The Jewish founding member of the ANC's umkhonto we sizwe defies the Zionist attempts
to close down free speech
It was a privilege to
hear the legendary Ronnie Kasrills, founding member of the ANC’s Umkhonto
we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), speak tonight. Ronnie was radicalised after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre when 69 Black demonstrators were mowed down by the South
African Police.
Of course this
massacre, which signalled the beginning of the end of the Apartheid regime, has
today been overshadowed by Israel’s murder of more than 200 unarmed
demonstrators in Gaza in the past year. But whereas Sharpeville radicalised the
world, in much of the West Israel war crimes have received support. Only last
summer Labour Friends of Israel, which numbers among its supporters MPs Tom
Watson and Emily Thornberry, openly tweeted
its support for the Israeli military.
Ronnie spoke
of the unanimous
vote of Vienna's Council, controlled by a group of Social Democrats and
Greens, to ban him from speaking at the Vienna Museum (see article below). In
the end he spoke at a Turkish restaurant. Every member of the Council,
including the neo-Nazi and fascist Right of the Freedom Party of Heinz
Christian Strache voted to prevent Ronnie Kasrills, a Jewish member of the ANC
speaking because he had the temerity to support the Palestinians.
The truth cannot
be silenced! We deplore the venue cancellation for the scheduled Israeli
Apartheid Week event at the museum in Vienna, Austria. This type of censorship
was deployed by the South African Apartheid regime and as South Africans we
condemn this act of repression. We will talk against all acts of racism and
apartheid. We will continue to fly the Palestinian flag and speak against
Israeli apartheid, aggression and occupation from the streets if we are denied
venues. We will not be silenced and I call on activists all around the world to
be spurred on and continue the struggle until we end the unjust occupation and
until Palestine is free. Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an international
series of events that seeks to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid regime
over the Palestinian people and build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Ronnie was
based for many years in London and in a humorous talk told us of the many small
meetings that he spoke to in the 1960’s from one end of the country to another
in what he described as Britain’s appalling weather! Ronnie described the
conservatism of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in London which looked in horror as
a young Peter Hain, then Chair of the Young Liberals and newly arrived in
Britain from South Africa, proposed disrupting British cricket and rugby
matches involving touring sides from South Africa.
On a personal
aside my first venture into politics was when I played truant from my school,
the King David Jewish school in Liverpool to go on demonstrations against the
Springbok Rugby team in 1970. We ran on the pitch and disrupted the games as
rugby stewards threw us off. Direct action raised the issue of Apartheid such
as none before had. The following year’s tour of South Africa by the English
cricket team was called off.
The Boycott of
South Africa sporting teams caused an immense political shock to the psychology
of South Africa Whites just as the Cultural Boycott is aimed at shocking
Israeli Jews out of their racist complacency.
The attempts
to ban and disrupt Ronnie’s tour in Europe show the lengths to which the
Zionists will go to prevent free speech on Palestine. The ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign in Britain
is not unique. Israel and its friends
are mounting an international campaign crying ‘anti-Semitism’ with the clear
aim of delegitimizing and demonising the BDS campaign.
Contrary to
the statement in Ronnie’s Wikipedia entry
Ronnie made it clear that he is not a supporter of the 2 State Solution, which
he described as an apartheid solution.
In 2001 Ronnie
wrote with Max Ozinsky a statement entitled a "Declaration
of Conscience by South Africans of Jewish Descent" on the Israel-Palestinian
conflict. It was signed by 220 Jewish South Africans amongst whom was Nadine
Gordimer, a Nobel prize winner, Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro), Dennis Goldberg, who
was sentenced to life imprisonment with
Nelson Mandela; and Arthur Goldreich, an escapee from Rivonia who settled in
Israel but nonetheless signed the statement as well as many younger signatories
who experienced detention and imprisonment in apartheid’s prisons.
At a speech on
the launch of the statement in December 2001, Ronnie declared that:
What
is most significant of this list of conscience is that virtually all our
signatories have participated in the struggle against apartheid over the years
leading to our country’s freedom in 1994.
Then
as now we represented a tiny minority of whites who as a matter of conscience
broke ranks with our supposed blood ties and pigmentation to protest against
the brutal violation of human rights in the name of our tribe and race. Then
and now we could not lend our names to the oppression of other human beings on
the grounds that survival of our kith and kin was at stake, and that our
unquestioning support and unity was necessary regardless of the methods used.
Then
and now we saw that as morally shameful and an abrogation of the lessons of
anti-Semitic persecution down the ages, and the ghastly nightmare of the
Holocaust. We grew up with the question:
why had the German people remained silent at the evil being implemented
in their name? The eternal answer of humanity has always been: to remain silent in the face of evil is to
condone evil. We by no means equate Hitler and Israel but Israel’s measures to oppress the Palestinian struggle
are an intolerable abuse of human rights, so we raise our voices as Jews and
cry – out “Not in my name,” and we join with all those in the world demanding
justice for Palestinians and peace and security for all in the Holy Land –
Christians, Jews Muslims, and non-believers.
