The article below is by Salim Vally, a leading member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa and a veteran anti-apartheid activist. A longer version is posted at http://www.links.org.au. Vally will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, in Sydney, April 10-12. For more information, or to register, visit ;http://www.worldatacrossroads.org.
There are moments in modern history when particular struggles galvanise millions around the world to act in solidarity.
This occurred during the Spanish Civil War, the struggle of the Vietnamese people against US imperialism and the liberation struggles of Southern Africa.
The time has now come for progressive humanity to meaningfully support the resistance of the Palestinian people.
For more than 60 years, Palestinians have alerted us to one outrage after another, injustices piled upon injustices, without the commensurate scale of global solidarity required to make a significant difference to their lives.
It is now in our hands to change this unconscionable situation — by applying the most potent weapon we have learned to rely on, forged and steeled through the tried and tested struggles of workers and oppressed people: solidarity.
International solidarity, in the words of the late Mozambican revolutionary, Samora Machel, is "not an act of charity but an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objectives".
Fundamentalist, militarised state
A reading of imperialism shows that apartheid Israel is needed as a fundamentalist and militarised warrior state, not only to quell the undefeated and unbowed Palestinians, but also as a rapid response fount of reaction — in concert with despotic Arab regimes — to do the empire's bidding in the Middle East and beyond.
This has included Israeli support for the mass terror waged against the people of Central and South America, and helping the West evade international sanctions against South Africa.
We have to recognise that the Israeli economy was founded on the special political and military role that Zionism fulfils for Western imperialism.
While playing its role to ensure that the region is safe for oil companies, it has also carved out a niche market producing high-tech security.
In Gaza, 80% of the population live in poverty and close to a million people have no access to fresh water, electricity and other essential services. Close to 70,000 workers have lost their jobs in the siege of Gaza.
But there is a hopeful reality: many ordinary citizens all over the world have not given up and the Palestinians have not given up on themselves.
Palestinians remain steadfast and courageous. We outside the Israeli dungeons and the rubble of the Israeli war machine have a responsibility to support the Palestinian struggle.
I believe this can be accomplished through the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS) proposed by a wide array of Palestinian trade unions, and academic, student and political organisations representing the vast majority of the Palestinian people (see <http://www.pacbi.org>).
Lessons from South Africa
It will be helpful to draw attention to the lessons from the campaign to isolate apartheid South Africa.
First, it took a few decades of hard work before the boycott campaign made an impact.
Despite the impression given by many governments, unions and faith-based groups that they supported the isolation of the apartheid state from the outset, this is just not true.
Because of the support given to the apartheid regime by then-US president Ronald Reagan and British PM Margaret Thatcher, multilateral organisations and unions were hesitant for many years to fully support the campaign.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) was formed in 1959 and the first significant breakthrough came in 1963 when Danish dock workers refused to off-load South African goods.
The rise of the AAM must be seen in the general effervescence of liberation struggles and social movements in the turbulent 1960s and early '70s. It was also in the context of, whatever our opinion was of the USSR and its motivations, the existence of a counterweight to US hegemony.
This, together with the viciousness of the pro-Israeli lobby, its opportunistic references to the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and the post-9/11 climate of fear, silencing dissent and Islamophobia, makes the task of isolating apartheid Israel more difficult.
Despite these seemingly daunting obstacles the movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel is gaining momentum and already some significant gains have been made.
Gains which would've been difficult to imagine just a few years ago.
Second, arguments opposed to the boycott related to the harm it would cause Black South African themselves, and the need for dialogue and "constructive engagement", were easily rebuffed by lucid and knowledgeable arguments.
The South African regime, like Israel today, used "homeland" leaders and an assortment of collaborators to argue the case for them.
Careful research played an important role in exposing the economic, cultural and the armaments trade links with South Africa to make our actions more effective as well as to "name and shame" those who benefited from the apartheid regime.
Third, sectarianism is a danger that we must be vigilant against.
Some in the AAM favoured supporting only one liberation movement as the authentic voice of the oppressed in South Africa. They also aspired to work largely with "respectable" organisations, governments and multilateral organisations — shunning the much harder and patient grassroots organising.
In Britain, for instance, sectarianism resulted in debilitating splits. The biggest chapter of the AAM in London, which supported the anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland and was part of the "Troops Out Movement", was ostracised by the official AAM.
The latter was also keen not to annoy the British government by taking a stronger stance against racism in Britain.
The healthy linking of struggles against racism, in support of the indigenous people and workers in North America with the Palestinian struggle that I have witnessed must be lauded.
At a huge Palestinian solidarity rally in South Africa recently, members of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee were asked by officials from the Palestinian ambassador's office to pull down the flag of the Western Sahrawi Republic because they feared this would alienate the Moroccan ambassador.
We refused this request much to the glee of Polisario Front supporters present.
Fourth, the campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions must be in concert with supporting grassroots organisations in Palestine as a whole and in the Palestinian diaspora.
This can take many forms and shapes, including "twinning" arrangements, speaking tours, targeted actions in support of specific struggles and concrete support.
Finally, the sanctions campaign in South Africa did produce gatekeepers, sectarians and commissars but they were also challenged.
Writing in support of the academic boycott, a colleague, Shireen Hassim does not gloss over the problems: "Some academics who actively opposed apartheid had invitations to international conferences withdrawn; it was not always possible to target the supporters of the apartheid regime; and South African academics' understanding of global issues was certainly weakened.
"It is in the nature of such weapons that they are double-edged.
"But, as part of a battery of sanctions, the academic boycott undoubtedly had an impact on both the apartheid state and on white academics and university administrations. The boycott, together with the more successful sports boycott and economic divestment campaigns, helped to strengthen the struggle of black people for justice.
"The Afrikaner elite, very proud of its European roots and of the legacy of Jan Smuts as a global representative in the post-war system, and convinced that there would be support for its policies abroad, was rudely shaken.
"University administrations could no longer hide behind an excuse of neutrality but had to issue statements on their opposition to apartheid and introduce programs of redress.
"Academic associations (some more than others) examined the nature and conditions of research in their disciplines, and faculty unions became part of broader struggles for justice rather than bodies protecting narrow professional interests.
"Universities became sites of intense debate, and, indeed, intellectuals became critically involved in debates about the nature of current and future South African societies.
"In the wake of the boycott, there was not a curtailing of academic freedom, then, but a flourishing of intellectual thought that was rich, varied, and exciting."