Palestine

Apartheid is a powerful word, with evocations of the South African experience and with implications of crimes against humanity. The United Nations does not use this word loosely. It rarely enters UN reports, and is not heard from the lips of UN officials.

Honorable Secretary General,

Because we were also a colonized people.

Because Hamas is Palestine's Mau Mau.

Because East Africa was also proposed as a location for a "Zionist Homeland."

Because Africans, like Palestinians, were non-people.

Twelve years ago today [July 9, 2004], the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion at the request of the United Nations General Assembly on the legality of the wall Israel has constructed in the West Bank.

The Palestinian-led, global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was launched eleven years ago as a nonviolent and effective means for progressive people and organisations across the world to support the struggle of the Palestinian people for our rights under international law.

I had mixed feelings when I learned that Palestine has erected a statue of Nelson Mandela, the iconic South African anti-Apartheid leader.