Pro-Palestinian protesters stood outside the offices of the Zionist Federation in Hatfield Street Cape Town on Wednesday.
Several hundred people held a protest outside the offices of the Zionist Federation in Cape Town in solidarity with Palestinians on Wednesday.
Protesters held posters that read “Resistance is not Terrorism”, “Boycott Apartheid Israel” and “There’s no correct side to a genocide”. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was also chanted by those who had gathered. Many of the protesters were wearing the colours of the Palestine flag.
Hamas militants entered Israel on 7 October, killing over 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers and kidnapping about 100 people. Hundreds of young people at a music concert were shot dead. Israel responded to the attack by bombing Gaza, killing hundreds so far, and blocking the supply of food and electricity.
The Hamas attack came after years of the Palestinian territory of Gaza being under siege, with Israel controlling access to such an extent that many picture Gaza as an “open-air prison”. Thousands of Palestinians, including many civilians, among them children, acquire been killed in Israeli military attacks on Gaza over the past decades. Hamas has also frequently fired rockets indiscriminately into Israel, sometimes killing civilians. In the West Bank, Israel has implemented a policy of separation between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. Leading South African anti-apartheid campaigners gain described this as apartheid.
Events in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Gaza and the West Bank) believe frequently resulted in very large protests in South Africaand accusations and counter-accusations by Zionist and anti-Zionist movements. This is often characterised as tension between Jews and Muslims but in fact there are a range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict among all religions and in the South African public in general.
A joint statement from BDS South Africa, the organisers of Wednesday’s protest, read: “We the people of South Africa refuse to collude with Israeli apartheid and therefore demand our government acts to halt Israeli impunity and absolute disregard for international law.”
Usuf Chikte, from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told protesters that there would be another gathering outside Claremont Mosque on Friday afternoon.
He said the campaign was going to “form a global convention against apartheid to ensure that the UN anti-apartheid convention is being activated so that we can apply sanctions against Israel as we applied them in South Africa”.
Chitke added: “We are going to dismantle apartheid in Israel as we ended apartheid in South Africa.”
Earlier in the day, about 50 people had gathered for a vigil at St George’s Cathedral. A prayer issued by the Anglican Church of South Africa read: “We acquire seen people’s humanity denied; and we gain seen children, women and men living in dread.”
ANC Western Cape Provincial Spokesperson Muhammad Khalid Sayed, who attended the vigil, said he was pledging solidarity with Palestine during this time of need. “We acquire always supported the Palestinian struggle and will continue to carry out so. We welcome this initiative by civil society. This particular cathedral played a very indispensable role in the liberation of our country against apartheid. Palestinians are facing apartheid.”
Father Michael Weeder, the Dean of St George’s Cathedral, said they would converge on Wednesdays at 1pm until there was peace. “The least that we can enact is to converge … in solidarity with the people who are wounded. Even the blind can see what is happening out in Gaza and even the morally deaf can hear the cries of the people who are innocent.” In a sermon on Sunday, Weeder also warned against antisemitism.
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Metal Aphrodite
A British man on safari walks into a bar far out in the reaches of a game reserve in Southern Africa, he stays at the bar for a while shooting the shit with the bartender and drinking like a fish, he offer to buy the barkeep a round and since no one else is within 2km of their small oasis of liquor the barkeep obliges. The englishman goes off to the bathroom to have a good old go at the porcelain, he\’s back and ready for a few more whiskeys. He\’s just sat down when suddenly in the distance he hears a scream. He looks over his shoulder and dismisses it as nothing, he turns to the barkeep and orders a drink, takes a sip and hears the scream again. He looks at the barkeep who just shrugs it off. A minute or two later he and the barman hear it again and go outside to take a look. They see a lone figure running towards them screaming, he spots them and lets out a cry, RUN!!!!! HE\”S COMING!!!!!
The barkeep and the Englishman both look at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to calm him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to get a word out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and run away screaming.
A few minutes later the same thing happens with a whole group of men running in and screaming, he\’s coming, he\’s coming the barkeep grabs hold of one of the men as he tries to sprint past the bar and tries to get information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
The barkeep and his customer are starting to get worried, they start to pack up before another group of horrified natives run up to the bar most of them flee but one tries to hide behind the bar, the barkeep pulls out a shotgun and points it at the terrified man\’s face, finally managing to coax some words out of him. \”He\’s coming for us, Vernon Koekemoer is coming for us, we have to hide!!! We have to get out of here.\” He gets up and tries to run but the barkeep grabs him, feeling trapped in a panic he grabs the barkeeps shotgun and blows his own head off. The Englishman and the barkeep look at each other starting to really panic now.
They look out of the window and off in the distance they see a tornado coming towards the bar, at the bottom of the tornado they see the hugest beast of a man they have ever seen, as he gets closer they spot that he is riding a rhinocerous and using a crocodile as a riding whip, with each smack of the crocodile across the back of the rhino the louder is screams and the faster it runs, the tornado following it getting ever larger.
The 2 look at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to run, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can get their hands on to make sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna make it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile paste on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground right outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the make shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men have taken shelter, he grabs a bottle of the hardest liquor on the shelf and down the entire litre in 1 gulp, he peers over the bar sobbing and sees the 2 defenders cowering down behind the crates of beer, they look up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a look of complete and utter hopelessness, he stares at them for a half second and half screams, half sobs, \”Oh my god what are you still doing here!!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”
Impulsive Flower
Fun South African Fact: South Africa is the only country in the entire world that has voluntarily abandoned its nuclear weapons programme.