Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the Zionist project moved to effectuate and legitimize the gains of its ethnic cleansing campaign through various means, one of which is education. Education is a human right. On this fourth annual International Day of Education, under the theme of “Changing Course, Transforming Education,” it’s important to emphasize the nature of Israel’s education curriculum vis~a~vis its Arab-Palestinian citizens, which serves to uplift the nationality of one group (Jews), and dimish or omit the nationality of another (Palestinians). The indigenous Palestinian community was the majority in Palestine, and now live as a “foreign” minority in the newly founded state, with second-class citizenship.

Israel is required to recognize the right and freedom of its Palestinian minority to practice their culture, religion and language, and to adopt positive measures to avoid discriminating against them. Moreover, indigenous minorities have the right to have their history expressed in state institutions, including the education system. In Israel however, Palestinians are limited in their political and cultural expressions, especially through Israel’s education system. A prime example of this is the Nakba Law, which prevents publicly funded institutions, including schools, from commemorating the Nakba (i.e. catastrophe).

The Nakba represents the ongoing forcible displacement, ethnic cleansing, land theft, and systematic oppression of the Palestinian people. It rests in the collective memory of the Palestinian people, yet it’s suppressed, and hidden in the Israeli history curriculum. In fact, the 1948 ethnic cleansing campaign that caused the dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians is taught from an Israeli perspective as a “just war” while purveying the myth of “the few against the many.”

When the Nakba is mentioned in textbooks, it’s framed as part of the unfolding events of the Israeli war of independence, and Jews and Palestinians as equal sufferers, in effect positing parity between them. Moreover, the resulting refugee crisis is blamed on Arab states or the Palestinians themselves. The purpose of this pedagogical approach is to absolve the crimes of the state’s Zionist settler-colonial project, or at least provide justification for it.

Israeli textbooks reinforce Jewish-israeli territorial identity, wherein Palestinians are not regarded as ancestral inhabitants of the land, and therefore have no claim to it.

Israeli textbooks reinforce Jewish-israeli territorial identity, wherein Palestinians are not regarded as ancestral inhabitants of the land, and therefore have no claim to it. While Palestinians have been appointed to lead the Department of Arab Education since 1987, they lack decision-making authority, which remains exclusively under the direct control of the Ministry of Education. This contrasts sharply with the state’s Jewish religious school system, which is physically and administratively separate from the state’s secular Jewish school system, and maintains complete autonomy over its educational policy, aims and goals.

Israel enacted the State Education Law in 1953, the main object of which is to “educate” on the “loyalty to the State and the Jewish people.” The law as amended in 2002 references the Palestinian minority, referred to as Arabs in Zionist discourse, by “acknowledging” their language, history, and heritage. A mere acknowledgement implies mere mention, as opposed to education.

Palestinian students in Israel are deprived of the Palestinian literary classics taught throughout the Arab world. In addition to not learning about the Nakba or Palestinian history, they also spend many more class hours on the study of Hebrew, Jewish history, and Jewish culture than they do on Arabic literature and history. One example is that of foremost Palestinian poet laureate, Mahmoud Darwish, whose work Israel tried to ban in both Jewish and Palestinians schools. Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman described Darwish’s texts as “fuel for terror attacks.”

A study found that over the years, generations of Israeli jews were taught from Hebrew textbooks that portrayed Palestinian-Arabs in a negative and deligitimizing way. Furthermore, on a general level, Palestinian society was presented as “primitive, backward and passive.” Israeli Jews were thus subjected to this form of negative and dehumanizing stereotyping, which ultimately conditioned how they perceive Palestinians.

What makes this trend more troublesome is that Palestinian history teachers can do little to correct it. They’re limited by the state curriculum and textbooks and banned from using other texts. The inevitable result of this educational regime is that Palestinian students are forced to memorize history as it is presented in these textbooks, because their final high school graduation exams depends on it.

Jewish exclusivity to Palestine was not only taught since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948; in fact, a study shows that history textbooks in the pre-state era (1900-1948) stressed the exclusive rights of the Jewish people to ownership of Palestine. The indigenous Palestinian-Arabs were portrayed as “backward, primitive,” and thus left the land “neglected” while awaiting “Jewish redemption.”

