I began organizing alongside Merle Favis in 2013 as part of a loose, South Africa-wide formation called Jewish Voices for a Just Peace, which subsequently gave rise to the anti-Zionist group South African Jews for a Free Palestine. Before that, I knew of Merle as a respected activist from the 1980s anti-apartheid movement. In that struggle, she participated in protests of the National Union of South African Students and produced anti-apartheid literature as part of her work with the union’s Wages Commission; she also became the editor of the South African Labour Bulletin, a leading journal reporting on labor and anti-apartheid organizing. In 1981, Merle’s activism led to her detention without charge under the Terrorism Act, a law criminalizing opposition to the apartheid regime.

Being arrested was a salutary experience for Merle, one that marked her awareness of her relative privilege as a white woman amid a brutal system of racial oppression. Black activists were often detained and tortured for years; in contrast, Merle was able to leave prison after five months. Afterward, recognizing her specific position as a white activist, and in the wake of the African National Congress’s directive for white people to organize others in their own community, Merle began working to bring more white South Africans into the movement against apartheid. To do so, she used a model that relied on identifying communal fractures—the places where people hold tensions and uncertainties—and using them as openings for genuine engagement.

Merle’s experiences in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement have since informed her work against apartheid in Israel/Palestine, where she likewise organizes her own community—in this case, white South African Jews—in support of Palestinian liberation. For younger activists like myself, who have been striving to bring more Jewish people into this struggle, Merle has been a pillar of thoughtful, constructive praxis, deeply committed to listening to community members still grappling with their inherited traumas in order to move them toward a liberatory politics. In this conversation, Merle talks about the promises and challenges of such organizing; the importance of starting from a place of vulnerability; and the responsibilities of Jewish organizers in this fight.

This article will be available to all in the coming weeks. To continue reading today, login or subscribe to Jewish Currents, starting at just $2/month.