It should be no surprise that members of Austria’s neo-Nazi Freedom
Party should vote to ban Ronnie Kasrills in Vienna. It is a matter of shame that members of
Vienna’s social democratic party and the Green Party held hands with fascists
and neo-Nazis, all in the name of opposing ‘anti-Semitism’.
It is a situation that is becoming remarkably familiar, in Britain and
the United States too. Fascists,
anti-Semites and right-wing social democrats, together with Greens like
Brighton Green Phelim
McCafferty all deprecate the ‘anti-Semitism’ that is involved in supporting
the Palestinians and opposing Zionism.
Ronnie himself has been a strong critic of the direction the ANC has
taken in its wholesale adoption of crony capitalism. In particular of former
President Jacob Zuma. He described how
the Communist Party has tailed the ANC and in particular he criticised the
massacre of 34 Black South African miners by the Police at Marikana. A massacre that the Communist Party and its
tame National Union of Miners has justified.
Today Ronnie supports a new Workers Party the United Front.
Tony Greenstein
March 21, 2019
A Vienna museum, Volkskundemuseum, has cancelled an
Israeli Apartheid Week event where former minister in Nelson Mandela’s
government Ronnie Kasrils was scheduled to speak
Ronnie
Kasrils: South African anti-apartheid leader and former Government Minister
March 21, 2019 — A Vienna museum,
Volkskundemuseum, has cancelled an event on Palestinian rights where former
minister in Nelson Mandela’s government Ronnie Kasrils was scheduled to speak (Video by
Ronnie Kasrils). Kasrils is a renowned South
African anti-apartheid activist of Jewish descent, and his address was
scheduled for the March 29
event as part of the annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW).
Human rights advocates immediately condemned the cancellation, and called for
the event to be reinstated.
The museum caved to pressure from Austria’s Israel
lobby. The cancellation comes amid Israel’s ongoing repression of the peaceful
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights. Two
IAW events scheduled in France this week were also canceled.
More than 80 IAW
events in 40 cities across Europe, North America and
Palestine have been scheduled to date. With events still to be finalized in
Asia, Africa and Latin America, IAW is expected to be held in more than 200
cities worldwide this year.
The organizers of the event, BDS Austria,
were informed that the Museum canceled the event because the Vienna City
Council adopted a resolution in June 2018 not to cooperate with the BDS
movement. Anti-BDS measures being promoted at the local and national level in
Europe, prompted by Israel’s far-right government, aim to stifle freedom of
speech and silence debate on Palestinian rights.
Ronnie Kasrils said:
I strongly condemn the Vienna museum’s cancellation of
a public meeting I was to speak at for Israeli Apartheid Week. Exactly 59 years
ago today the Sharpeville massacre took place, compelling me to stand up for
human rights in my country, following in the footsteps of Chief Albert Luthuli
and Nelson Mandela. As a result I was banned by South Africa’s apartheid
government from attending meetings, and anything I said could not be published.
How disgraceful that, despite the lessons of our struggle against apartheid and
racism, such intolerance continues to this day, stifling freedom of speech and
association.
The Vienna Museum should welcome Israeli Apartheid
Week, and discussion of the anti-racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality. BDS is a peaceful form
of applying pressure to encourage the Israeli government to abide by
innumerable United Nations resolutions. Exactly that kind of pressure led to
the demise of apartheid in South Africa.
A spokesperson for event organizer BDS Austria said:
We are not surprised by the Vienna City Council’s
repression or their growing relations with Israel’s apartheid regime. They are
silencing democratic debate and criminalizing all human rights groups, even
Jewish ones, that are in solidarity with Palestine. Palestinian academic Edward
Said was invited to Vienna shortly before his death and then disinvited due to
the Israel lobby’s pressure. We will not be intimidated by this. We remember
Edward Said’s words: It is a just cause, a noble idea, a moral quest for
equality and human rights.
Chief Mandla Mandela, ANC Member of Parliament and
Nelson Mandela’s grandson said:
The truth cannot be silenced! We deplore the venue
cancellation for the scheduled Israeli Apartheid Week event at the museum in
Vienna, Austria. This type of censorship was deployed by the South African
Apartheid regime and as South Africans we condemn this act of repression. We
will talk against all acts of racism and apartheid. We will continue to fly the
Palestinian flag and speak against Israeli apartheid, aggression and occupation
from the streets if we are denied venues. We will not be silenced and I call on
activists all around the world to be spurred on and continue the struggle until
we end the unjust occupation and until Palestine is free.
The German organization Jüdische Stimme, Jewish Voice
for a Just Peace, recently awarded
a peace prize in Germany, said:
As a Jewish organisation we face, worriedly, the
criminalisation of voices in defense of Palestinian rights all round the world.