Additionally, the earliest geography textbooks, produced by Zionist authors in Europe who embraced the Zionist slogan of “a land without a people for a people without a land,” omitted the presence of the indigenous population. This orientalist framework represented the indigenous Palestinians as a “negative homogenous mob that threatens, assaults, destroys, eradicates, burns and shoots . . . who strive to annihilate the most precious symbols of Zionism.”

Israel’s education system is designed to maintain racial domination of one racial group over another, while systematically oppressing them. There’s a word for such a system: Apartheid.

Even the updated history textbook of 2016 reinforces the omission, dehumanization, and denationalization of the indigenous Palestinian minority that characterizes Israel’s prior history curricula. They’re referred to in the negative as “non-jewish groups,” and viewed as an amalgamation of religious, cultural and linguistic groups, thereby reinforcing the notion that Palestinians are not a national group, let alone in a struggle for national liberation. Palestinian citizens are thus alienated from their ancestral connection to Palestine, and the Zionist-Israeli ideology, narrative, and history is amplified to reinforce colonial domination.

As we reflect on the right to education, we must first understand how education is sometimes employed to undermine the existence of an entire people. Palestinian citizens of Israel learn their diluted history from within that prism. Israel’s education system is designed to maintain racial domination of one racial group over another, while systematically oppressing them. There’s a word for such a system: Apartheid. This week is that of the International Day of Education, and we recognize Israel’s apartheid education system and rally for all educators and educational institutions to incorporate this fact and knowledge in how we educate about the world.

When Arabs arrived in Central and South America, they had nothing but the clothes they wore. They were called “Turcos” as they carried Ottoman passports. Today, they are wealthy and occupy important positions. Are they “sons who lost their mothers,” as a poet once put it? Do they maintain their ties to Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, the lands of their ancestors? Yousef M. Aljamal of Politics Today spoke with Simán Khoury, a Palestinian-Salvadorian, who serves as the president of the Palestinian Federations in Latin America, about the ethnically Arab populations in Latin America today.

Q. When people of the Levant arrived in Latin America in the late nineteenth century, they were called “Turcos.” Can you tell us about this? What does it mean and how do South Americans perceived the term?

The Arab immigration, especially from the Levant or Greater Syria, to Latin America was mostly in the late nineteenth century during the period of the Ottoman Empire. All those immigrants held Ottoman passports. So basically, people there did not distinguish between Arabs and Turks, and they called us all “Turcos” (Turks).

Q. What is the reason for this contempt of “Turcos”?

The majority of those who immigrated at that time were poor and ordinary people, mostly peasants. Ordinary Latin Americans, who lived and thought in feudal structures, considered them as inferior, lower-class people.

When our grandparents and our great-grandparents arrived there, four, five, or six generations back, they did it barefoot, which means that they were in a dire economic situation.

Q. What was the stereotype in the minds of immigrants about Latin America? I mean economically.

They were men of modest substance. Everyone wanted to go to America, meaning North America, and had no idea about possible differences between North, Central, and South America. They thought that they were going to North America. However, they arrived at Puerto Colombia, in Colombia, or in Cuba, where they split up. Some went to Chile, some went to El Salvador, and from there to other places, especially the places where they had relatives, if any.

Q. Why are Levant immigrants mainly concentrated in Chile, El Salvador, and Honduras?

There are about a million Palestinian immigrants in Latin America. The majority almost are from Palestine, especially from Bethlehem. In addition, the majority of those immigrants were Palestinian Christians from the city of Bethlehem. Chile has about half a million Palestinians, and there are maybe some 200,000 in Honduras, and 120,000 in El Salvador. Although there are people who say that these numbers are exaggerated, I am sure that they exist and we have statistics supporting that.

Chile has about half a million Palestinians, and there are maybe some 200,000 in Honduras, and 120,000 in El Salvador.

Q. There is a saying, which goes “In every town in Chile, there is a priest, a policeman, and a Palestinian.” Can you tell us more about Palestinians’ impact in Latin America today? What are their positions, their economic status, their cultural, political, and societal status?

When immigrants arrived, they were in a miserable economic situation and suffered from extreme poverty, but they managed to integrate. First, they worked as street vendors and this contributed to their marginalization by the feudal and wealthy classes. But they managed to set up shops and work in textile factories. Gradually, their financial situation improved, which led to an improvement in their social situation. These immigrants struggled for their children to live a better life. They sent their children to schools and universities, and were able to obtain a better social status.

