Na'eem Jeenah - The African Apartheid and the Palestinian Plight (2002)

Na'eem Jeenah: Let me begin by making it clear who I am. I speak here this evening as a South African. I speak here this evening as an African. But more than that, I speak here this evening as a black South African that has lived under, suffered under, and struggled against an apartheid system. I should also, since I'm saying that, make it clear, because I've been asked this on a number of occasions after lectures that I've delivered in the recent past, I'm not Palestinian, I don't have any family in Palestine, and my ancestry is not Palestinian. So that has nothing to do with why I'm doing what I'm doing. What I plan on doing this evening is looking at the state of Israel and comparing it to the South African apartheid state of the past. I'm going to split this part of what I'm going to talk about into two parts. The first part I'll deal with that political entity that's referred to as Israel and for the purposes of this talk I'll call it Israel. What Palestinians prefer to refer to as Palestine 48 in terms of its geographical nature. And in the second part of this, I'll talk about Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, the so-called occupied Palestinian territory. Now, when we look at the first aspect, there are a number of critical areas around which we could characterize Israel as an apartheid state and compare it to the South African apartheid state. I'm going to take a couple of these... two of the more crucial aspects and deal with them in some detail so that that might set the basis for us to have a discussion. The first issue that I want to look at is the question of nationality or citizenship. Now if you look at the apartheid South African state, we found that the Apartheid government has deprived African people in the South African population, meaning just over 80% of the South African population, had deprived them of their citizenship or their nationality in the South African state. They were removed as citizens of South Africa, and the citizenship was then transferred. Now, one of the pillars of the apartheid system and of the apartheid ideology was the whole notion of what the apartheid government called homelands, what we prefer to call bantu sons. And so the apartheid state created these bantustans, Transkei, Bhagwat Aswana, Benda, Siskai. It then de-citizenized more than 80% of the South African population and transferred their citizenship to these new political entities. These new entities, of course, as far as most of the rest of the world was concerned, didn't exist. So the citizenship of more than 80% of the population was then transferred to these new political entities, and they were no more then regarded as citizens of South Africa, and no more then, in terms of that rationale, have any rights within South Africa. This implied, of course, that Africans, and I use this apartheid era terminology just to be able to understand what we're talking about, anyone else's clarity about what I mean by the kind of terminology I'm using in Africa, This then resulted in Africans becoming aliens in their own homeland. They had no rights in the place of their birth. And so, as a typical example, a Xhosa-speaking person, for example, living in Cape Town, whose parents might have been living there, who might have been born there, got little bits of apartheid education for whatever it was worth there, is working there. Suddenly he discovers that he or she is no longer regarded as a citizen of this country, of South Africa. That rather, he or she is now a citizen of another country, another entity, called Transkei, which is about 1,500 kilometers away, which country, in quotes, he or she might never visit in his or her lifetime. This was the kind of reality that faced African people in that context. An important point I should just make here, however, is that in this context, these people, more than 80% of the population, while being deprived of their citizenship, were still regarded by the apartheid state as being legal persons. Hence, the state had to take care of their citizenship in one way or another. It couldn't just deprive them of it. It had to be replaced by a new citizenship. So their legal persona was still acknowledged right through and realized and therefore had to be dealt with. They were not defined out of legal existence, as has been the case in Israel. Now, in the Israeli context, we find that currently, of the close to 4 million Palestinians that are entitled to citizenship of the State of Israel, in terms of UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which partitioned Palestine, of these four million Palestinians that are entitled to citizenship of the state of Israel, only 25% of them actually have any kind of citizenship within the state of Israel. The other 75% have not been granted citizenship, but have in a sense been defined out of legal existence. They just, as far as the Israeli apartheid state is concerned, they just don't exist. And they don't have to be dealt with. Unlike the situation of African people in South Africa, who had to, in some way, be dealt with. There needed to be some way in which they were sorted out. In the Palestinian context, for these three million, that just doesn't have to happen. And this... the absentee property law of 1950, and I'll talk