Apartheid

elsewhere in Cape Town: Emma Thomasson and Moegsien Williams; and of course all the
other students, speakers, interviewees and hosts involved.
Along with Professor Munro, I organized and led the Webster-Wits exchange in 1998
and 1999, and the knowledge, experience and insights gathered during this period are an
important foundation for this book. I had decided at an early stage to make the TRC and
human rights violations during the apartheid era the focus of the Webster study trips to South
Africa and of the associated Webster University courses, and to a large extent, the inspiration
to write this book came from experience gathered from the associated courses, study trips,
and, in general, from the wonderful people of South Africa.
In December 2004 I received a UNDP (United Nations Development Program)
sponsorship for a six-month period as consultant to the media and information program at
Miftah (‘Key’) – the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and
Democracy, a human rights organization based in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Again, my focus
here – this time at the interface of intergovernmental and non-governmental initiatives –
would be human rights in general, but especially human rights and related problems regarding
the mass media, the rights to information and education, freedom of expression, objectivity,
fairness, and balance. I had earlier visited Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and met and
befriended Palestinians, both refugees and non-refugees, in Austria and elsewhere, also during
an earlier visit to the West Bank in September 2004. I am in debt for the generosity towards
me shown by the people at the UNDP, Miftah, and elsewhere, who made my work in
Palestine possible and enriching, especially by Rami Bathish, Mounir Kleibo, Hanan Ashrawi
and Lily Feidy. It has enabled me to personally experience full-blown apartheid first-hand for
the first time. Not that apartheid is a pleasurable experience. It most certainly is not. But it has
taught me and inspired me tremendously and helped me add more than mere scholarly and
second- or third-hand experience to the Israeli-Palestinian aspect of this project. I would also
like to thank my fabulous colleagues during my half-year in Palestine: Husam al-Madhoun,
Mousa Qous, Muath Al-Bakri, Mohammed Mosleh, Nahed Abu Sneineh, Dolly Nammour,
Labib Nasir, Nadia El Rashidi, and Natalie Mikhail at Miftah Jerusalem, as well as
Muhammad Yahri, Wafa’ Abdel Rahman, Ruham Numri, Rana Malki, and Margo Sabella at
Miftah Ramallah, and, more widely, the incredibly friendly, hospitable, and resilient
Palestinian people, in Palestine and elsewhere.
I joined the faculty at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank in March 2005. For the
privilege of teaching and learning with great students and colleagues, I owe gratitude to Aref
Hijjawi, Abdel Karim Barghouthi, Nadim Mseis, Fayzeh Mohammed, the Department of
Cultural Studies and Philosophy, the Faculty of Arts, and, last but not least, to my students at
Bir Zeit.
Special thanks are also due to my colleagues at Webster University in Vienna,
Benjamin Fasching-Gray and Charlotta Larsson, and to Christopher Schlemmbach at the
University of Vienna. They read the whole manuscript at different stages of completion,
including footnotes, with amazing care and contributed immensely with constructive and
useful criticism, suggestions, comments, and occasionally with disagreement, which on some
issues has lasted, but so have our friendships, which I continue to value immensely.
Moreover, I am very grateful for Matt Wuerker’s generous offer to let me use his
cartoon/maps (for the CD cover) which masterfully capture elite and settler arrogance and the
brutal decimation, displacement, and expropriation of indigenous people in South Africa, the
USA, and Israel.
Much appreciated help came from members of the Palestinian refugee rights group,
the Al-Awda e-group (al-awda@egroups.com), from the members of the interdisciplinary, yet
egyptologically focused, ‘Assmann Seminar’, and from the Viennese Society for Intercultural
Philosophy (Wiener Gesellschaft für Interkulturelle Philosophie) both affiliated with the
University of Vienna, as well as from Rami and Amal A. Bathish, in Ramallah and Jerusalem
also from Husam al-Madhoun, Emile and Hanan Ashrawi, Nisreen, Rock and Clelia Bathish,
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