Q. You have spoken about the relations that still link the Latin American Levantines with the Middle East. How do you see the new generation, especially with the Internet and easy access to information? Do they try to restore this relationship and the link between them and their countries of origin? If yes, how do they express this?

Although these migrations took place a long time ago, 80, 100, or 120 years ago – for example, I immigrated 41 years ago – the link between Palestinians and their homeland, despite the fact that they belong in the countries they are currently in, is excellent. They visit their homelands, whether Palestine, Syria or Lebanon – especially the Lebanese, who live in large numbers in Brazil, reaching 7 million.

They still send money and other kinds of aid, whether from Chile, Brazil, or El Salvador to their families there and continue to visit them. As an expression of our cultural identity, we participate in pro-Palestine political and cultural events on every possible occasion and follow the latest news. We have activities, including political ones, to support the Palestinian cause. We have many people in El Salvador who are politically active and support the cause.

Q. Historically, the relationship between South and Central America and the Middle East is strong, but recently, there has been a rise of the right wing in South and Central America. This, of course, also applies to the whole world. Do you observe any impact of this trend on South American interest in Middle Eastern affairs?

This has a great impact on our relationship. In 2017, with the presence of a left-wing government and the activism of the Palestinian community, we were able to close the Israeli embassy in El Salvador. However, the current situation is different due to the economic power of the Jewish lobby in South America.

In 2017, with the presence of a left-wing government and the activism of the Palestinian community, we were able to close the Israeli embassy in El Salvador.

At present, Palestinian embassies are not showing enough effort to influence these countries diplomatically and win their support. This is surprising because this cause is fundamental, it is about displaced people who are being expelled from their lands by brutal force. I personally blame Palestinian diplomacy because there are many countries, even when Chile was ruled by the right, which are still supportive of Palestine. For example, the President of the Republic of El Salvador Elías Antonio Saca González visited Palestine and he was a right-wing politician. He visited his family, the city of Bethlehem and Palestine, while currently, there are leftist countries that try to destroy these relations.

Two months ago, we published an article on the controversial issue of using models with the Palestinian keffiyeh in the training of the Panamanian police by the Israeli police. What are the reflections on this in local society?

Even though we have a large group of Palestinians in Panama, who have the upper hand in the country economically, the incident shows that the Israeli lobby is strong. I have personally been to the city of Cologne, where the greatest merchants in the Colon Free Zone are Palestinians. The community is doing what it can and we cannot blame them. What’s sad is that the Palestinian community has not had enough support from the Palestinian government or the PLO during the last three or four decades.

Is it possible to form a lobby that supports the rights and demands of the Arab Middle Eastern communities in Central and South America, similar to, for example, the Jewish lobby in the U.S. so that it presses, for example, for the recognition of the Palestinian state? In entire South America, Mexico and Panama are the two states, which haven’t yet recognized Palestine.

There is a lobby in Chile. For example, we have around 12 parliamentarians of Palestinian origin, and there is a league of these parliamentarians to support the Palestinian cause.

There is a lobby in Chile. For example, we have around 12 parliamentarians of Palestinian origin, and there is a league of these parliamentarians to support the Palestinian cause. Similarly, although this lobby is currently less effective in El Salvador, they nurture considerable support in Latin America in general.

Espionage of the Palestinians and their leaders by the Zionist movement is documented to have taken place in the 1930s and 1940s, with the Palmach, an underground force which included the Arab Platoon. The Arab Platoon recruited people who might pose as Arabs, such as Isaac Shoshan, a Syrian-born Israeli undercover operative, who passed away in 2020.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s former prime minister, tweeted about his death, noting that he was one of many people who learnt at the hands of Shoshan, adding that “generations of warriors learned their trade at his feet.” The Haganah also collected information about the residents of Palestinian villages and towns, which paved the way for occupying these villages and expelling their residents throughout 1947-8.

During my conversations with Palestinian Nakba survivor Ahmad Alhaaj, who now resides in Gaza, he told me that the Zionist movement had recruited a Yemeni Jew named Ali to work as a spy and that he posed as a Palestinian imam leading the Muslims of the town of Al-Majdal (today’s Ashkol) in their prayers. Palestinians learnt his origin and that he was a spy when the invading Zionist militias entered the town in 1948 and expelled its population at gunpoint. An officer had hugged the supposed imam in front of the people who were still in shock and had thanked him for his services.

