EFF OBSERVES NAKBA DAY AS THE FOUNDING OF THE ISRAELI APARTHEID STATE

Sunday, 15 May 2022

The EFF reaffirms its solidarity with the people of Palestine on the 74th commemoration of the Palestinian Catastrophe also known as "the Nakba".

Nakba Day is marked by Palestinians every year on May 15, the anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, which led to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians.

Israel's ongoing Nakba aims to erase the presence, identity and memory of indigenous Palestinians and the theft of Palestinian land. This was again highlighted when Israelis attacked indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinians a few weeks ago when worshippers entered the holy sites at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Al¬Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

The EFF joins Israeli Human Rights organisations, Yesh Din and B'Tselem and International human rights organisations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in its condemnation of Israeli apartheid as a crime against humanity.

We call on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people.

Furthermore, we call on South Africans to intensify their support for the resistance and freedom struggle of the Palestinian people by demanding the isolation of Israel.

The South African government should develop and implement institutional frameworks that would:

1. Enable the effective investigation and prosecution of South Africans who aid and abet the crime of apartheid and to prosecute South Africans serving in the Israeli Defence Force under the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, 1998

2. Display zero tolerance and hold to account with the full might of the law, South African organisations such as the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and associated organisations that supports Israeli policies.

There is no meaningful solidarity that does not impose consequences of a repressive system, accordingly, the South African government should sever all diplomatic, trade, sporting, cultural and academic relations with the apartheid Israeli state.

It must be South Africa that leads the call for the removal of accreditation of Israeli observer status at the African Union which is in any case in contravention of the Constitutive Act of the AU and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.

Let us band together and put an end to the Nakba which continues to confront the people of Palestine.

Statement issued by the EFF, 15 May 2022