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Meaning beyond slogans
Mail & Guardian This week’s picket against Israel’s Apartheid Wall, organised by Jewish Voices (JV) and the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), is significant for more than the slogans on the placards. Many Palestine solidarity activists in the picket had debated the joint action. Not because JV is a Jewish organisation – a number of PSC members are Jewish and the PSG in Cape Town has had joint action with Not in My Name – but because some positions held by certain JV members were disconcerting. After initial meetings and a joint media release, some PSC supporters and members criticised the organisation for meeting with a group with whom we couldn’t agree on the racial exclusivist nature of the Israeli state or on a seemingly minor issue like whether to use the term ‘Apartheid Wall’. Pro-Palestinian activists engaging in the dialogue asked three questions: firstly, will working with an organisation like JV compromise the principles of the PSC, secondly, does the Palestinian struggle benefit from this collaboration and, thirdly, do Jews benefit from it. There is no question about the PSC compromising its principles in any engagement with a Jewish organisation, political parties (including the government) or social movements. For us, the issue is of a people denied their human rights, their self-determination and being brutalised on a daily basis. The Israeli government and the Palestinian people are not simply ‘two parties in a conflict’. Rather, the Palestinians are the victims of the worst kind of dispossession and violence by an Apartheid state and they have a right to defend themselves against that violence. The question of whether the Palestinian struggle would benefit from such an engagement is critical. In a liberation struggle, it is necessary to analyse the nature of oppression and those who benefit from it. Just as in South Africa there were whites who were staunch upholders of apartheid, there were also whites that were socialists, liberals and those simply critical of apartheid. It was necessary to identify these groups and decide on different strategies by which each could be addressed. In the Palestinian context too, there are different groups among Israelis and their supporters, including conscientious objectors, Israeli groups against house demolitions, supporting Palestinian prisoners, in the struggle against the Apartheid Wall. In that regard, Israeli society has a prouder record of supporting the Palestinian struggle for human rights than South Africa’s Jewish community. As the Palestinian struggle gains momentum, Israelis and Jews around the world will have to be engaged and will have to support the just Palestinian struggle in various ways. For the PSC, the Palestinian struggle is not between religious communities and those responsible for Palestinian oppression are Zionists, not Jews as a community. The PSC has also stressed that the Palestinian struggle is linked to all just struggles: the Burmese struggle, the struggle of the people of Darfur, local struggles of the poor and unempowered in South Africa. Over the past few years, few South African Jews have broken from the wall of Israeli support. In 2001, 300 Jews signed the ‘Not In My Name’ declaration. Others have protested Israeli actions with some even supporting a single-state solution. Highlighting and exposing such voices helps raise the level of consciousness of Palestinian oppression and helps develop stronger international solidarity and a quicker resolution to the problem. But does such engagement between Jews and Palestine solidarity activists benefit Jews? Uncritical Jewish support for the Israeli state and the horrors it unleashes dehumanises Jews too. Such collaboration with the Palestine solidarity movement allows Jews to take a stand for justice and human rights and to liberate their Jewishness and their humanity from being commandeered by Israeli political Zionism. It allows them to reject what is done ostensibly on their behalf and to reclaim the progressive strands in their history. The PSC will continue working with Jewish Voices and hopes that collaboration can extend to issues of Palestinian political prisoners, collective punishment and sanctions – despite differences on issues like the one- vs. two-state solutions.
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