Above photo: Image advertising the conference, “Narrative Conditions Towards Peace in the Middle East”. African Global Dialogue/Twitter.
For Using It To Whitewash Israel’s Crimes.
Activists in South Africa recently upended a high-profile “peace” conference over its agenda of obscuring Israeli apartheid, colonization, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In early September, pro-Palestine activists began to receive information about a conference organized by prominent academic Ivor Chipkin and his Johannesburg-based research NGO, the New South Institute (NSI). Launched under the signature name African Global Dialogue, this year’s event was titled “Narrative Conditions Towards Peace in the Middle East.”
To many, this was innocuous enough. What could be harmful about engaging in intellectual dialogues that promote peace? Who could oppose, in their words, a critical, yet positive engagement “with a view to opening a discursive space about Israel/Palestine”?
Juxtaposing their call for “nuance and complexity” with a false equivalence between the “extremism” and “messianism” of the Israeli right-wing and the so-called “fascism” of Hamas, the conference boasted a “stellar line-up of experts” from various fields.
The fate of the gathering, however, took an unexpected turn when a number of internal documents, including a concept note – listing dozens of potential guests – was leaked. South Africans recognized many of the names immediately: International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola, economist Imraan Valodia, journalist Ferial Haffejee, Robben Island political prisoner Saths Cooper, and Wits University Vice-Chancellor Zeblon Vilakazi. But it was the list of headline speakers that really shocked people: including the celebrated historian Achille Mbembe, the prominent philosopher Etienne Balibar, the former President of the International Criminal Court Chile Eboe-Osuji, and the ex-Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Salam Fayyad.
The fact that many of the named speakers, including some committed anti-Zionists, were lumped in with genocide-deniers and pro-Israel hacks like sociologist David Hirsh and historian Benny Morris (not to mention the proto-fascist Minister of Sports, Arts, and Culture, Gayton McKenzie) was more than surprising. What was going on here?
While South Africans — who recognize the systematic oppression of Palestinians as close to their own history — are generally anti-Zionist, there is a growing cohort of Westernphilic elites who see their own interests as aligned with U.S. imperialism and who have begun to assert a politics sympathetic to Israel. Chipkin’s position on this “conflict” is part of this grouping: seeking to con the public by presenting his politics as taking the middle-ground but in practice acting as a shill for Zionism. Yet in South Africa, with our history of being hoodwinked by liberal solutions to apartheid, activists quickly saw through the disguise and successfully mobilized to challenge the conference’s agenda.
South African Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists analyzed the leaked conference documents. In attempting to shift the narrative away from so-called extremes and towards peace, Chipkin and NSI were deliberately obscuring the fact of an ongoing genocide and a history of colonization and dispossession that informs the so-called conflict. The panels were constructed in such a way as to hide the mass killings and terrorism at the hands of the Israeli army and Mossad. They presented the matter as a conflict of two sides that could only be resolved through changing the narrative away from decolonization and resistance. What Chipkin and his cohort were advocating, then, was not some nuanced middle ground, but the capitulation of Palestinian resistance in favor of liberal Zionist or “post-Zionist” justification for the extreme status quo. In other words their own version of extremism, but with a reasonable humane face (to paraphrase Steven Bantu Biko).
If we can simply dialogue our way toward peace, then we do not need to dismantle the colonial entity, its occupation, and its apartheid dispensation. Of course dialogue and diplomacy need not take the place of anti-colonial resistance: it can be a tactical consideration within a wider political and material struggle.
But in NSI’s formulation, armed and other forms of resistance must first capitulate to a post-colonial (read: neocolonial) framework for this dialogue to take place. This would use the promise of peace to maintain structures of oppression intact. Zionism would be taken back from its zealots and re-articulated as a reasonable project of Jewish national liberation. In effect, however, this is no different than US President Joe Biden calling for a ceasefire while arming and backing Israeli aggression.
The Big Con
But while such a position remains mainstream in the United States, in South Africa it raises immediate red flags. For South African activists, it harkens back to apartheid-era reformers: those who sought to save apartheid and quell resistance by setting up a three-tiered assembly called the Tricameral Parliament and permitting expanded – though still unequal – rights to Black South Africans. Though these apartheid-lite reformers tried to get Black people to participate in their own oppression, their attempts were decisively rejected by liberation movements. The Tricameral Parliament was widely boycotted and other halfway solutions were broadly dismissed.
It is this legacy that many South Africans see in the liberal Zionist project of dialogue and peace. This is why news of the conference invited opposition from civil society groups and individuals, including the South African BDS Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and South African Jews for a Free Palestine.
The BDS Coalition released a statement lambasting the organizers for promoting their event with a list of participants and attendees who had no intention of attending. Named participants also responded, firmly rejecting any implication that they were involved. Liepollo Pheko condemned “the unethical use of these colleagues, without permission in ways that imply that these individuals sanction Zionism, ethnic cleansing, racism and genocide.” Achille Mbembe publicly withdrew his name as one of the conference’s featured panelists. After pressure from BDS Palestine, Salam Fayyad also wrote a statement confirming that he was not participating in the conference. Even so, the organizers failed to remove his name from the website and other promotional material, making it seem as if he had not declined to attend.
After activists announced a protest outside the venue and some media jumped into the controversy, the conference began to implode. The big Zionist Con was exposed.
The Venue
One of the most controversial aspects of the conference was its choice of venue: Constitution Hill.
A world heritage site, it was an old colonial and apartheid prison that once housed famous political prisoners from Albertina Sisulu, Winnie Mandela, Fatima Meer, and Joe Slovo, to Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. It is now a popular museum, a civil society conference venue, and the location of the country’s top Constitutional Court. It is considered the flame of South Africa’s democratic order.
The fact that a conference that sought to legitimize a racist colonial ethno-state was being held in the symbolic heart of South African democracy was an outrageous insult to those who fought for freedom in this country.
Statements were issued. Constitution Hill Trust, the NGO that runs the adjacent museum, wrote its own message distancing itself from the conference. They clarified that they had nothing to do with bookings in Constitution Hill.
After significant pressure, the Constitution Hill Development Company, the actual managers of the precinct, withdrew from hosting the conference. NSI was forced to relocate the event online, and to an undisclosed backup venue in a hotel in the suburb of Sunnyside.
Don’t Bring Your Liberal Genocide Rhetoric To South Africa
While the conference still took place – in South Africa’s free constitutional order, it could not be banned – it did so as a shell of its larger ambitions. Its venue was scrapped and with it the symbolism of the post-apartheid order. Panels were reorganized as closed, invite-only affairs. Finally, key participants pulled out at the last minute. Despite estimates that NSI spent in excess of $100,000 dollars to organize and promote the conference, including $25,000 just for online promotion, CNN and local media declined to broadcast it. With only a limited number of attendees, the impact of the conference was negligible.
African Global Dialogue issued its own statement on the controversy, condemning this anti-apartheid activism as an extremist assault on freedom of speech. But virtually everyone saw through the rhetoric of peace and moderation.
Through widespread activism and pressure, South African activists exposed the big Zionist con and made sure that it was unable to masquerade as favoring both sides.
As South African activists, we have learned that liberal measures are not to be trusted in opposition to apartheid. In the 1980s, such attempts to undermine the South African anti-apartheid movement threatened to extend apartheid well beyond its sell-by date. More recently, we have also seen how liberalism’s co-optation of political parties after 1994 has prevented the transformation of our society in the post-apartheid order.
This experience and our successful opposition to NSI’s Zionist Conference is a beacon for activists in the West, inviting them to take a similar position when confronted with liberal Zionist justifications for apartheid Israel.