Israel’s espionage and surveillance of Palestinians have only increased over the years, and technology has contributed to making them even more complicated. In the past, it was people on the ground who would do the job, but today, Israel does not stop bragging about its technology. From social media to drones, satellites to monitoring phone calls and the internet, Israel has circled the Palestinians from land, air, and sea, and learns of every step they take.

Artificial intelligence has been increasingly used by the Israeli security, and the surveillance of Palestinians by Israel has become ever more automated. This Israeli surveillance comes as no surprise as Israel learns of the birth of every single Palestinian and keeps record of Palestinian civil records. No ID card is given to any Palestinian that Israel deems unworthy based on the Oslo Accords of 1993, which gives Israel the final say on issuing ID cards to the Palestinians, such as Palestinians who came on family visit permits and stayed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Apple’s recent legal case against the Israeli NSO group for hacking Apple users’ devices does not come as a surprise to Palestinians. Some Palestinians joke that Israeli drones, which fly over the Gaza Strip 24/7, can tell if a Palestinian family is going to cook fresh or frozen meat on a random day. Not only this, but it is also widely believed that Israel plants spy sims in every single phone device brought into Gaza through Israel – this is the main way Palestinians have access to phones and other technologies.

The recent revelation that an NSO software was used by the Israeli authorities to monitor the phones of six Palestinian human rights workers came as no surprise either. Since NSO is an Israeli company, which works under the watch of the Israeli government and has been used to advance the goals and agendas of the Israeli government in the region, it was almost certain that the Israeli government itself has also used NSO’s Pegasus software, and that the Palestinians were most likely the target in this case as well.

A recent Washington Post article has revealed that, according to former Israeli soldiers, the Israeli security authorities are promoting a software known as “Blue Wolf,” which aims to use facial recognition to further monitor the Palestinians and to keep a database of the data. The former soldiers added that they were given rewards for taking photographs of Palestinians crossing checkpoints using cameras and smartphones.

Since NSO is an Israeli company, which works under the watch of the Israeli government and has been used to advance the goals and agendas of the Israeli government in the region, it was almost certain that the Israeli government itself has also used NSO’s Pegasus software.

The program, which was launched two years ago, served as a secret Israeli “Facebook for the Palestinians.” This Israeli software complements the monitoring of Palestinians in the Old City of Hebron, where racial recognition allows Israeli soldiers to recognize Palestinians at checkpoints in the Old City before they even hand over their IDs for regular checks.

The use of artificial intelligence and automation as part of the Israeli mass surveillance of Palestinians and exporting these technologies and software to other countries after testing them on Palestinians and proving they are effective is something civil society across the globe should speak out against. The last thing the world needs is to import Israeli software tested on caged Palestinians whose privacy has been completely violated.

Civil society across the globe should raise their voice against Israeli surveillance technologies which will only serve to violate the privacy of peoples in exactly the same way they violate the privacy of Palestinians.

Civil society across the globe should raise their voice against Israeli surveillance technologies which will only serve to violate the privacy of peoples in exactly the same way they violate the privacy of Palestinians. The U.S. government’s blacklisting of NSO over the use of Pegasus to spy on different human rights activists and journalists is an indication of how serious this Israeli software should be taken, and the need to protect other nationals from the violation of their privacy and their subjection to mass surveillance.

It must be very boring and sadistic for Israeli officers monitoring the Palestinians 24/7 as they listen to stories about the devastating impact of Israel’s military occupation and siege on the lives of those being spied on. International civil society must act to end the violations of Palestinians’ privacy and the automation of their surveillance, because no one knows, who will be next. Israelis have no reason to ask a Palestinian crossing a checkpoint out of Gaza the reason his family placed another door in their grandmother’s house. The answer is truly mundane.

The recently released report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) which described Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians as apartheid is important. It should serve as a wake-up call and bring attention to the ongoing plight of the Palestinians. The truth, however, is that the conclusion of this report, although it surprised some, did not surprise the Palestinians.

Palestinians have been describing Israeli laws, practices, and orders against them as apartheid for decades now. Since Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” which Palestinians use to describe the mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing of 1948, the year Israel was established on the ruins of 532 Palestinian villages, Palestinians have been placed under a de facto rule of apartheid. Here is how.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians remained in major cities such as Jaffa, Haifa, and Lod, under Israeli control, while some 750,000 were made refugees. Those who remained in what became Israel were placed in fenced areas called “Arab ghettos.” Some Israeli officials called these places concentration camps, but later, the term was omitted from Israeli archives on purpose.

