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In an Open Letter in today’s Irish Times, 32 veterans of the Irish movement against South African apartheid call for Ireland, RTÉ & Sarah McTernan to #BoycottEurovision2019 due to be held in Israel next week, comparing Israel to Apartheid South Africa. irishtimes.com/opinion/letter…
The signatories include renowned Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strikers Mary Manning and Karen Gearon, former Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson and Secretary of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) Gary Kilgallen, Rafique Mottiar and Louise Asmal respectively.
Further signatories comprise 10 former members of the IAAM Executive Committee, including co-founder Anthony Coughlan, Sister Cora Richardson and Lalloo Bhagwan.
Other who have signed are many anti-apartheid activists such as travel writers Dervla Murphy & Mary Russell, artist Robert Ballagh, playwrights Margaretta D’Arcy and Donal O’Kelly, and journalist and humanitarian Lynn Geldof.
The letter compares repression under South African apartheid to repression against Palestinians under, saying that “Israel is an extremely repressive state ... that we believe practices apartheid against the Palestinian people.”
It goes on to note that many South African veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle and the ANC istelf see the same parallels, with some like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ronnie Kasrils believing Israel’s is a worse form apartheid.
It states that when “we were active in the South African solidarity movement, we supported an international boycott of that apartheid regime” & say this campaign “played a significant role in the ultimate defeat of that regime and the end of racial discrimination in the country.”
The authors state their support for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, “including its call for a cultural boycott of Israel”, compare Tel Aviv to South Africa’s notorious Sun City.
They call for Irish Sarah McTernan to “stand on the right side of history” by “[listening] to the call from the Palestinian people not cross their picket line” & hope that “she will be remembered as an artist who took a brave & principled stance against oppression.”
This is a wonderful act of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice & equality from giants of the Irish anti-apartheid movement. They clearly understood what Mandela meant when he said that ‘our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.’