This pressure is even greater in German speaking countries where growing
alliances with the Israeli state and its narrative, undermine all other voices,
including Jewish ones, which dare to criticise Israel’s racist policies. We
sent a letter to the museum director when we learned that the event was
threatened with cancelation. We are appalled that this cancelation was
announced, and call again for the event to go forward.
In Paris, only two days before a planned IAW event on
March 20, the University Sciences Po emailed the student organizers informing
them their event had been banned. L’Intersection, the anti-racist group
organising the event with Palestinian speaker Rania Madi, condemned
this cancelation, as did
Rania Madi. An IAW event scheduled for March 22 in Montpelier, France was also
canceled.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is
the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the
global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
I was shut down in South Africa for speaking
out, and I’m disturbed that the same is happening to critics of Israel now
Ronnie Kasrils was a leading
member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era and former
government minister
Wed 3 Apr 2019 10.00 BST
Last modified on Wed 3 Apr 2019 12.46 BST
‘Benjamin Netanyahu said recently: ‘Israel is not a
state of all its citizens … Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people –
and them alone.’ Photograph: Amir Levy/Getty Images
As
a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist I look with horror on the
far-right shift in Israel ahead of this month’s elections,
and the impact in the Palestinian territories and worldwide.
Israel’s repression of Palestinian citizens, African
refugees and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza has become more
brutal over time. Ethnic
cleansing, land seizure, home demolition, military occupation,
bombing of Gaza and international law violations led Archbishop Tutu to declare
that the treatment of Palestinians reminded
him of apartheid, only worse.
How disgraceful that, despite the
lessons of our struggle against racism, such intolerance continues to this day
I’m also deeply disturbed that critics of Israel’s
brutal policies are frequently threatened with repression of their freedom of
speech, a reality I’ve now experienced at first hand. Last week, a public
meeting in Vienna where I was scheduled to speak in support of Palestinian
freedom, as part of the global Israeli Apartheid Week,
was cancelled by the museum hosting the event – under pressure from Vienna’s
city council, which opposes the international movement to divest from Israel.
South Africa’s apartheid government banned me for life
from attending meetings. Nothing I said could be published, because I stood up
against apartheid. How disgraceful that, despite the lessons of our struggle
against racism, such intolerance continues to this day, stifling free speech on
Palestine.
During the South African struggle, we were accused of
following a communist agenda, but smears didn’t deflect us. Today, Israel’s
propaganda follows a similar route, repeated by its supporters – conflating
opposition to Israel
with antisemitism. This must be resisted.
A growing number of Jews worldwide are taking
positions opposing Israel’s policies. Many younger Jews are supporting the
Palestinian-led Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a peaceful
mobilisation inspired by the movement that helped to end apartheid in South
Africa.
The parallels with South Africa are many. The Israeli
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently
said: “Israel is not a state of all its citizens … Israel
is the nation state of the Jewish people – and them alone.”
Similar racist utterances were common in apartheid
South Africa. We argued that a just peace could be reached, and that white
people would find security only in a unitary, non-racist, democratic society
after ending the oppression of black South Africans and providing freedom and
equality for all.
By contrast, Netanyahu’s Likud is desperately courting
extremist parties, and abandoning any pretext of negotiating with the
Palestinians. His plan to bring an extremist settler party and Kahanist
terrorist party into his governing coalition is
obscene. His most serious opponent is a general accused of
war crimes in Gaza. As long as a repressive
apartheid-like regime rules, things will only worsen for Palestinians and
Israelis too.
The anti-apartheid movement grew over three decades,
in concert with the liberation struggle of South Africa’s people, to make a
decisive difference in toppling the racist regime. Europeans refused to buy
apartheid fruit; there were sports boycotts; dockworkers from Liverpool to
Melbourne refused to handle South African cargo; an academic boycott turned
universities into apartheid-free zones; and arms sanctions helped to shift the
balance against South Africa’s military.
As the movement developed and UN resolutions isolated
Pretoria’s regime, pressure mounted on trading partners and supportive
governments. The US Congress’s historic adoption of the Comprehensive
Anti-Apartheid Act (1986) was a major turning point. When the Chase and
Barclays banks closed in South Africa and withdrew their lines of credit, the
battle was well-nigh over.
This required huge organisational effort, grassroots
mobilisation and education. Similar elements characterise today’s BDS movement
to isolate apartheid-like Israel.
Every step is important – pressing institutions and
corporations that are complicit in Israel’s crimes and supporting Palestinians
in their struggle for liberation. This is not about destroying Israel and its
people but about working for a just solution, as we did in South Africa.
It is the duty of supporters of justice worldwide to
mobilise in solidarity with Palestinians to help usher in an era of freedom.
•
Ronnie Kasrils is a former South African government minister, and was a leading
member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era
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