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Here in Johannesburg, protests are taking place outside the Johannesburg City Council on Friday to call for the renaming of Sandton Drive after Palestinian resistance icon Leila Khaled.
The Johannesburg City Council adopted a motion to rename Sandton Drive after Khaled, dubbed “the poster girl of the Palestinian struggle”. The motion was brought to council by the ANC, Al-Jamaah and EFF and was passed with an easy majority.

The group wants Sandton Drive renamed after Leila Khaled, a member of the resistance movement the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The ANC and EFF tabled the motion last December arguing it was important for Johannesburg to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine against what they call “the oppressive state of Israel”.
The BDS movement says DA Mayor Herman Mashaba is trying to stall the renaming process. Representing BDS and the Palestine Solidarity Movement, I’m joined by Alex Mdakane

Leila Khaled was the first woman ever to hijack an aircraft. As a member of the Popular front for the liberation of Palestine, the PFLP, she hijacked an American Boeing 707 in 1969. This is a story told by a young Palestinian who grew up in Sweden. What made Leila Khaled become one of the world’s most famous terrorists and the most famous Palestinian Woman of all?

Leila Khaled was the first woman to hijack a plane. In 1969, she showed her grenades to the terrified passengers by order of the Che Guevara commando unit of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

STATEMENTS AND MEDIA RELEASES

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Freedom of Religion SA (FOR SA)

TEMPLATE PROVIDED BY FOR SA

I strongly oppose the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill [B9B – 2018], which I believe to be unconstitutional and unnecessary, for the following reasons:

  1. The Bill violates our constitutional rights as religious persons to express our religious beliefs without fear of punishment or persecution (section 15, read with section 16). Increasingly, around the world but also in South Africa, various holy scriptures (particularly on contentious issues) are regarded as “politically incorrect” or “offensive”, allegedly causing emotional and/or social harm.
  2. I specifically oppose the Bill’s:
    1. wide definition of “harm” (in Clause 1);
    2. the failure to define “hatred” (in Clause 1); and
    3. definition of, and creation of, the crime of “hate speech” (in Clause 4).
  3. The creation of the crime of “hate speech” for saying / distributing something which could possibly be construed as “harmful”, will have certain unintended consequences, namely the criminalisation of good / well-meaning people who will be prosecuted for saying what they sincerely believe (according to their holy texts) and sent to jail.
  4. There are already sufficient existing laws dealing with “hate speech”.
  5. For all of the reasons given, I ask:
    1. For the scrapping of the “hate speech” sections from the Bill altogether;
    2. Alternatively, should the “hate speech” provisions remain part of the Bill, we ask:
      1. That “harm” be defined as: “gross emotional and psychological detriment that objectively and severely undermines the human dignity of the targeted group”; and
      2. That “hatred” be defined as: “strong and deeply-felt emotions of enmity, ill-will, detestation, malevolence and vilification against members of an identifiable group, that implies that members of that group are to be despised, scorned, denied respect and subjected to ill-treatment based on their group affiliation”.
    3. That Clause 4(2)(d) (the “religious exemption clause”) be strengthened as follows to protect:
      “expression of any religious conviction, tenet, belief, teaching, doctrine or writings, by a religious organisation or an individual, in public or in private, to the extent that such expression does not actively support, instigate, exhort, or call for extreme detestation, vilification, enmity, ill-will and malevolence that constitutes incitement to cause gross emotional and psychological harm that severely undermines the dignity of the targeted group, based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation”.