about that law in a few moments. But before I do that, another curious aspect about the citizenship issue that I just want to mention. In Israeli birth certificates, there are a number of descriptions, like all birth certificates there are included religion, nationality, and citizenship. I should just say, as far as the religion thing is concerned, Palestinians, and I refuse to call them Israeli Arabs, as Israelis call them. They are Palestinians who live in Israel. Palestinians are very concerned about this category of religion in itself, because in terms of that, you're either Jewish, or you're Christian or Muslim, which makes you Palestinian, and therefore easily... easily targeted. But that's not the point that I want to make. The point that I want to make is that the third category that I mentioned, citizenship. For Jews who are citizens of the state of Israel, citizenship is listed as Israeli. For non-Jews, Palestinians, in the main, who are citizens of the state of Israel, citizenship is left blank. It's undefined, it's indefinite, it's indeterminate. Now, what does that really mean? For Palestinians who, for all of their lives and all of their ancestry have lived on this land, suddenly find themselves in a new state created without any consultation with them, and then not even regarded as properly citizens of that state because the birth certificate refuses to list them as citizens. That is the Absentee Property Law and the other is the Law of Return. Both of these laws were enacted in 1950. The Absentee Property Law was enacted first and it was followed by the Law of Return and there were very good, sound, rational, logical reasons for why the Law of Return followed the Absentee Property Law. It, in a sense, had to follow the Absentee Property Law. The Absentee Property Law defines Palestinians, Palestinians who lived in that geographical area, that later became known as Israel, defines Palestinians into three categories. There are those Palestinians according to the law that are present, there are those Palestinians according to the law that are absent, and then there are those Palestinians according to the law that are present absentees. As ridiculous as that might sound. Now, let me just talk very quickly about each of the like all Palestinians, have been living there, living in their homes, on their lands, etc., for all of their lives. Come the terror campaign waged by the Irgun and the Stern and the Haganah in the mid to late 40s, they remained in their homes despite all of that and despite the intimidation, etc., remained in their homes, remained on their lands, and were still there when Israel was established as a state. They are regarded as being present. They have citizenship rights. wife, but that's another issue. Those Palestinians who are regarded as being absent are those who are living there, and through all of these various actions by the Ilgun, Stern, Haganah, etc., because their neighboring villages were attacked and they felt intimidated and they left, or they were part of those villages that were attacked and terrorized into leaving and went out of the country, became refugees, etc., they then were not, or they are now not there in their homes. They are regarded as being absent, and these make up all of the refugees that are entitled to citizenship in the State of Israel. They are regarded as being absent, they just don't exist, and their lands and properties, etc., have been taken over and used very well in terms of the other law, the law of return. Then we have the third category of people, of Palestinians, rather, And these are those who are called present absentees. This is a very interesting category. Present absentees are those who, like the absentees, would have been forced out of their homes. Let me take an example. Let's assume you have a certain person who, in 1947, at the beginning of 1947, through the attacks by the Haganah, for example, left her home with her families. She then went to Jordan or wherever. Now remember that the Irgun and the Stern and the Haganah, through their various attacks, committed a number of massacres throughout Palestine. Deir Yassin being the most famous one of those, but a number of other massacres. By 1948, more than 450 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground. So what they did was quite serious. she then goes into exile, into a temporary refugee status, let's say in January 1947. Now there's a period defined in the absentee property law between 1947 and 1948. And our example, she goes into this temporary refuge in January 1947. For that period between 1947 and 1948, she's not present in what suddenly becomes known as Israel. She returns then. in December 1948. So for that whole period she's not there. She returns in December 1948. Today she might be resident in Israel as it is. Children might be schooling there. She might be working there. She pays taxes there. But she is a present absentee because of that period between 47 and 48 she wasn't there. And so she's not a proper citizen of the state of Israel and she has no claim over the lands and property etc. that she owned. Let's turn to the law of return. The law of return is in fact one of the pillars of Israeli apartheid. In terms of the law of return, Jews all over the world have the right or are given the right to come to Israel, to claim citizenship of