En Passant

Now is the time for the world to stop words of pity and lamentation, but take action by doing what it did to apartheid South Africa when its policies were declared a crime against humanity. Indeed, apartheid remains a crime against humanity wherever it happens. If apartheid can’t outrage us, our humanity is called into question and our morality is hollow.

Scarlett Johansson is the new face of apartheid writes Kostas Rologas in Red Flag. Her very public decision to quit Oxfam and continue her role as Sodastream’s “global brand ambassador” is appallingly racist. Here’s why.

In September 1993 Mandela made a remarkable speech to trade unionists. He declared, “How many times has the liberation movement worked together with workers and then at the moment of victory betrayed the workers? There are many examples of that in the world.

“It is only if the workers strengthen their organisation before and after liberation that you can win. If you relax your vigilance you will find that your sacrifices have been in vain.

“You just support the African National Congress only so far as it delivers the goods. If the ANC government does not deliver the goods, you must do to it what you have done to the apartheid regime.”

Once more Mandela had courageously told the truth.We mourn his passing. We remember his great sacrifice. The struggle goes on.

The death of Nelson Mandela closes the life of a heroic resistance figure who devoted his very being to the struggle against apartheid even though this came at immense personal cost writes Tom Bramble in Red Flag.

Mandela was, also, however, the saviour of South African capitalism, which condemned so many of his countrymen and women to continuing terrible hardship even after the destruction of the apartheid regime.

I am in tears as I write this. Farewell Nelson Mandela.  We loved you. The best way to remember him and honour his legacy of struggle will be to continue the fight against apartheid today in Australia and Israel.

Three key features characterize Israeli apartheid:

•Four million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories lack the right to vote for the government that controls their lives through a military occupation. In addition to controlling the borders, air space, water, tax revenues, and other vital matters pertaining to the Occupied Territories, Israel alone issues the identity cards that determine the ability of Palestinians to work and their freedom of movement.

•About 1.2 million Palestinian Israelis, who make up 20 percent, or one-fifth, of Israel’s population, have second-class citizenship within Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state rather than a state for all its citizens. More than 20 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel.

•Millions of Palestinians remain refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, unable to return to their former homes and land in present-day Israel, even though the right of return for refugees is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Zionism is not interested in peace with the Palestinians. It has only one goal – the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Palestine. It wants nothing less than the destruction of the Palestinians as part of the ultimate gaol of Zionism – an expansionist Jewish state across the region without Palestinians or their memory

The spreading campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel has the potential to focus the world’s attention on the crimes against the Palestinian people.

Analogies are lies which reveal the truth. Israel is an apartheid state. Zionism is an  exclusivist and racist ideology in its vision and practice. In this world view Palestinians are lesser humans. They have no rights to their land. The 20 percent of the Israeli population who are Palestinian are second class citizens. They sit at the […]

Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Aborigines has changed little. White Australia must offer its first people universal land rights and a proper share of resources argues John Pilger in the New Statesman. I remember the boys dressed in army surplus, the girls in hessian, silhouettes framed in beach shanties, staring across an abyss. You were […]