Report on Teach-in on Israeli Military Occupation
15.12.2024
Saturday morning there was a teach-in held at a small hall in the beautiful setting of the garden around the Sir Abdool Razack Mohamed Hall in Phoenix. Present for the lively event were people who had been at the Ragini Kistnasamy Report Back from Palestine held 29 November, including university students, and men and women who are dedicated to Palestine solidarity as well as LALIT members. The theme of the teach-in: “What Exactly is Israeli military occupation of Palestine?” The two LALIT members who led the teach-in, Ragini Kistnasamy and Alain Ah Vee, each gave a brilliant introduction, based on their own personal experience of time spent alongside Palestinian families and villages facing up to the Israeli occupation. It is quite different to hear about the occupation like this from those who have experienced it, and shared, even if for a few weeks each time, the life as it is lived by Palestinian families.
After their talks, people present brought up thoughtful comments, questions to ponder over, and the seeds were sewn for plans for future actions that will be based on a common understanding of how the actions we undertake fit into the big picture.
Ragini Kistnasamy explained military occupation over time – from what she experienced on the ground during her four encounters with its different forms in Palestine, in 2004, then 2006, then 2009-10, and finally in October 2024 – linking it to Israel’s on-going plan since it became a State in 1948 to control as much of the land of Palestine as possible (so it is essentially a colonial land-grab) and to do this by driving as many Palestinians as possible off their land, by every means (so this is what ends up in a genocide, now accelerating in Gaza). These means include the state of siege in Gaza, which she experienced when in 2009-10, she and a thousand other international supporters of Palestine were not allowed through the Rafah Crossing into Gaza from Egypt. Even then. Now the crossing is occupied by the Israeli Army. They include the hundreds upon hundreds of armed check-points that separate each Palestinian neighbourhood into separate bits, under military control. They include illegal arrests, essentially hostage-taking, by the thousand, military and police violence, and literally killing Palestinians, both in Gaza, by fifty thousand, and in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by blowing up their houses and killing hundreds of people. In Gaza now, the Israeli Occupying Forces simply drive people from one area to another – as if they were herds of animals – and kill them with bombs, wipe out whole blocks of flats, and the entire infrastructure. All these are different forms of the horrors of occupation. They have haunted Palestinians from 1948, accelerating under formal military occupation from 1967, and intensifying over the past 20 years since the treacherous Oslo Accords.
Alain Ah Vee as he described the collective actions against the long Israeli Wall of Apartheid that divides Palestinian neighbourhoods from each other. He and other international visitors, assisted as Palestinians had to get through the gates in the Wall and the fencing, just to get to school, to their olive groves, to the hospital, to see a relative. They were hosted by Palestinian families. This way, Alain saw that, for example in Ramallah, when he was there, there is a Palestinian bourgeoisie, also under occupation, but with interests that do not coincide always with those who are Palestinian peasants and workers. He said, also, how, as Israel now invades the Lebanon and Syria, backed as ever by its USA partner-in-crime, we realize that we need an internationalist struggle in order to win, in the long run. The whole of the world’s working class people – a massive majority of us – against the world’s huge companies, based in the USA mainly, owned and controlled by a tiny minority of people. This is the form the struggle needs, in order to win, to take. Anti-imperialism is a class struggle. We all find out, as we organize focused boycotts, that it is private, profit making companies – in the USA, and world-wide – that benefit from profits out of Israel, or from investment in or trade with Israel, and from the arms trade. Both speakers linked the imperialist wars, like that against Palestine, with the USA’s ring of military bases, like Diego Garcia, that, together with the arms industry, are the means by which war is waged. We need to get the base on our land closed, they said, even as part of our struggle to support Palestine.
The open session of debate was very intense, intelligent.
The event was the final event organized by the Ad Hoc Committee set up at the Ragini Kistnasamy’s Report Back at the Municipality of Port Louis Council Chamber held on 29 November. From now on, organizations are invited to join Solidarite Morisyin Ar Lepep Palestinn (SOMALP), and individuals to become supporting members of SOMALP. Each participant received a 12-page booklet that begins to catalogue our different actions over the past two years, from January 2023 i.e. before 7 October until mid-December 2024.
