South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), endorsed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel on Thursday. Adopted a series of resolutions against the occupation policy of Israel at its 53rd National Conference, the ANC adopted policies urging South Africans to support any Palestinian campaigns that “pressure Israel to end its violations of international law.”

Another resolution affirmed that “The ANC is unequivocal in its support for the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination, and unapologetic in its view that the Palestinians are the victims and the oppressed in the conflict with Israel.” In addition, the ANC adopted resolution 35 (g) that specifically called for “all South Africans to support the programmes and campaigns of the Palestinian civil society which seek to put pressure on Israel to engage with the Palestinian people to reach a just solution.”

An African refugee holds a sign reading: “We are all refugees”, during a demonstration in Tel Aviv against racism and the government’s policy against African refugees, July 28, 2012 (Photo: Activestills)

The ANC also strongly condemned the Israeli “state-sponsored xenophobic attacks and deportation” of African migrants. The resolution cites comments from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Interior Minister Eli Yishai and MK Miri Regev as examples to Israeli racism. The decision on Israel that was adopted by the ANC was the resolution 35 (j): “The ANC abhors the recent Israeli state-sponsored xenophobic attacks and deportation of Africans and request that this matter should be escalated to the African Union. In June this year Israeli anti-African protests turned into full-fledged race riots. Israeli racism and xenophobia against Africans is shared and even encouraged by Israeli politicians including the Israeli Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said: ‘If we don’t stop their [African immigrants’] entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence…and threatens the social fabric of society.’ Israel’s Minister of Interior, Eli Yishai, has said that African immigrants ‘think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man.’ And the Israeli parliamentarian, Miri Regev, has publicly compared Sudanese people to ‘a cancer’.”