COSATU SUPPORTS Israeli Apartheid Week
6 March 2017
COSATU joins millions of people all over the world in participating in activities marking the historic Israeli Apartheid week, starting today. We are proud to host the Opening day of the week-long activities and call on all workers, activists, internationalists and all justice-loving people in our country and beyond to join us today at COSATU House.
COSATU Central Executive Committee (CEC) in its ordinary sitting last week, clearly pronounced its unwavering support for the just cause of the Palestinian people. It reaffirmed its unequivocal determination never to betray the sister peoples of Palestine, no matter how difficult things become in the journey to their freedom.
We are further inspired by the double efforts put up by our affiliates in making sure they fully participate, express solidarity and mobilise workers to make the call loud and clear that we won’t be bullied, neither will we be cowed by racists and Zionists in our own country, through perpetual harassment and insults or even threats against our hard won freedom. We remain resolute, our freedom is not for sale, neither is it for those who have money to use courts to reverse our struggles.
All workers must be mobilised into action against all and any form of attack on their federation and all progressive forces the world over. It is noteworthy that the Zionists have launched a global offensive, using dirty money, buying and bribing politicians, corrupting every fibre of society, to join the chorus of lies and misinformation against the colonised people of Palestine and their legitimate struggle for their land.
The world must refuse to be part of the rot to keep the Palestinian people in bondage a day more. It is enough dehumanisation and tragic that we are daily living as if life is normal, when amongst us we have “civilised colonisers and fascists”, who pretend to be civilised and dignified, but savage on the blood and sweats of other people. We also salute all those comrades and ordinary people who joined us in the court case by the South African Board of Jewish Deputies and the South African Human Rights Commission in the past few weeks, which was a naked attack against our constitutional right to free expression and obligation to render solidarity with those in pain wherever they are.
We salute the church for refusing to be blackmailed and spread lies that justify the holocaust unfolding in Palestine, with the full blessings of the powerful in the world, the US and parts of the EU.
Let this year be the year of action in support of BDS to hit hard on the evil economy of Zionism that hurts children and women, that allows for the official stealing of land, that allows for naked lies to be turned into gospel truths and that allows for bribing of international institutions to blacklist proper investigation and action against the apartheid state of Israel.
COSATU affiliates have announced their own activities and equally pledged to join all the BDS and COSATU events for the whole week and beyond and may we invite all South Africans who hate apartheid and racism to join and spread the word of liberation, that finally, Palestine shall be free. No amount of state terror and bully tactics shall stop that, because history so demands.
Issued by Sizwe Pamla, National Spokesperson, COSATU, 6 March 2017
