75 Years Of Israeli Apartheid: South Africans Should Not be Partying for Apartheid!
24 April 2023
This year marks the commemoration of 75 years since the start of the Nakba – the catastrophe – carried out by Zionist forces with a colonial agenda – to establish the state of Israel on Palestinian land. Thousands of Palestinians were massacred, others were driven from their homes resulting in over 700,000 Palestinians becoming refugees.
Israel and its international supporters whitewash the bloody reality of Israeli so-called ‘independence’. The South African Zionist Federation and other Zionist organisations are shamelessly holding parties this week celebrating 75 years since the founding of the apartheid Israeli state. They refuse to acknowledge that Israel was, since its inception, a settler colonial state, created through a bloody war aimed at ethnically cleansing the land of the indigenous Palestinian people. South African musicians The Kiffness, Sona and Goodluck are billed to play at these parties celebrating apartheid.
"Palestinian people are being dispossessed and murdered every day by the Israeli state forces of violence. There is an explicit call for a cultural boycott of Israeli apartheid from those suffering at the hand of its tanks and guns. To support and celebrate Israel's birthday with music is to support and uphold colonialism, death and imperialism. It is indefensible! This is a call for South African artists and cultural workers, in the spirit of the international anti-apartheid movement and boycotts of the 1970s and 1980s, to stand in solidarity with Palestinian people and boycott the Israeli state and any celebration of its statehood! " said musician and activist Asher Gamedze.
The Nakba has not ended. Israel commits the crime against humanity of apartheid, numerous gross violations of human rights and crimes considered war crimes, such as the use of home demolitions as a form of collective punishment against Palestinians.
In 2023 alone over 90 Palestinians have been extrajudicially killed in the West Bank including 17 children; the siege of Gaza enters its 17th year and the world’s largest open air prison has yet again suffered air strikes; the world witnessed the brutal assault by occupation forces on worshipers in the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem during Ramadan and restrictions on Christian worshipers at holy sites during Easter; pogroms and daily attacks by illegal settlers incited by Israeli government Ministers; and efforts to eliminate Palestinians from the Masafer Yatta villages amounting to the largest land grab since 1967.
Last year the UN designated Nakba Day 2023 (15 May) as an official day of commemoration with the Palestinian people. The South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation will be participating in events at the UN to mark this occasion.
The SA BDS Coalition calls on The Kiffness, Sona and Goodluck not to participate in events that whitewash the apartheid Israeli regime: “We call on all South African artists to take a stand against apartheid – it was wrong for South Africans and it is wrong for Palestinians to suffer discrimination, racism, and colonial oppression” said Roshan Dadoo, Coordinator of the SA BDS Coalition.
We call on all cultural workers not to perform, screen or exhibit in apartheid Israel or at any institution allied to Israel in our own countries. We call on our creatives not to accept invitations or funding from institutions, venues or events sponsored by or partnered with apartheid Israel, its lobby groups or complicit institutions.
We reiterate our call on the South African government to end diplomatic and economic relations with apartheid Israel and implement policy for a cultural, sporting and academic boycott of Israeli institutions and those complicit in Israeli apartheid.
For more information please contact:
Roshan Dadoo
Usuf Chikte
Issued by the SA BDS Coalition, 24 April 2023