the state of Israel, be granted that citizenship, and then get a number of benefits following on that citizenship, settlement benefits, etc. Of course, this means that even Jews that have no lineage or ancestor linked to the land of Palestine whatsoever are able to exercise this right in terms of the law of return. So even though there can be no traceable lineage back to Palestine to even say, my ancestors lived here, let alone owned anything here, they have the right to go there and become citizens. And the settlement benefits that they're afforded, of course, come out of what was dispossessed on the basis of the absentee property law from Palestinians. Hence, as I said, the logical reason for why the one law follows the other. Now, a curious note that I want to add here is that Israel maintains a list of a number of countries throughout the world that are regarded as being particularly hostile to Jews. And Jews from these countries, if they emigrate to Israel, get a huge package, much larger than the ordinary Jewish person from Brooklyn, for example, might get. Now, the reason I mention this is a very personal reason, is that my own country, South Africa, has been added to that list after September of last year. And the reference to September of last year is not because of the 11th of September. In North America, people generally think that my reference to September last year is in reference to the anti-racism conference that took place in Dublin. And following that conference, the Israeli state decided that South Africa was a country that was particularly hostile to Jewish people, and hence, if any Jew from my country now wants to go to Israel and become a citizen there and settle there, would get this extra huge package to assist him or her to settle on Palestinian land. Well, since I mentioned the word land, let's move on to the next issue. And that is the question of land. Land, of course, is a very crucial issue for all anti-colonial struggles all over the world. Always has been, still is, in many contexts. In some of those contexts, those issues have been resolved in one way or another. In some of those contexts, they are under resolution. In some of those contexts, they haven't been resolved. Zimbabwe and South Africa, South Africa my country, and Zimbabwe the one next door to us, fall in that second category of still being under resolution. But the land issue is a big issue for everyone. In our context, in the South African context, land dispossession began from 1652, when the first colonialists arrived in South Africa. They arrived and began dispossessing the indigenous people of their land in a number of ways. Enslavement of the Khoi Khoi and the Sun, for example, wars of subjugation against the Zulu and the Xhosa, and other such ways in which people were subjugated, their land stolen, etc. In the 20th century, we found a number of laws that facilitated this land dispossession. We had the Land Act of 1913, for example, which helped to dispossess black people generally, but African people in particular, of their land. Then closer to our time, from 1948 onwards, 1948 being not only the establishment of the State of Israel, but also the establishment of apartheid in South Africa, from 1948 onwards, One of the pillars of apartheid in South Africa was what is called the Group Areas Act. In terms of the Group Areas Act, areas are defined as being for the residential and business use of a particular racial group only. So let me give you an example. I mean, this is not just a definition that happens on a map. It has serious consequences for people that are actually living and have lives and homes and property. Let me give you an example or two examples from the area where I live, that is Johannesburg. There are two areas in Johannesburg that used to be called Fitas and Sophia Town. Lots of the famous South African jazz musicians come from Sophia Town. Author, poet, Don Matera, internationally known, comes from Sophia Town. These two areas were later renamed to Pageview and Triumph, respectively. Triumph means victory. for them. What happened in these two areas was that both of these areas were classified as being for white residential use only. Both of these areas were, to use a term that we don't use in South Africa, but I'll use because you might understand it better, both of these areas were multiracial. Black people from all three black racial groups lived there, worked there, and did their thing there, and great vibrant culture, I've been told a bit before my time, in those two areas. They were defined as being areas for whites only. Houses were demolished, bulldozed. I'm not sure where the caterpillar was around at that time, but they were bulldozed. People's possessions were dumped into trucks, and people were dumped about 30, 35 kilometers away from the city center. Both of these areas were close to the city center, just west of the city center. They were dumped about 30, 35 kilometers away, mostly working class people. African people were dumped in Soweto. Colored people were dumped in El Dorado Park, and Indians were dumped in La Nacia. In South Africa we would say so-called African, so-called colored, and so-called Indian, but I'll drop that for now. And so this was one of the ways in which people who were black people were dispossessed of their land, their properties, their