Event location: North Campus Conference Centre
Event date and time: 04/04/2019 13:00:00
CANRAD, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee and BDS-SA invite you to a LUNCHTIME DIALOGUE.
As part of the 15th International #IsraelApartheidWeek.
Keynote Speaker: Lema Nazeeh
Diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Palestine
Respondent: Siyasanga Ngwabeni (MA Political Studies candidate)
Facilitated by Prof Christi van der Westhuizen
RSVP: Siphosethu Sandi
Telephone: (041) 504-4390
Email: canrad@mandela.ac.za
Light refreshments will be served
See below for more info and how to get involved, or visit www.iawafrica.com
15TH INTERNATIONAL ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK (IAW)
01 - 07 April 2019 (African Dates)
BACKGROUND
“The world must hear the Palestinian voice and give them support”
Former President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere
Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of Apartheid, said in 1961: “Israel, like South Africa, is an Apartheid
State”. Since then there have been several senior -and more appropriate- South Africans who have
compared Apartheid South Africa to current-day Israel, including: Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Former
South African Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Mothlante (who was the keynote speaker at IAW
2017); Anti-Apartheid Icons Ahmed Kathrada, Denis Goldberg (who was a keynote speaker at IAW 2013),
Kader Asmal and Winnie Mandela. Other notable personalities who have compared the two situations
include poet Breyten Breytenbach, jurist John Dugard and the late author Allister Sparks. Speaker of the
South African Parliament Baleka Mbete (who was a keynote speaker at IAW 2016) said that the Israeli
regime is not only comparable but 'far worse than apartheid South Africa'. The South African Government
itself has on several occasions condemned Israeli practices toward the indigenous Palestinians as
"reminiscent of Apartheid" (refer to the following: statement 1, statement 2). In January 2018, at the
UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), South Africa slammed Israel as “the only state in the world that
can be called an apartheid state”.
But beyond comparisons, there is also a growing paper trail. In 2009, in a 300-page report commissioned
by the South African government, the Human Sciences Research Council found that Israel is guilty of
practicing apartheid. This position was then confirmed by the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, in 2011. In
March 2012 the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination made similar
findings followed a month later by the United Nations Human Rights Council releasing a scathing report
on the state of human rights in Israel, finding that a form of “institutionalized discrimination” is practiced
by Israel. In 2017 a United Nations report, which Israel later forced to be withdrawn, was released by the
UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) detailing how Israel has established "an
apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole". Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and various other legal and human rights organizations have made
similar findings reaffirming Israel as an Apartheid state.
MOTIVATION
“International solidarity is not an act of charity: It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different
terrains toward the same objective”
Former President of Mozambique, Samora
During the 1980s, for the liberation of Africans, people of the world mobilized in their hundreds of
thousands, if not millions: they held protests, rallies, concerts, free Mandela events, lectures, film
screenings and a host of other events and campaigns to raise awareness of Apartheid South Africa's racist
policies as well as the oppression of the people of Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe etc.
Israel shamefully supported the Apartheid regime of South Africa as well as other colonial powers in
African countries supplying these countries with weapons that were used on our people. However, it was
the Palestinian people, who gave South Africans and other African nations resources, military training and
other forms of support and solidarity.
Today we have the opportunity to "give-back" by joining the international movement in solidarity with the
indigenous Palestinian people (and their progressive Jewish Israeli allies) who are campaigning against
Israeli Apartheid – endorsing and participating in Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is one such form of
solidarity with the people of Palestine.