South Africa

Palestinians at the site of a destroyed building from an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 5, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

‘The international legal order needs repair — and Gaza is a part of this’

Al Mezan director Issam Younis explains the obstacles and opportunities for Palestinians following major interventions from the world’s top courts.

By Ghousoon Bisharat May 24, 2024

Bethlehem Municipality employees raise a South African flag in support of their lawsuit against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, January 16, 2024. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

ICJ case ‘opens new era between the Global North and South,’ says UN expert

Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese discusses South Africa’s charge of genocide in Gaza and the power struggle playing out in the legal arena.

By Alba Nabulsi January 23, 2024

Palestinians wait to receive the bodies of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, at Al-Najjar Hospital, southern Gaza Strip, December 7, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Will the ICJ find Israel guilty of genocide?

Attorney Michael Sfard outlines what could play out as the world’s top court decides if and how to intervene in Israel’s war on Gaza.

By Meron Rapoport January 11, 2024

Latest

Thousands of Palestinians rally in solidarity with the hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, Nelson Mandela Square, Ramallah, West Bank, May 03, 2017. (Ahmad Al-Bazz/Activestills)

What lessons can Palestinians really take from the struggle of Black South Africans?

With comparisons growing between Israeli and South African apartheid, we must consider the different strategies adopted by both resistance movements.

By Ran Greenstein September 11, 2022

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stands with Mpho Franklyn Parks Tau, Mayor of the city of Johannesburg, in front of the new Mandela statue during the inauguration of Nelson Mandela Square in the West Bank city of Ramallah, April 26, 2016. (Flash90)

Do Palestinians really want a South African solution?

Mahmood Mamdani believes Palestinians and Israelis should build a state that transcends their national identities. Here are three problems with his case.

By Dana El Kurd July 14, 2021

Demolished structures seen in Cape Town's Marikana community, after the city's Anti-Land Invasion Unit began demolishing structures erected on a plot of land by the Abahlali baseMjondolo shack dwellers movement, January 9, 2014 (Shachaf Polakow/Activestills.org)

The Dispossessed: Palestine’s forgotten lesson from post-apartheid South Africa

Those looking to South Africa as a blueprint for the struggle against Israeli apartheid are doing a disservice by ignoring how racial capitalism has sustained inequality and oppression 30 years on.

By Joseph Dana November 19, 2020

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21, 2016. (Haim Zach/GPO)

Progressives will keep up the fight for Palestine — with or without Biden

Rather than pegging hopes on a White House moored to bygone policies, Palestine activists should keep bolstering the movement from the ground up.

By Edo Konrad November 10, 2020

Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini speaks at a conference in Airport City, outside Tel Aviv on September 3, 2019. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Unpacking Ben-Dror Yemini’s industry of lies

The journalist's book, which tries to justify Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, is nothing but a concentrated dose of disproven propaganda.

By Shmuel Lederman August 24, 2020

Israeli human rights lawyer and Yesh Din legal counsel Michael Sfard. (Oren Ziv)

‘An illegitimate regime’: How a top rights group shed Israeli myths to recognize apartheid

In an exclusive interview, human rights lawyer Michael Sfard explains what led Yesh Din to charge Israel with the crime of apartheid in the West Bank.

By Amjad Iraqi July 9, 2020

Herzl seen traveling to Palestine, 1898. (Central Zionist Archives)

Under Zionism, Jewish lives have always mattered more

Zionism was never simply about the idea that 'Jewish Lives Matter' — it has always privileged Jewish colonists over indigenous people. Just ask Theodor Herzl.

By Tom Pessah July 8, 2020

Palestinian sociologist Dr. Honaida Ghanim. 'The unintended consequences of annexation could be to create new conditions and to restore to us the recognition that this conflict is tied to colonialism.'

‘Annexation has made the Palestinian struggle anti-colonial once again’

Dr. Honaida Ghanim believes that while it will be hard to stop annexation, this moment presents an opportunity to bring the struggle back to basics.

By Meron Rapoport June 23, 2020

Israeli soldiers guard Jewish settlers as they walk around the Palestinian market in the old town of Hebron in the West Bank on September 4, 2010. (Najeh Hashlamoun /Flash90)

Palestinians are tired of proving Israeli apartheid exists

There is nothing that an annexation bill can tell us that decades of Israeli laws and policies haven’t already.

By Amjad Iraqi June 17, 2020

Israelis look on at an Independence Day military parade at the Hebrew University Stadium, Jerusalem, April 24, 1958. (GPO)

What would Israeli identity look like without Zionism?

In post-Apartheid South Africa, white Afrikaners had to create a national identity that was not based on subjugation of another people. It is a question that Israeli Jews, too, will one day have to face.

By Yuli Novak June 11, 2020