homes, etc. Now when we come to the Palestinian case, original sin regarding the Palestinian question. That original sin is based on what is now the kind of Zionist dictum that Palestine was a land without a people for people without a land, Theodor Herzl's statement. Or perhaps more blatantly, Golda Meier's statement, there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. These form the founding lies of the Israeli state. The founding lies of the Israeli state. And both of these relate to the issue of land, of course. Now, looking again, as I said earlier on, I'm still looking just at that entity that's called Israel, and I should just make a side comment here, that it's a bit difficult to talk about land within Israel, because Israel has consistently refused to define what its borders are. Israel, this great democracy of the Middle East, it refused to define its borders. Nevertheless, land ownership in Israel is defined into four categories. The first three of these categories are what are known as national lands. These are, firstly, state lands, secondly, development authority lands, and thirdly, lands that belong to the Jewish National Fund. The fourth category is what are called private lands. Private lands are the only category of lands in which Palestinians, what Israelis call Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, the only category within which Palestinians can own land. And so they own land in some of those private lands. Private lands make up 7.4% of the total land in Israel. This means that 92.6% of the land in Israel is national or are national lands, the ownership and use of Jewish people. Palestinians then, who make up in Israel, after the de-citizenizing of 75% of the population that's entitled to citizenship, of the 25% that's left, they still make up 20% of the Israeli population. They are by law not able to own or use 92.6% of the land that exists. Now, having said that, a quick reflection backwards. If you just look at what one or two land statistics looked like in 1947, just before the passing of the UN General Assembly Resolution 181. Now, we should remember that the Zionist movement was formed in the late 19th century, and the first half of the 20th century, it spent a lot of its time and energy encouraging, in various ways, Jews from various parts of the world to emigrate to Palestine. And, of course, the majority of these Jews that did immigrate were people that had no lineage or ancestral link to the land of Palestine at all. By 1947, before Resolution 181 was passed, 30% of the Palestinian population was Jewish. 7% of the land was owned by Jews. 7% of the land was owned by Jews. Yet the United Nations, in all its great wisdom and without consulting any Palestinians at all, decided to divide Palestine into two states, a Jewish state, 55% of Palestine, and an Arab state, 45% of Palestine. Of course, Israel redefined that and then took over more areas so that it then became 78%, actually 2%. But nevertheless, my point was that by 1947, 7% of the land was owned by Jewish people. Land dispossession in the Palestinian context has taken place through a number of means. I spoke about the Zionist terror in the 40s. That was a big thing. The destruction, as I said, of more than 450 Palestinian villages. The absentee property law played an important role in land dispossession. House demolitions assist in doing that. All of these kinds of things. But one additional thing that I want to mention specifically and make a point about area, particularly, have the distinction of being the only Palestinians for whom Israel has built settlements. Now, these Bedouins are people, as the name implies, people who live on the land. They were either agriculturalists or pastoralists, live on the land, they have their own kind of Bedouin culture and relationship to each other and relationship to the land, etc. Their land was stolen literally into apartment block type settlements, little urbanized things. The impact that this has had on Bedouin culture, on Bedouin psyche, on the whole family structure and social structure of the Bedouin people has been immense. With having this kind of thing imposed on them and then having to deal with that and live with that has resulted in Right up to now, I mean a few months ago there were articles in the Independent and Guardian, and if anyone wants you can go to their websites and search and check up on this, but right up to now, Benuan land is still being dispossessed. The articles that I'm referring to talk about instances where Benuan crops, for example, are repeatedly sprayed from the air with toxic chemicals. I guess that's biological warfare. Are repeatedly sprayed from the air by toxic chemicals in order to destroy the crops. Crops are destroyed, the women have lost much of their livelihood, they're herded into these settlements, their lands are taken over. These lands now belong to the Jewish National Fund. It's not, as the name might seem to imply, some kind of humanitarian organization. It's actually the organization that owns most of the land that was stolen from Palestinian people. Now, when South African anti-apartheid activists, and I've decided that after my bio, by which I was introduced, has been going around, I've now decided to change part of that. And I've stopped referring to myself as a former anti-apartheid activist. If