“We are with the refugees, the martyrised refugees of Palestine, who have been tricked and driven from their own homeland by the manoeuvres of imperialism. We are on the side of the Palestinian refugees, and we support wholeheartedly all that the sons of Palestine are doing to liberate their country, and we fully support the Arab and African countries in general in helping the Palestinian people to recover their dignity, their independence and their right to live.”

Amílcar Cabral, CONCP Conference, Dar Es-Salaam, 1965.

The 15th of May marks Palestinian day of grievance, Nakba day; it memorialises the indigenous Palestinian lives lost to genocide. This year’s occasion occurred as the world witnessed Israeli settlers threaten to ethnically cleanse the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. The same threat has plagued Sheikh Jarrah since 2009, with Israeli-settler organisations actively dispossessing Palestinians of their territory and homes. Sheikh Jarrah is in many ways a microcosm of the land-grabbing settler-colonial project of the Zionist state, which has been occupant following the first Nakba in 1948.

Across the world, protests arose in solidarity with Palestinians, demanding a stop to Israeli-arming after the 11-day bombing raid in Gaza. One of the more memorable shows of solidarity was in South Africa when dock-workers refused to unload an Israeli ship. I pick this moment in particular because of the historical relationship between the South African liberation movements, with Nelson Mandela as one of the figureheads, the African National Congress (ANC), and the diverse Palestinian liberation movements since the early 20th century. The dock-worker strike is an important marker of the continued tradition of solidarity.

Internationalist solidarity networks, like the one between the ANC and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), were critical to liberation movements in the 20th century. In an interview with Yasser Arafat, former chairman of the PLO, featured in the Tricontinental Bulletin in 1971, Arafat commented on the similarities between the Palestinian liberation struggle and the struggles of other colonised people, saying: “We wish all our comrades to see our revolution within this framework. We occupy the same trench as the fighters of Asia, Africa, and Latin America and are likewise side by side with those fighting for freedom in the United States. It is true that there are different trenches, but it is all one single battle. We are a part of this international liberation movement.” 

Solidarity since the 20th century

Resistance is the natural response to any oppressive regime. Structured political organisation by Palestinians against British rule – that was solidified in 1922, under the League of Nations – and Zionist settler-colonial movements began after World War I. Some of the more memorable, popular Palestinian uprisings in the 20th century include the 1936-39 Great Arab Revolt and the first Intifada in 1987.

In other parts of the world, anti-colonial and civil rights activism was gaining ground, and the respective movements were internationalist in nature. Algeria, which had gained its independence from France in 1962, became an outpost for revolutionaries around the world. South Africa’s ANC, Guinea-Bissau’s PAIGC, Mozambique’s FRELIMO, USA’s Black Panther Party and the Palestinian Fatah (formerly Palestinian National Liberation Party) established bureaus or found refuge in the Algerian capital. Algerian liberation leader Houari Boumédiène is said to have had close relations with Arafat and Mandela, a symbolic marker of interpersonal support for those struggling against colonialism.

The global solidarity of these movements comes from a deep understanding that, to borrow from the late Fannie Lou Hamer, nobody’s free until everybody’s free. In one of her reflections, professor Angela Davis stresses the need for internationalist frameworks to dismantle oppressive structures within the national borders in which we exist, as well as the global apparatus of white supremacy, because of their affinities beyond national borders, cultures and racial groupings. She had first understood the affinity because of the very nature of the United States as a settler-colonial nation, just as Israel.

This year, at the height of the 11-day bombing raid, Davis discussed the depth of affinities between the Palestinian cause and that of Black America. She recalled that, among the 99 books that were found in George Jackson’s prison cell in 1971, was a poetry anthology from the Palestinian resistance: “some of us will remember that the Black Panther Party newspaper mistakenly credited the poem by Samih Al-Qasim to George Jackson. This was a wonderful and revealing mistake attributing words of Palestinian resistance to a pivotal figure in the struggle for abolition and Black freedom”, a mistake made possible because of how similar the conditions were for Black people in the United States and Palestinians. Among Jackson’s collection were also works by June Jordan, a central figure within Palestinian and African American political unity. Last year, during the racial reckoning that shook the world with protests, murals of George Floyd were painted across the walls of Gaza and the West Bank.

In the case of South Africa, the legacy of coalition is much the same. Having endured years of the violent apartheid, Mandela recognised, in a 1997 address, that peace and prosperity could only exist if all people enjoyed these freedoms. He marked it poignantly when he expressed, “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians, without the resolution of conflicts in East Timor, the Sudan and other parts of the world.” His grandson, Chief Mandla Mandela, would echo the sentiment in 2021 by quoting his late grandfather.

Comparisons between South Africa and occupied Palestine have existed for decades, with the land seizures, mobility restrictions, racially exclusive residential areas, and the non-existence of political rights for the oppressed populations being some elements that have characterised the two. International solidarities are important in bringing issues to worldwide consciousness and reframing how we perceive seemingly different situations. The comparisons in the struggles of South Africa and Palestine have been important in reminding the world of the origins of Israel as a settler-colonial state. For a long time – and to some extent today – apartheid was rejected as a descriptor of the conditions in the country.

Internationalism is also essential in informing the ways we organise and in teaching us different ways to resist: the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) takes after the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa; the Palestinian Freedom Rides take after the Freedom Riders, activists in the segregated south of the United States in 1961; Black Lives Matter; the ANC stand in solidarity with Palestine today.  

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As different liberation movements are juxtaposed, there are often concerns that their goals, past and present, are being flattened. On Twitter, there have even been accusations that contemporary movements for non-Black groups hijack the language of Black liberation, such as “Black Lives Matter” or “Say Her Name”. These phrases, created in response to state violence against Black people in the United States and the erasure of Black women who have also been victims of police brutality, respectively, have been employed by different movements that identify with the slogans and use it to amplify their plight. At the same time, and despite any parallels, we are often confronted with the anti-Blackness that is pervasive in non-Black groups. For instance, whenever the attention shifts from one struggle to another on social media, phrases like “since you supported Black Lives Matter, now show your support for [insert cause]” are recycled. Naturally, it leads to frustration that other groups benefit from of Black freedom movements while neglecting to address the anti-Blackness that exists in their communities. Radical psychologist and author of Living While Black Guilaine Kinouani reminds us that it is indeed possible to support multiple causes at once. But she also asks us to be wary of what it means to ask Black people to wait for their justice when their frustration is dismissed as “derailing the conversation.”

There is nothing inherently reductive about borrowing (as opposed to hijacking) the language of different campaigns when organising for another. Revolutionary movements across history have learned and borrowed from each other and, in doing so, were able to establish transnational links. The raised fist, for example, that is closely associated with the historical and contemporary Black civil rights movements in the United States, has been used in anti-fascist struggles in 20th century Europe. In the context of Palestine and Black America, kinship between these two struggles not only exists because of racial or national identities but because these groups are both being oppressed via the same tools. In turn, knowledge sharing helps us all survive.

The tensions, rather, result from an awareness of Black people’s oppression throughout the world by different races and fears that support is not reciprocal. But through these tensions, it is essential to remember that political alliances should be built on the principle that no one should be oppressed rather than on transaction. We do not have to like everyone to want liberty for all. That being said, and with the assertion that nobody’s free until everybody’s free, all oppressions must be fought simultaneously because they are co-reinforcing. Davis warns us that prioritising one over another often leads to ultra-nationalisms that do nothing but restructure power dynamics. That is, one group of people gaining “freedom” within white supremacist capitalism only translates as having the “freedom” to oppress other groups. 

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“Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face.”