Summary
The author, activist and former South African government minister whose praise opens Barghouti’s book — “The ABC for internationalist support for Palestine is BDS” — and whose Guardian writing Barghouti quotes against the argument that a boycott of Israel is economically unfeasible (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, PDF p.9, p.36).
Details
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In his praise: like the anti-apartheid movement against racist South Africa, BDS “is helping to make a tremendous difference in what has been a most difficult struggle for human rights and the right of a colonized and dispossessed people to national self-determination”; the book is “a weapon in a noble struggle in which all right-thinking people can play a part” (PDF p.9).
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Barghouti identifies him as “a former South African cabinet minister and ANC leader, Ronnie Kasrils, who happens to be Jewish”, writing in the Guardian: “When Chief Albert Luthuli made a call for the international community to support a boycott of apartheid South Africa in 1958, the response was a widespread and dedicated movement that played a significant role in ending apartheid.” (PDF p.36)
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The same quotation continues: “Almost four decades later, the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions is gaining ground again in South Africa, this time against Israeli apartheid.” (PDF p.36)
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In Barghouti’s Chapter 3, Kasrils and Victoria Brittain are quoted on the Palestinian minority in Israel, and Kasrils explains: “Apartheid was an extension of the colonial project to dispossess people of their land. That is exactly what has happened in Israel and the Occupied Territories” (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, PDF p.79). Kasrils co-authored the Jewish South African Not in Our Names Declaration of Conscience with Max Ozinsky (PDF p.82), and with Brittain argued boycotts “ultimately helped liberate both blacks and whites in South Africa” (PDF p.102).
Related pages
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, BDS movement, Apartheid, Desmond Tutu