I'm fighting apartheid in Israel, then I'm still an anti-apartheid activist. South African anti-apartheid activists, in the main, when we talk about the comparisons between the two situations, the one thing that is often pointed to is the comparison between the repression of South Africans on the one hand and Palestinians on the other. In the South African context, we had a number of ways in which repression took place. of that. Disappearances, detention without trial, torture in prison, banning orders, house arrests, judicial executions of anti-apartheid activists, as well as judicial executions for criminal cases which favored black people. Extrajudicial executions both within South Africa as well as outside of South Africa in the so-called front line states, the countries surrounding South Africa. and even attempted extrajudicial executions in Europe. In the Israeli context, all of these form part of the repressive armory of the Israeli state. And more than that, it includes depopulation, taking possession of Palestinian land, forfeiture and demolition of property, closures of Palestinian areas, etc. All of these form part of the repressive armory of the Israeli state. And hence, as I say, South African anti-apartheid activists often make this as a kind of comparison. One thing I should just point to here, one example out of all of the things I've mentioned, that in the South African situation, Everyone knew it. It was happening and, you know, as much as the police tried to make sure they didn't leave marks and things like that, we all knew it was happening, it was taking place. People were killed in prison. Despite, you know, the police saying that they jumped, you know, the guy jumped out of the tennis floor window, et cetera, we knew that it was all related to torture. However, we didn't have a situation in South Africa where the Supreme Court, the apartheid-appointed judges in the Supreme Court, found themselves in a position where they could actually legitimize torture taking place in our prisons. In the Israeli context, the Supreme Court has legitimized torture against Palestinians in certain circumstances. Now let me move on to talking about the situation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. between certain kinds of situations. The one aspect is the settlements. And I should just say that settlements are illegal in terms of international law. I don't recognize the right of settlements to exist in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. They don't have a right to exist in terms of international law. They don't have a right to exist. Nevertheless, I'm speaking about them as they are a reality on the ground. Settlements are, of course, for exclusive Jewish use. This includes, for example, the highways that are built for settlers to move between the settlements to Israel proper, I suppose you could call it, or Israel. Eight-lane highways in some instances with 100 meters on either side destroyed of all, cleared of all trees, houses, whatever might exist. Jewish highways might exist to take settlers between the settlements and Israel. Racism, I mean, even in South Africa they didn't have roads for white people. But that's what exists. So in a number of ways there are those similarities. On another level, however, as we do in the West Bank and Gaza context. It was a very different kind of situation. But more importantly for me, that in the South African context, let me just make a point here before I continue. And this is that I've been told on a couple of occasions that this kind of comparison that I'm making comparing apartheid in South Africa to Israeli apartheid is in fact diminishing the importance of this great moral struggle that took place in South Africa against apartheid. This great struggle which took place with the whole world recognized as being important, etc., that my comparison actually diminishes that. Let me make it quite clear. I'm a South African. I struggled against apartheid. I lived under apartheid. If I were to diminish the struggle of black people in South Africa, I would be diminishing myself. And I have absolutely no intention of doing that. We went through many processes by which whites in South Africa tried to diminish who we were. We survived that. We struggled against it. We won against it. I have no intention of diminishing myself. This is not that. This is about talking about the reality of another people. So I was saying, in the South African context, we didn't have... the apartheid state having a policy, whether written or unwritten, official or unofficial, of ethnic cleansing against the black population. In the Palestinian context, particularly when you're talking about Palestinians in so-called occupied territories, Israel has a policy of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian population. Now, in one of my previous lectures, a young woman came up to me afterwards and said, you know, how can you say ethnic cleansing? Israel doesn't intend to kill all the Palestinians. And I'm not suggesting that Israel wants to necessarily kill all the Palestinians. That's not what I'm suggesting. However, when I talk about ethnic cleansing, I mean it in two respects. And both of these respects lies. One, that Palestine is a land without a people, or people without a land, and second, that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. So