For years, these Palestinians have needed permits by the Israeli authorities to move from one city to another or merely to go to work. They became strangers in their land and next to their own homes, which were taken from them at gunpoint and given to Jewish settlers.

Since day one, Israel was established on the notion of separation, separating Palestinians from Jews, and European Jews from Arab Jews. For example, the babies of Yemeni Jews were taken to be adopted by European Jews and to be raised as white Europeans in the 1950s. This denial of the other has extended to the dead too.

Recently, I came across a video showing the graveyard of the village of Aqer, where my family comes from. The graveyard where my great-grandfather was buried in early May 1948, after being shot dead while defending the village before it was taken over by the invading Zionist militias, is almost empty today except for what seem to be a couple of stones belonging to graves and some scattered trees.

Israeli settlers, whose villas overlook the graveyard, throw their old furniture inside the graveyard, while some of them bring chairs and have BBQ parties there.

The 10-dunum (acres) graveyard appears to be covered in sand, hiding the graves and trying to obscure the accompanying memories. It would appear that the Israeli settlers who live in the nearby villas do not want to be reminded of what happened here once.

Israeli settlers, whose villas overlook the graveyard, throw their old furniture inside the graveyard, while some of them bring chairs and have BBQ parties inside the graveyard. This is the history they don’t want to remember or talk about, the gruesome truth that must haunt them as they host parties and grill meat over the bones of dead Palestinians beneath them.

Palestinians who became internal refugees in what became the state of Israel were not allowed to return to their villages. At the same time, Jewish migrants who chose to move to Israel were given easy access to these villages and were given houses that belonged to Palestinians. Palestinians ended up as refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and some neighboring Arab countries.

Palestinian refugees who attempted to return to their villages and towns were shot dead or arrested. From 1948 to 1956 alone, 3,000 Palestinians were shot dead on the northern borders of the West Bank. The aim was to scare refugees not to return, but also to force those who had managed to stay in their homes in what became Israel to move to the West Bank, which was under Jordanian control, and the Gaza Strip, which was under Egyptian control until 1967.

The year 1956 was rife with Israeli massacres of Palestinians, both those living under military rule inside Israel and those in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The year 1956 was rife with Israeli massacres of Palestinians, both those living under military rule inside Israel and those in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In 1956, 49 Palestinians from the town of Kufur Qasim, 23 of whom were children, were shot dead by Israeli forces. The victims were workers returning from their daily jobs without knowing that Israel had imposed a curfew on their town. As of today, Israel refuses to take responsibility for what happened.

This is only an example of how Israel has always treated Palestinians in Israel. Today, Israel claims to be giving Palestinians citizenship and allowing them to vote in elections.

The expulsion of Palestinians continued even after the establishment of Israel. The residents of the coastal city of Al-Majdal were expelled from their homes in 1949-1950 to make space for Jewish migrants. Al-Majdal was famous for its textile factories and Palestinians were forced to leave and move to the Gaza Strip, leaving behind their textile factories and machines. The 105 residents of the town of Abu-Ghosh were also transferred to the West Bank in 1950 by Israeli forces.

Israeli-American activist Miko Peled notes that Israeli generals had described the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967 as “finishing the job.” The “job” that they started in 1948, but were not able to finish then. The entire British Mandate of Palestine came under Israeli occupation in 1967, but the “job” was not over yet. Since then, Israel has engaged in a systemic campaign of expelling Palestinians from their land, be it Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship or Palestinians who live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians in Jerusalem were given blue IDs, which give them the status of temporary residents in the city and allow them to visit the West Bank or Israel. As for Palestinians in the West Bank, their IDs only allow them to visit areas in the West Bank, but not Jerusalem. In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians can visit the West Bank or Jerusalem, but only after they get an Israeli permit which is hard to obtain and is given only to a limited number of Palestinians – mostly cancer patients, many of whom have died waiting for these permits to be issued.

The Human Rights Watch report which described Israeli policies towards the Palestinians as apartheid is not the first of its kind by non-Palestinians. In 2017, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) issued a report by Prof. Richard Falk and Prof. Virginia Tilley calling Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians apartheid. The report was withdrawn following Israeli pressure which pushed Rima Khalaf, the under-secretary general and executive secretary of the ESCWA, to resign in protest.

