ABOUT 1 000 activists demonstrated in Durban on Sunday to demand that the government coordinate a campaign to isolate Israel. The rally, called by the Palestine Support Committee in South Africa and the Durban Social Forum, preceded a week-long UN-sponsored conference on racism opening in the east coast city on August 31. The United States has threatened to boycott the conference if it equates Zionism with racism, and if it demands reparations for slavery. Palestinian ambassador to South Africa Salman El-Herfi told the demonstrators: “Our people are under siege; our people are being bombarded; our people are under occupation.” He compared Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories to that of South Africa’s apartheid regime, whose Bantustan policy created homelands separating black South Africans from the country’s whites. – AFP