ethnic cleansing in the Palestinian context from the Israeli side, the one objective of that is to use the euphemistic term, to cleanse Palestinian land of Palestinians, so that that land might then become accessible, a land without a people, and and increased Jewish settlement. The second objective of this ethnic cleansing, and the second way in which I refer to it, is its attempt to not kill all the Palestinians, but to destroy the identity of the Palestinian people as a people. It really doesn't matter to Israel if there are 20 million Palestinians all over the world, every one of them saying, I am a Palestinian. It doesn't matter. Hence, Golda Meir's lie becomes a reality. There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. And these are the objectives of the ethnic cleansing taking place against Palestinian people. And I should just say that one of the big concerns about the possibility of any war being launched against Iraq by Palestinians and Palestinians themselves world, is also what it would mean to the Palestinians. And one of the real fears is that it would result in wide-scale, well, the nice euphemistic word is transfer. It would result in wide-scale transfer of Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza, even, some people suggest, out of Palestine. Now, the really shocking thing For those of us anti-apartheid activists that have visited Palestine for any length of time, and I talk here about not only people like myself, but people like Blayden Zimande, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Thandi Modise, ANC, African National Congress MP who headed a multi-party delegation from South Africa, leadership of the Adhanian People's Organization, the Socialist Party of Adhania, all of these organizations. The really shocking thing that people come back with and that sticks in people's minds from Palestine is collective punishment. In the South African context, we didn't experience collective punishment. Not only that, we didn't even expect collective punishment. We didn't even dream that it would happen against us. Let me give you a very personal example. When my brother was killed by apartheid police because of his activism and his involvement in the PAC, as a family we had no fear about what that would mean to us as a family. I mean, as an activist myself, I had my own concerns about what my activism would mean to me. But I had no concerns about what my brother's activism would mean to me. We had no fears, for example, that my mother's house might be demolished because of my brother's activities. We had no fear that my father or my sister or I would be arrested, detained, interrogated, tortured because of my brother's activities. We had no fear that any of us, members of the family, might be uprooted from our homes and dumped into some remote rural area, Ntata or Leboa Homo or any of those places. We had no such fears because collective punishment just didn't exist in the South African context. In the Palestinian context, collective punishment, which is illegal in terms of international law, is the daily diet of Palestinian people. All the time. All of the things that I mentioned about what we didn't expect or didn't fear happening to my family, all of those things happen in the Palestinian context today. Not only houses, but entire blocks of houses could be destroyed because of the activism of some activists. People moved from the West Bank to Gaza for 10 years just because a member of their family was an activist. uh... people arrest family members arrested detained tortured interrogated etc all of these things take place the closures of palestinian areas is part of that collective punishment again remember collective punishment illegal in terms of international law the curfews that take place against palestinian towns is part of that collective punishment and i just want us all to remember that nablus has been under curfew now for about 110 days A curfew means that people cannot leave their homes, except for every four or five days when people are allowed out for a few hours just so that they can get food, because the Israelis don't really want them to die. Otherwise, statistics start going up. But living dead is better than having them dead. So let them go out every two days so they can obtain some food. But Nablus has been under curfew for 110 days. People are not allowed out of their houses. children, old people, no one is allowed out of their houses, they can't go to schools, they can't go to work for 110 days. That's more than three months. I don't know whether I could survive in that. That's collective punishment, which is illegal in terms of international law, but then, hey, what does Israel really care about international law when it doesn't adhere to it anyway? We didn't, in the South African context, have black anti-apartheid activists, white anti-apartheid activists, for that matter, being tried in military courts. That's the kind of thing that happens to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Finally, on this issue of the West Bank and Gaza, let me make this point before I move on to the last part of what I want to say. In the South African context, we, and by we, now, I'm not referring just to us South Africans that were opposing apartheid, but us South Africans that were opposing apartheid, as well as all of those people around the world, millions of people around the world who were in solidarity with us, our comrades in various parts of the world. We had succeeded in convincing the world that apartheid was wrong, apartheid was bad, apartheid is a sin, apartheid is a crime against humanity, apartheid is a cancer that had to be removed. Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza are being told that apartheid for them is the solution. that the only way that they can live is to accept a situation of bantu stamps. A situation where you would have little cantons. You can call it a Palestinian state, you know. But Botswana was called a state. It had its own flag, it had its own anthem, it had its own president, it had its own cabinet and parliament, it had its own stamps, it had its own TV station, its own... had its own airport, all of those things. It was called a state. No sane person recognized Abu Dhabi as a state. It was a bunch of stuff that was puppeteered. And that's what Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are being told is the solution that they should accept. Apartheid as the solution. In our context, it was the crime. In the Palestinian context, they're being told it's the solution. Now, as an anti-apartheid activist, I'm speaking about between our two contexts. I would be failing if I didn't also suggest that we as anti-apartheid activists in South Africa believe that in terms of the response to Israeli apartheid, that we believe, whether rightly or wrongly, and this is open to solidarity activists around the world, and I think there are a few sitting here, to debate and discuss, but we believe that the response to the apartheid South African context might have The first one of these was international solidarity and international isolation. The second one was the internal resistance. The third was the underground movement. And the fourth was the armed struggle. We basically unanimous that the first two, international isolation and the internal resistance, were the two most important ones that helped to bring about an end to apartheid in South Africa. As South African activists Palestinian solidarity activists as well, we think that there's something that we can learn from this experience of ours. And not only our experience, but the experience of all of those around the world that made solidarity with us. And so we believe that the notion of isolation is something that we should be seriously considering, as in the South African context, of us argue, was the main one of the four pillars that helped to end apartheid. This isolation included things like widespread consumer boycotts, sanctions, disinvestment, academic boycotts, cultural boycotts, sporting boycotts, etc. We believe that these are all strategies that are on the table, that can be considered in a struggle to help bring about Palestinian liberation. And so, last year, during the anti-racism conference, at the head of 20,000 people, We launched, after consultation with a number of Palestinian groups as well as a number of solidarity groups around the world, we launched what we called the International Anti-Apartheid Movement Against Israel. The process now is to give substance to that launch and to make it a reality, to develop structures and programs and networks around that, work plans around that, so that it might become a reality and might begin that process. Now, we are under no illusion. that we actually live today in a different world from the one that we lived in in the 1980s. In the 1980s we had a bipolar world, today we have a single superpower which is firmly behind Israel. We know that that's the case. In the 1980s we didn't have, you know, you can think about your own context here in Canada, I doubt that you had a single university campus, for example, that had an organization whose sole purpose in life was to defend apartheid in South Africa. In the current context, you have those organizations all over the world and all over North America. So these things make these tasks much more difficult. But difficulty is not something we can shy away from. Palestinians have been under occupation for 54 years now, have been struggling for liberation for 54 years now, and are determined to continue with their struggle. We cannot fail. have to be taken up, and we have to take them up. But before I end, let me also say that, as I said, those first two pillars in the South African context were the most important, international isolation and internal resistance. We believe that in the Palestinian context, we need to recognize, acknowledge, and work in both of these. that as much as we as international solidarity activists, and those that are Palestinians, of course, Palestinian refugees, so you're not just international solidarity activists, you're Palestinians, that as much as we might develop and strengthen a campaign to isolate the apartheid state of Israel, that at the same time we also have a responsibility to support and strengthen And so I want to end by ending with a statement that anti-apartheid activists, people that have been involved for many years in the liberation movement, are repeatedly saying these days and increasingly saying these days in South Africa, that as South Africans we believe that South Africa and South Africans will not be free as long as Palestinians are not there.