SACP+open+letter+to+the+Israeli+Embassy+in+South+Africa



=An open letter to the Israeli Embassy in South Africa=

I am writing this letter on behalf of the South African Communist Party to express our outrage and outright condemnation of the latest military offensive against the Palestinian people, especially in the Gaza strip. Our attention is daily being drawn to the wanton killing of innocent civilians, destruction of houses, and attacks on leaders of the Palestinian Authority. This is all done under the pretext of seeking to release an Israeli soldier captured in the Palestinian territories.

We wish to reiterate our condemnation of all forms of violence against both Arab and Jewish civilians. However, the direct cause of the conflict in Palestine and Israel is the continued occupation of Palestine by your army, and the denial of the Palestinian people of their legitimate right to national self-determination.

As I write to you I am reminded of a trip I undertook to the former Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland in the late 1990’s, now one of the holocaust museums. What I saw there was almost incomprehensible, as to how sections of humanity would have subjected part of its own to such brutal atrocities. The scale of the holocaust is something that should deeply offend all of humanity. Our own experiences with the apartheid regime also made me to be so deeply offended. During the same trip I visited the Ann Frank museum in the Netherlands, and was also deeply moved by that experience.

In 2001 I had the honour to lead a delegation of the SACP to Palestine at the invitation of the Palestinian People’s Party. The atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli government – ranging from bombing of civilian homes, destruction of food plantations, the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people at the various military check points, to the building of luxurious Jewish settlements on Palestinian territories – made me to conclude that Israel is indeed an apartheid state. During our visit to East Jerusalem the Al Aqsa mosque was closed and occupied by the Israeli army, something that was deeply offensive to most Palestinians, and all this reminded me of some of the most degrading actions perpetrated by the apartheid regime in South Africa, including the hatred bred by the Israelis towards Palestinians.

One of the images that will never be erased on my mind when I was in Palestine was the sight of an elderly man, running across plantations destroyed by Israeli bombs, flashing a bunch of keys and crying like a little baby. He asked us to help him to return to the house where he was born in Israel, from which his family was kicked out in 1948. Those keys were handed over to him by his parents. All he wanted was to return to his home in peace, security and dignity!

When I was in the Gaza strip, in the midst of sounds of Israeli bombs, my mind quickly raced back to Auschwitz, and I asked myself the question: How can it be that a section of the Jewish community, a victim of some of the worst atrocities ever perpetrated against humanity, now unleashes its own version of a holocaust on the Palestinian people, and all this being done in the name of a Jewish state?

Our own experiences in the struggle against apartheid, and indeed similar struggles in other parts of the world, have taught us that no amount of arms, including nuclear weapons, can defeat a people struggling for a just cause. The actions of your government over the decades, including the current military offensive, can only postpone, but not defeat, the inevitable – the liberation of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian struggle is a just and legitimate struggle.

No matter how many military invasions into Gaza and the West Bank, the problem won’t go away. Israel can have peace and security, only if the peace and security of the Palestinians are secured. The solution is not the creation of an apartheid wall on Palestinian territory. The quest for freedom cannot be prevented by apartheid walls; as such walls are as porous as the injustices underpinning them.

No amount of trying to hide behind the ‘US war on terror’ will delegitimise the just struggle of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian struggle is not a terrorist war, but a struggle for the right to self-determination.

We wish to reiterate that the only lasting solution to this problem is the immediate end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the creation of a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of return for Arab refugees.

We once more call upon your government to follow this path of peace and immediately end the current invasions in the Gaza strip and in all other Palestinian territories.


 * Blade Nzimande**
 * General Secretary**
 * SACP**

800 words