Fighting apartheid the Irish way

On July 19, 1984, a 21-year-old worker at a shop in Dublin, Ireland, refused to handle the sale of grapefruit from the apartheid regime of South Africa. Mary Manning’s union, the Irish Distributive and Administrative Trade Union, had directed its members not to accept products from South Africa in protest at the discriminatory practices in that country. Manning was suspended from her job and she and 10 other Dunnes Stores workers went on strike. She struggled to make ends meet during the three-year-long  walkout but she refused to surrender to brutality, even in a country far from where she lived, and stood up for her principles.

Slowly, other union and community activists joined the protest and generated much publicity and pressure. Eventually, in April 1987, the government of Ireland banned the importation of all South African goods — the first complete ban of South African imports by a Western government.

Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation that began in South Africa in 1948, the same year that Israel launched a war against democracy in Palestine. It rejected the idea of a pluralistic state to create one based on a religion, Judaism, that meant excluding the Muslims and Christians who made up more than 70 percent of the territory’s population.

Manning refused to compromise her principles. Her courage inspired others and spread throughout the country

Ray Hanania

The irony of Israel’s version of apartheid rising alongside that of South Africa’s is striking. The Western world focused only on South Africa, ignoring Israel’s racist policies.

Manning’s protest was the result of the actions of one young woman who refused to compromise her principles. Her courage inspired others and spread throughout the country.

It was the seed that ultimately grew into the collapse of the apartheid government in South Africa and led to the country’s first non-racial election in April 1994. This resulted in the historic inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president on May 10, 1994.

Manning should be an icon of Palestinian freedom — a reminder that, while evil can be allowed to linger for many years, it can eventually be stopped. All it needs is for people to refuse to compromise on fundamental aspects of humanity, including adhering to the rule of law, embracing humanity and the belief that all people are equal.

Today, Palestinians are being pushed to the extremes of suffering, not just in Gaza, where Israeli violence continues in the shadow of news media neglect, but also in the West Bank, where armed Jewish settlers are terrorizing Muslim and Christian civilians.

The struggle to defeat the form of apartheid practiced by Israel’s government is long and difficult, but hope has not been extinguished. Palestinians and their supporters in the Arab world need to remember that as long as they have justice on their side, they can prevail. They can change a diseased government system like Israel’s.

They also need to remember that not every Israeli and not every Jew is their enemy. In fact, the fight for Palestinian independence, justice and rights is being embraced by many Jews.

When you engage in a principled fight, you must remain principled.

However, in Michigan last week, we saw how easily those principles can be compromised. On Thursday, a naturalized US citizen from Lebanon drove his truck into a synagogue in Dearborn Heights before shooting himself dead. Fortunately, only a security guard was injured. None of the many children at the synagogue or their families were hurt.

The perpetrator was reportedly angered when he learned that two of his brothers and two nephews were killed during an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. His wife was also seriously injured. His anger was fueled by the fact that the killing of his family members was shrugged off by the mainstream American news media, which for the most part minimizes or fails to report on Israeli violence but augments and exaggerates violence against Israelis and Jews.

The struggle to defeat the apartheid practiced by Israel is long and difficult, but hope has not been extinguished

Ray Hanania

It has been falsely claimed that he was motivated by antisemitism, which is being used as a weapon and a shield against any criticism of Israel’s government.

Clearly the situation is unjust. But the man’s actions were not justified. Violence for the sake of vengeance is not the foundation for any form of justice. Seeking to kill innocent people anywhere is unjustified and should never be part of the Palestinian fight for freedom.

It is not easy to control emotions when family members are murdered or when homes are destroyed. It is not easy to control emotions when a government that claims to be democratic brutalizes people because of their race or religion. However, resorting to violence is a weak response to that kind of injustice.

The proper response is to stubbornly embrace your principles and fight for justice, not just for yourself but for all.

Manning is not an Arab, a Muslim or a Palestinian. She is an ordinary person who stood up for justice. Palestinians should learn more about the principled and nonviolent struggle she began with her simple act of refusal. Her story was the subject of a 2014 documentary, “Blood Fruit,” while Manning herself released a book in 2017, titled “Striking Back: The Untold Story of an Anti-Apartheid Striker.”

On Tuesday, people around the world celebrated Ireland’s patron saint and all things Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. This might be a good moment for Palestinians to contemplate how they can move forward more powerfully to overcome injustice.

It should not be surprising that Ireland was the first nation to demand a ceasefire in Gaza or that it was the first EU member state to call for Palestinian statehood. We should embrace Ireland’s honorable fight against discrimination.

• Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at www.Hanania.com. X: @RayHanania