A personal story about @btselem's findings on Israel being an #apartheid state: 12 years ago, as a young college student, I spent 6 months gathering evidence, travelling across #Palestine, documenting non-stop stories of injustice. This was for a huge academic study. 1/

A large group of highly respected South African, international, and Palestinian legal minds and scholars were leading the research project. It was under the umbrella of South Africa's well-respected Human Sciences Research Council @HSRCza 2/

It was a tough experience. The amount of learning in that short period was astronomical. It came from travelling across the country & hearing an unending spectrum of the injustices my people faced. I also felt out of place as a 19-year-old amongst intellectual giants.3/

I grew up in Palestine. I had seen and experienced injustices personally. But when one goes beyond living the injustice to peeling the onion of injustices, from labour rights to land rights to torture, learning about the pain through people's eyes, not books, it's different. 4/

After months of work, the evidence (and how international law interpreted it), was clear. Israel was committing the crime of Apartheid against the Palestinian people.

With hope, I flew back to @Stanford with this clear argument. Trump's friend & lawyer Alan Dershowitz..5/

...was on our campus a few months later. A pre-eminent Harvard professor who had not yet fallen from grace, Dershowitz viciously attacked the student movement we were building on campus. Attacks for simply using that word, Apartheid, kept escalating. 6/

I was hopeful that the findings of SOUTH AFRICA's leading institute & scholars would change the debate. That the evidence we had gathered would make a difference, or at least get media headlines in a way that would inspire action from the Obama administration. Nothing. 7/

Change was slow, but I never lost faith that the truth would be recognized. Today, a decade later, @btselem, a preeminent Israeli human rights organization, reached the same conclusion, under the strong leadership of @HagaiElAd. It's headline news: 8/ https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/12/middleeast/israel-apartheid-regime-report-intl/

Other leading human rights organizations across the world will possibly also find the courage to publicly reach this conclusion. Because these are Western/Israeli organizations, they will very likely change the narrative, and how the international community sees this conflict. 9/

I commend @btselem for this step. But it is bittersweet. Imagine if the world listened to the voices of human rights experts from South Africa, Palestine, and other places a decade ago. If there was not a media "apartheid" landscape that ignored & shunned these voices. 10/

The struggle for freedom remains long, but listening to and respecting the voices of the oppressed could shorten it. Accountability measures for Apartheid could have come faster. Justice & peace could have been more swift. May this serve as a lesson. 11/

I definitely believe the hard work, research, and struggles over the last decade played a role in the change we are seeing now. But as we fight apartheid on the ground, let us also fight the whispers of apartheid in institutions & people's minds that mute the oppressed. 12/

The key question for all who care about this region continues to be: How do we achieve freedom, justice and dignity for all?

Confirming this is apartheid expands the toolkit available to that prusuit.

Here's the original report for those interested: https://www.soas.ac.uk/lawpeacemideast/publications/file60532.pdf END