On April 27, one of the world’s largest and most credible rights groups, Human Rights Watch (HRW), concluded, in a comprehensive 213-pages report, that Israel is an apartheid state.

“Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power and land has long guided government policy,” the report entitled “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution” read in part.

More specifically, HRW wrote that Israeli “authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity.” This led it to unequivocally conclude that “these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

While, on their own, HRW’s conclusions carry a significant legal and potentially political weight, the report is hardly an isolated event. Only a few months ago, in January, a leading Israeli rights group, B’tselem, reached a similar conclusion.

“In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another –  Palestinians,”  B’tselem’s report, entitled “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid”, read.

The above are two significant, if not earth-shattering, additions to a burgeoning legal literature that points to Israel’s racial discrimination and outright apartheid. All of this signals a vastly changing discourse concerning Israel’s unlawful practices in occupied Palestine.

What makes HRW’s latest report, however, more significant than any other previous legal arguments regarding racism and apartheid in Israel, is its timing.

In fact, both reports are published against the backdrop of an equally unprecedented study conducted by the United Nations itself. In 2017, the UN-affiliated Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), released its own report, entitled “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid”.

That in mind, it is important that the HRW, B’tselem and ESCWA reports are placed within a proper context, one that examines the evolution of the apartheid narrative, mostly in the Western discourse, concerning Palestine and Israel. This understanding is important in the sense that it could help illuminate the possible direction, in addition to the political and legal consequences of labeling Israel an apartheid regime.

Tellingly, it was Africa, not the West, that first began coining today’s terminology concerning Israel’s racism and apartheid. In 1975, the Organization of African Unity passed Resolution 77 (XII), condemning Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism, as it considered it “a danger to world peace”. Then, it launched a global campaign aimed at unmasking “the racist aggressive nature of the Zionist entity”. This condemnation was made within the larger context of condemning racist apartheid regimes in South Africa and elsewhere.

It is historically significant to point out that it was this morally driven African stance on Palestine and against racism in all of its forms, which served as the foundation upon which UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 1975 was based. The UN Resolution, which was revoked in 1991 under intense American pressure, had recognized Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination”.

The famous 1997 declaration by South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon, and first post-Apartheid President, Nelson Mandela, that “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” was not an isolated moral stance against injustice. Instead, it was fully consistent with other statements and declarations made by many other African liberation leaders throughout the continent’s anti-colonial struggle.

With time, the direct correlation between South African apartheid and Israeli apartheid became more palpable. “I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces,” said anti-apartheid leader, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, following a trip to Palestine in 2014.

“Their humiliation,” Tutu added, with reference to the Palestinians, “is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.”

In a 2014 interview with the US-based TV program, ‘Democracy Now’, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky went further, suggesting that “in the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid.” He elaborated,

“To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by ‘apartheid’ you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There’s a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce. … The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them. They want them out, or at least in prison.”

According to the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid in 1976, the Crime of Apartheid is described as follows:

‘The crime of apartheid’, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the (…) inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”.

None of the previously mentioned reports deviated from that description. For example, HRW wrote,

“A stated aim of the Israeli government is to ensure that Jewish Israelis maintain domination across Israel and the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories). (…) Other steps are taken to ensure Jewish domination, including a state policy of ‘separation’ of Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza, which prevents the movement of people and goods within the OPT, and ‘Judaization’ of areas with significant Palestinian populations, including Jerusalem as well as the Galilee and the Negev in Israel”.

Earlier, B’tselem essentially made the same assertion.

Dismissing a legally justifiable conclusion – itself based on the harrowing reality under which Palestinians have been forced to subsist for decades – as if another form of ‘anti-Semitism’ is a desperate attempt at delaying the inevitable. Israel’s apartheid status will eventually become the global designation of Israel’s practices in Palestine, as was the case in South Africa.

In truth, the cracks in the wall of the Israeli narrative were always present. Critics of Israel’s racist and violent policies against Palestinians included many courageous intellectuals and movements, some of whom paid a heavy price for that courage. However, a combination of factors, including the absence of Palestinian voices in mainstream academia and media, in addition to the intimidation tactics and smear campaigns used by Israel and its supporters, kept criticism of Israeli apartheid at a minimum.

