The Electronic Intifada Podcast 17 April 2024
Many governments have responded and even the US abstained – rather than vetoed – a UN Security Council resolution in March calling for a temporary ceasefire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and Malta have also committed to recognizing a Palestinian state, joining eight other EU member states, including Poland and Sweden who have already done so, even though the EU as a whole has yet to take this step.
Nevertheless, Israel has continued its genocide in Gaza, seemingly unconcerned. And crucially, Israel’s most important allies, the US and the UK, have remained largely unmoved and continue to support Israel diplomatically and militarily, with little to no regard for popular feeling.
This prompts the question of whether we have reached the limits of what Palestine activism can achieve or whether the current popular momentum can turn into an Apartheid South Africa moment, a moment of global solidarity that led inexorably to the collapse of South Africa’s racist regime.
To discuss this, and more about the parallels and differences between Palestine activism and the anti-Apartheid movement, The Electronic Intifada talked to two veteran activists.
Things can change fast
Ghada Karmi has authored several books on Palestine, including her latest, One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel, as well as a memoir, In Search of Fatima that detailed her family’s flight from Jerusalem during the 1947-49 Nakba.
Andrew Feinstein was a long-time anti-apartheid activist who became a parliamentarian for Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress party after the country’s first free elections in 1994.
The son of a Holocaust survivor, an experience that informed both his and his mother’s opinions on apartheid and Palestine, he is the author of a book about the ANC, After the Party, as well as an investigation into the global arms trade, The Shadow World.
“The imperative is to stop the genocide and to stop the ethnic cleansing,” Karmi said.
And while resolution might seem far away, ultimately, she said, “the only realistic, practical, just and humane endpoint to this is the creation of a proper democratic state, in which both these peoples become equal citizens.”
Feinstein pointed out that situations can change faster than expected.
“In 1986, when I had to leave South Africa, if someone had told me apartheid would be over four years later, I would have used my training as a clinical psychologist and offered them a straitjacket.”
Watch the video above or listen via SoundCloud below.
Filmed and directed by Asa Winstanley. Produced by Tamara Nassar.
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Comments
exalent civilised discussion
Permalink IAN KEMP replied on
exalent civilised discussion by all. There is hope that what is happening Palestine will eventually end for the good of all.
One state is the only way
Permalink Colin replied on
I am a South African, born in Africa. I am in my 60th decade here, I lived through the worst of apartheid, I know it when I see it, smell it and hear it.
Anyone who has lived through a life changing experience -- apartheid, cancer, a horror of human loss -- knows that thing in a profoundly different way to those who have not.
One sees it from the inside, the other as an observer.
I know that the 'thing' I see quacking like a duck and walking like a duck, is a duck!
It is the same philosophy that bound the South African apartheid system with the Israeli system during the darkest days of SA's time. The Israeli's provided weapons, technology, license agreements and technical skills to those defending and upholding SA apartheid.
The Israeli apartheid project is not new, it is simply in a new phase when it can cock a snoot at the world because it has a bully at their back.
As was the case in SA - there cannot be a balkanisation / bantustan solution in Palestine.
The two-state idea was always a dead duck... and some people recognised that long ago and opposed it.
The solution will be found by going back to how the land was in 1916 (pre-Balfour, pre-colonisation). It was a land inhabited by a people, call them whatever they care to be called, but it was not an empty land.
If Jewish or any other people care to live in that parcel of land (as it was in 2016), then they can do so as citizens with the same rights as those who lived there then.
It cannot be that a third party gives away something they have not title or right to.
Otherwise, I can claim that parts of Nebraska are "an empty land" and settle it for the Yazidis...
PALESTINE: One country, different peoples, equal rights, one vote each...
Karmi/Weinstein
Permalink Antje replied on
Excellent video
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