (which the Israeli lobby has attempted to take students, journalists, sports people, CEOs, government officials, mayors and others on):

"Because of the treatment and policies of Israel towards the Palestinian people, we strongly discourage South Africans from going there [to Israel]...[and] any South African company from having anything to do with strengthening the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories."

- Mail&Guardian, 10 August 2012

South Africa`s position is commendable; having relations and dealings with Israel (other than to pursue peace) normalizes an abnormal regime and tacitly endorses Israel`s illegal occupation and apartheid policies toward the Palestinian people.

Major Set-Back for Israeli Lobby in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province of South Africa

In 2005, Palestinian civil society and political groups issued a call to the international community for a campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it abides by international law and respects human rights.

The SA-Israel Forum, in contravention of this BDS call, has attempted several "boycott-busting" trips to Israel. The SA-Israel Forum is mostly a covert arm of the Israeli lobby operating in South Africa with direct connections to CapeGate—a South African company that, shamefully, supplies material to, and profits from, the construction of Israel`s notorious, "Apartheid Wall." The SA-Israel Forum seeks to co-opt business and entice local government by circumventing SA`s national policy - which is to discourage relations with the Israeli regime. The Israeli lobby in general, and the SA-Israel Forum in particular, have been taking members from the academic, sports, business, media, and local government sectors to forge relations with the Israeli establishment (which is becoming increasingly isolated because of Israel`s oppression toward the Palestinian people and  active BDS campaigning worldwide).

Click here to learn some of those from the SA business sector that were taken on a SA-Israel Forum trip to Israel. Early last year, the Israeli lobby also tried to break the sports boycott of Israel by hosting a delegation of SA Rugby Union (SARU) members in Israel, including Oregan Hoskins and Peter de Villiers. However, that trip back-fired with a huge outcry from South Africans, particularly from former SARU rugby players, who even threatened to burn their blazers because of the SARU trip to Israel.

Then, this week (5-12 August) the SA-Israel Forum was intending to take a delegation from the KZN province of mayors and other municipal members to Israel. An urgent joint letter from the ANC Youth League; SA`s largest trade union federation, COSATU; the SA Students Congress, SASCO; and other groups was sent to the Premier of the KZN province, Dr Zweli Mkhize (download here), together with a letter of support from Palestinian Christians (read here) and another letter, interestingly, from a group of progressive Israelis (see here), all requesting the province of KZN not to cross the international boycott-of-Israel-picket-line. Subsequently, KZN (in line with SA government policy) cancelled the SA-Israel Forum trip to Israel, read all about it here

What You Can Do

The SA-Israel Forum, like its partners overseas in other countries, is nothing more than an Israeli propaganda initiative equivalent to the PR initiatives of Apartheid South Africa. During the 1980s we had similar groups that worked to build relations and buy influence abroad for an isolated Apartheid regime. The SA-Israel Forum is doing the same, but like in the case of Apartheid in South Africa, it is not a new image, nor new relations, that will bring about change. Apartheid South Africa was forced to dump its racist policies; Israel too, needs to dismantle its racist and oppressive policies.

  1. The province of KZN, by refusing to go on this Israeli lobby trip, sets a precedent for all our provinces to follow. If you know of similar trips that are being pursued by the Israeli lobby in your area, make people aware of our government`s policy, or, be in touch with us for more information: administrator@bdssouthafrica.com
  2. This is a major setback for the Israeli lobby, and particularly the SA-Israel Forum. The KZN province should be commended for its principled position. You can write to the province at: Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, Moses Mabhida Building, 300 Langalibalele Street, Pietermaritzburg, 3201
  3. Contact BDS South Africa to arrange a full workshop and presentation on Israel-Palestine and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for your community:administrator@bdssouthafrica.com

During the late 1980s, the UK government also "discouraged" trips to Apartheid South Africa. The current Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, who was a local politician at that stage, contravened the UK`s policy (and, of course, the ANC`s boycott call) when he came to South Africa on an apartheid lobby trip (similar to the ones organized today by the SA-Israel Forum). Cameron later distanced himself, but only after the demise of apartheid. The trick, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it, is: "how do we commit ourselves to virtue before its political triumph?"

Be on the right side of history: join and support the international boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) of Israel campaign.

  

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412