The genie, however, is finally out of the bottle and a massive edifice of intellectual, historical and legal discourses are quickly building up an irrefutable case against Israel’s apartheid. No amount of Israeli propaganda and smear campaigns can turn the tide back in favor of Israel. While it may be too early to speak of a major paradigm shift, it is certainly no longer far-fetched to imagine that such a possibility is finally at hand.

Mourid Barghouti, 77, passed away on February 14, 2021 in the Jordanian capital Amman, after a life-long commitment to literature, politics, and public affairs in the Arab world. Born to a Palestinian family in the West Bank, Barghouti grew up surrounded by his extended family which lives in Deir Ghassana and the nearby villages.

In 1963, Barghouti left Palestine to pursue his undergraduate studies at the University of Cairo in Egypt. As he sat his final exams in his senior year, Israel occupied the West Bank, depriving him of his right to return to his village for the next 30 years.

While studying at Cairo University, Barghouti met Radwa Ashour (d. 2014) who he married in 1970.  Ashour was a well-known Egyptian novelist who left behind a great legacy of novels and literary works. The couple’s only son, Tamim, is a known poet and a professor of political philosophy. During a poetry competition, a literary critic once told Tanim, “You have proven that poetry genes can be inherited through DNA.”

The Barghouti family has a remarkable legacy of literature, politics, and public engagement, which is rare to find in a single family in the Arab world. It all started with the marriage of Radwa and Mourid, a marriage that was characterized by imprisonment, exile, and separation as well as great contributions to literature and politics.

Life in Exile

On the eve of signing the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, Barghouti was deported to Lebanon for his critical views of the accords. He spent thirteen years in Budapest representing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), although he kept himself away and refused to join any Palestinian political party. His life in exile sharpened his memory, prompting him to write twelve poetry collections and a couple of autobiographies that were translated into numerous languages.

Barghouti’s return to Palestine, however, inspired him to pen one of his greatest autobiographies, I Saw Ramallah, in which he documented his experience in exile.

Upon his return to the Palestinian territories, Barghouti took a job under the Palestinian Authority, but unable to cope with corruption, he resigned three years later. His return to Palestine, however, inspired him to pen one of his greatest works, I Saw Ramallah, in which he documented his experience in exile.

Crossings and Waiting

For him, the crossing point controlled by Israel “nullifies the fatherhood of fathers, the motherhood of mothers, the friendship of friends, and the love of lovers.” Upon his return to Ramallah, he found out that many things had changed in his 30 years of exile.

The feeling of being uprooted and not belonging characterized another of his works: I was born there; I was born here. In this Memoir, Barghouti described the feeling of living under occupation. After a long time of waiting, he was able to take his son to his home village in Ramallah, so that he could tell him “I was born here,” showing him a room in his family’s house.

The Palestinian novelist points to the ways Israel uses waiting as a weapon to make Palestinians wait forever for borders to open, for electricity to turn on, for permits to be issued, and for occupation to end. In I Saw Ramallah, Barghouti stresses the fact that Palestinian life has been characterized by uncertainty because of this very waiting. He recounts how Palestinians had to leave Palestine “until things get clearer” and they could return back, but that time never came. How they moved from Jordan, to Lebanon, to Tunisia, to establish a state under occupation “until things get clearer.”

The truth is that Barghouti was among the few Palestinians who understood the wrath of having a state under occupation, who was a critical voice of the Oslo Accords of 1993 between the PLO and Israel – a fact that brought him much trouble.

Just like Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who was a close friend of Barghouti, and Edward Said, who wrote the foreword to I Saw Ramallah, describing it as “one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement,” Barghouti understood well that the Oslo Accords were meant to end any self-determination and statehood aspiration of the Palestinians. In addition to expressing this skillfully in his writings, Barghouti was very critical of the corruption of the PLO leadership.

A life-long Commitment to Freedom

Apart from his involvement in Palestinian politics, Barghouti was known for supporting the uprisings that broke out in the Arab world. His fierce commitment to freedom never changed over time, despite imprisonment, exile, and exclusion.

His voice was always critical, it never faded over the years. Neither did his commitment to literature and his family. Six years after the departure of his wife, Radwa Ashour, Barghouti’s powerful presence in literature and politics has slipped away.

Perhaps a lesson one can take away from the rich life of Mourid Barghouti and Radwa Ashour is that commitment to a cause, even though it might bring many troubles, gives life a purpose. After 77 years, much of which were spent in exile, Barghouti departed us so that he could see Ramallah from above – without Israeli travel restrictions and checkpoints.