Solidarity still necessary

IN 1977 the UN passed a resolution inaugurating International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people in recognition of the injustice and gross human rights violations that were being perpetrated in Palestine. International Day of Solidarity is commemorated tomorrow.

We need to mark this day, 38 years after the resolution was passed, because the Zionist State of Israel continues its systematic campaigns of ethnic cleansing that have involved land grabs, settler expansions, home demolitions, destruction of essential infrastructure, illegal imprisonment and targeted killings of Palestinians.

Restrictions on the movement of people and goods undermine the living conditions of 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza and other territories.

What Palestine needs from the world today is not just a condemnation of the injustice and gross human rights violations being perpetrated against the Palestinians, but also a delegitimisation of the Zionist ideology used to justify the destructive actions of Israel. International solidarity with the Palestinians demands no less than the complete isolation of Israel.

As long as Israel acts with impunity in the expansion of its occupation territories, and as long as it remains a member of the UN, despite violating without sanctions, we need an International Day of Solidarity.

After the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, we saw the Sydney Opera House and other iconic buildings around the world light up in the tricolour of France in solidarity.

We call on the world again to light up their buildings in the colours of the Palestinian flag to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people who face daily terror at the hands of Israel.

We once again affirm the right of Palestinians to resist the illegal occupation of their land by Israel.

We call on all peace-loving citizens of the world to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign to isolate Israel economically and politically. We call on the international community to enact its own resolutions in pursuit of justice for Palestinians by ending the impunity with which Israel continues to perpetrate gross violations of human rights. RODNEY Mazinter’s letter on Zionism (“Forty years on the evil still won’t die”, Weekend Argus, November 21) misses the point altogether.

Zionism was not condemned by the UN General Assembly as an act of anti-semitism, but like Nazism and apartheid, for promoting the concept of two worlds, the “Ubermensh” and the “Untermensh”.

The very concept of a Jewish state in Israel implies the rejection of other population groups who are not part of the Chosen few and are therefore “inferior” to the selected group.

It is no use saying how good the treatment of those “lesser breeds” is, as we did once in South Africa.

It is the stigmatisation of a group of people – in Israel, the Palestinians; in Germany, the Jews; and in South Africa, people of colour.

In 40 years since the resolution was passed, the situation has become worse.