Irene Calis on Everyday Forms of Resistance in Palestine

Freedom Dreaming & Liberation: Robin D.G. Kelley

Making a Sow’s Ear from Palestinian Protest

Camalita Naicker, The Con

The recent decision by the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) to place a pig’s head in what was assumed to be the kosher section of Woolworths, and then, in fact, turned out to be the halal section, could be written off as a mere “fail of the week.”

But it is indicative of a far more serious and insidious politics being cultivated by Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions-South Africa (BDS-SA) who have proved unable and unwilling to run a disciplined and ethical campaign in solidarity with Palestinians.

The 2014 Edward Said Memorial Lecture with Dr. Judith Butler

Why Memory Matters: Gaza, Recent History & the Campaign Against Truth

Gaza vigil - Rhodes University 8/8/2014

Grahamstown Vigil for Gaza

Achille Mbembe at the Grahamstown Vigil for Gaza

Rania Masri's Speech at "Crisis in Gaza and West Bank: Context and Action" Forum

Grahamstown Vigil for Children Killed in Gaza

An Israeli Soldier's Story - Eran Efrati

Motion on Israel Adopted by the Faculty of Humanities, Rhodes University, 4 August 2014

Motion to the Faculty of Humanities concerning the abuse of Human Rights in Palestine and the Occupied Territories

Noting the United Nations Security Councils specifically call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, respect for humanitarian law and protection of civilians in Gaza; the general worldwide condemnation of the Israeli government’s sustained airborne assault and ground force military incursion into Gaza, which has resulted in over 1,035 deaths of Palestinians (of which 218 deaths have been children); the deaths of 3 Israeli civilians; the injuring of 6,200 Palestinian people and the displacement of 100 000 Palestinian individuals by the 27th of July 2014;

Illan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - The Past & the Present

Religions & Peace in an age of invasions, occupations, and emppire

Open Letter from Concerned Individuals in the Rhodes University Community on the Israeli Attacks on Gaza

During apartheid academics and students around the world took a strong stand against injustice in South Africa. Their demands for the international isolation of the South African state were an important contribution to the struggle against apartheid.

The attack on Gaza by the Israeli state violates the most basic human rights of the men, women and children in the area who continue to live in fear of the destruction of their homes, injury and death. The escalating catastrophe is not an isolated incident but part of a persistent and systemic oppression of the Palestinian people.  In light of this, we take the view that solidarity with the people in Gaza needs to move from expressions of moral outrage and towards effective political action.

As staff, students Honorary Graduates and alumni at Rhodes University we feel a moral obligation to take a clear public position against the ongoing violence of the Israeli state. We would like to add our voices to the growing demand that the South African Government sever all links with Israel, including trade and investment, and expel Israel’s Ambassador and recall ours.

Poetry for Palestine

Nine Butler, The Con

The street is empty

as a monk’s memory,

and faces explode in the flames

like acorns –

and the dead crowd the horizon

and doorways.

No vein can bleed

more than it already has,

no scream will rise

higher than it has already risen.

We will not leave!

-       Exodus, Taha Muhammad Ali

Gaza: Words and Weapons

Richard Pithouse, The Con

Words are the raw materials for building a house. Words are a country.

-       Mahmoud Darwish, Absent Presence

In The Jerusalem Post, articles on Gaza report that Israeli “soldiers” have engaged Palestinian “terrorists” in battle. In our colonial historiography, “soldiers” were often reported to have fought “warriors”. In the 1980s, “soldiers” were reported, much like in Israel today, to have been deployed against “terrorists”. Today, as state murder is increasingly normalised as an acceptable tool of social control in our deeply compromised democracy, the police are, we are often told, at war with “criminals”.

Gaza conflict: Lives that matter

Gabeba Baderoon and Nadia Davids, Letter to the Editor, Mail & Guardian

The reality of war is bitter.  A Vietnamese writer once confided that, for her, nighttime and its peaceful silence was a time of visceral fear because when she was a child, the silence of night was when the bombs would fall. Now, silence took her back to the moment before the explosions and so she could not rest. This is how the fear and destruction – the reality – of war enters our bodies immediately and forever.

Yet it seems we weigh realities differently.

Gaza Under Attack: Public Discussion in Grahamstown, 24 July

John Berger reads Ghassan Kanafani's Letter from Gaza (Inaugural Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008)

Open Letter on the Israeli Attacks on Gaza

We, as South Africans of Jewish descent, strongly condemn the Israeli bombing of the Palestinian Gaza Strip which has already resulted in over 200 fatalities (including over 40 children) and thousands injured. This operation is in gross violation of international law, including international humanitarian law and the relevant provisions on the protection of civilians in armed conflict, and of the prohibition of reprisals and collective punishment of a civilian population under occupation.