Stopping the genocide in Palestine “does not depend on the UN, it depends on us”, said Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, at UCT on Monday.
She called on the public to withdraw support from businesses propping up the “Israeli apartheid state”.
“Businesses are acting against international law by contributing to human rights violations. After October 7, businesses not only ignored the evidence but stayed involved, raising their profits…The Israeli stock exchange has grown 213%,” she said, urging universities, businesses and states to stop the genocide.
Hundreds of people, wearing keffiyehs and T-shirts in support of Palestine, queued to get into the Sarah Baartman Hall to hear Albanese, who got a lengthy standing ovation on entry. Her talks in Johannesburg and at a Cape Town church at the weekend also drew huge crowds.
Universities need to disinvest from the corporations enabling and profiting from the genocide, she said. They need to stand up for academic freedom against funders who try to silence resistance – as is happening at universities in the US and Europe - she said to loud clapping.
In her latest report, Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime, that was scheduled to be livestreamed on Tuesday afternoon to the UN General Assembly from Cape Town, she named 48 entities fuelling the forced “displacement and replacement” of Palestinians from their land and homes.
“They are enabled by universities, research centres and banks. This could not happen without them…nothing is neutral,” she said.
Tech, arms, water, agriculture, roads, construction and other companies are supporting the expansion of Israeli colonies, said Albanese. Her last report talked about the economics of occupation.
She said 300 Israeli colonies had been built on “land stolen from the Palestinians” and this expansion was growing by the day. The attacks on education and on cultural identity, targeting universities and libraries in Gaza, were an attempt to erase Palestinian identity.
The origins of the devastation in Gaza today go back decades, she said, a history brought to life by fellow panellist Prof Haidar Eid.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation and UCT’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance hosted the roundtable discussion with Albanese and three other panelists.
After October 7, businesses not only ignored the evidence but stayed involved, raising their profits
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur
From Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, Eid and his family were evacuated and he is now a research associate at the Centre for Asian Studies in Africa at the University of Pretoria. His flat and family home have been destroyed since he left.
“I was in Gaza for five massacres until the genocide,” he said, highlighting the long history of violence. “On December 27 2008, I was driving past a police station and heard a huge blast five minutes later. Within five minutes, 270 people in Gaza were killed.”
“Again in 2012, I was driving home from campus and there was an explosion, and 267 people were killed. In 2014, more than 2,400 people were killed, including 660 children,” he said.
“But we are not numbers…I have lost 54 cousins, whole families. I have had 38 colleagues killed and 288 students,” he said, remembering a student he taught who was killed with her family.
The Gaza education ministry reports that at least 1,700 teachers and more than 20,000 students have been killed since October 7 2023, he said.
Albanese said: “Every time I talk about the genocide in Gaza my heart pierces, 20,000 children [out of more than 60,000 deaths]. For once I do not have to give the details because we have a genocide survivor here.”
UCT professor of public health Leslie London said his students “see the genocide, I do not have to teach this and that gives me hope for the future”.
He said academics cannot stay silent despite attempts to suppress dissent. “Universities have to be independent of financial interests. We can’t be independent with a financial gun to our head,” he said to applause from the audience.
“Universities need to unite,” London said, urging them to stand together in rejecting money from Zionist funders.
States need to stand together against genocide, said Albanese, paying tribute to South Africa for its case against Israel at the International Criminal Court of Justice.
How the world treats the genocide in Gaza will set a precedent for its response to uncontained power, she said. “Gaza is our test.”
“For each step forward there is resistance and you have to push back. What we need now is more solidarity.”
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