Palestinians need the same freedom as SA

Editor,

Nelson Mandela, perhaps the most iconic figure in the struggle against South African Apartheid, has died.

It sometimes shocks me to remember that the Apartheid regime in South Africa continued to exist well into my lifetime, with U.S. government support provided to it for a good portion of that time period. I remember Ronald Reagan talking cheerfully about “constructive engagement.” Ultimately, Congress opted for sanctions, with the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, and the Apartheid regime dissolved in 1991.

It is the twenty-first century. Apartheid-era South Africa is history, and while racism and the aftermath of racist official policy continue to be a problem in the United States, its president is an African-American and there has been some progress.

Yet, at this very moment the U.S. government continues to provide massive support — economic, military, diplomatic — for a regime built on colonization, ethnic cleansing, and the supremacy of one ethnic/religious group, a regime which unrepentantly continues these policies into the present.

I am obviously referring to the country which bills itself as the Jewish state.

Numerous South Africans, some of whom had been active in the anti-Apartheid movement, have condemned the political inequality that is inherent in Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Mandela himself has said: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

The way forward is not through further “constructive engagement” with Israel. That did not bring political equality to South Africa, and it will not bring it to Israel/Palestine. We cannot wait for our bought and paid for Congress to do the right thing and cut aid to Israel, let alone apply sanctions. Change will have to begin at the grassroots level, and one vehicle for this is the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement. Unsurprisingly, South Africa’s trade unions, who have not forgotten South Africa’s history, have been in the vanguard of international support for the BDS movement.

In the words of Palestinian leader and spearhead of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti: “If equality and justice would destroy Israel, what does that say about Israel? Did equality and justice destroy South Africa? Did they destroy Alabama?”

Rudy Meixell
UNM Libraries staff