Israel

“I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, the description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would be a description of what is happening in South Africa” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, New York 1989.

By Antony Loewenstein & Moammar Mashni

March 6, 2011-- Green Left Weekly -- When Desmond Tutu made this comment, the South African apartheid regime was still in power. In 1994, after 45 years of racial segregation, the apartheid era was officially over. When watershed moments like this occur, multiple factors can be attributed. But history is clear that one of the many reasons this tyranny finally succumbed was an international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS).

Tahrir Square. Foto by Hossam el-Hamalawy.

[English version at http://links.org.au/node/2164.]

Por Adam Hanieh, traducido para el CEPRID por María Valdés

By Fidel Castro Ruz

Anti-Mubarak graffitti on a tank.Tahrir Square.

Tahrir Square. Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy.

Donald Perera, embajador de Sri Lanka a Israel, en su oficina de Tel Aviv.

[English at http://links.org.au/node/1841.]

Por Chris Slee

By Fidel Castro

February 1, 2011 -- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s fate is sealed, not even the support of the United States will be able to save his government.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilisation. “From the top of these pyramids, 40 centuries of history are looking down upon us”, Napoleon Bonaparte once said in a moment of exaltation when the revolution brought him to this extraordinary crossroads of civilisations.

After World War II, Egypt was under the brilliant governance of Abdel Nasser, who together with Jawaharlal Nehru, heir of Mahatma Gandhi; Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah; and Guniea's Ahmed Sekou Toure — African leaders who together with Sukarno, then president of the recently liberated Indonesia — created the Non-Aligned Movement of Countries and advanced the struggle for independence in the former colonies.

Egyptians call for Mubarak's ouster, Tahrir (Liberation) Square, Cairo, January 29, 2011. Photo by Matthew Cassel.

By Ali Abunimah

January 29, 2011 -- Electronic Intifada -- We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when events are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt -- however it ends -- will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine.

By Tony Iltis

January 30, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- Having started with a fearless uprising for democracy and economic justice that is sweeping the Arab world, 2011 is shaping up to be a decisive year for the Middle East. By January 14, the first dictator had already been overthrown: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak looks set to follow.

Protests inspired by the Tunisian revolution have occurred in several Arab countries, repeatedly in Yemen and Jordan. On January 28, the Middle East’s most populous country, Egypt, was rocked by riots after police tried brutally, but unsuccessfully, to end four days of protest against the 30-year-old dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.

Mahmoud Abbas with US President George W. Bush and Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the Red Sea Summit in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4, 2003.

Apartheid Wall, near Jerusalem. Photo by Patrick Bond.

By Patrick Bond, Ramallah

October 13, 2010 -- On a full-day drive through the Jordan Valley late last month, we skirted the Earth’s oldest city and lowest inhabited point, 400 metres below sea level. For 10,000 years, people have lived along the river that separates the present-day West Bank and Jordan.

Since 1967 the river has been augmented by Palestinian blood, sweat and tears, ending in the Dead Sea, from which no water flows; it only evaporates. Conditions degenerated during Israel’s land-grab, when from a peak of more than 300,000 people living on the west side of the river, displacements shoved Palestinian refugees across into Jordan and other parts of the West Bank. The valley has fewer than 60,000 Palestinians today.

Drawing comparisons to South African apartheid policies: Israel requires Palestinians to carry identification documents that restrict their movement. UN photo.

By the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)

Occupied Ramallah, September 30, 2010 -- PACBI welcomes the decision[1] on September 29, 2010, by the Senate of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) "not to continue a long-standing relationship with Ben Gurion University (BGU) in Israel in its present form" and to set conditions "for the relationship to continue". The fact that the UJ Senate set an ultimatum[2] of six months for BGU to end its complicity with the occupation army and to end policies of racial discrimination against Palestinians is a truly significant departure from the business-as-usual attitude that had governed agreements between the two institutions until recently.