Cape Town - Gift of the Givers (GOTG) officially launched its Coalition for Good campaign, endeavouring to create a global movement to make the flag of Palestine the most shared and famous in the world, while educating the public on the occupation of Palestine.
The campaign launch took place on Monday evening during a dinner hosted for the visiting Palestinian pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, Reverend Dr Munther Isaac.
During the launch, the outspoken cleric – condemning Israel’s apartheid policies and attacks on Gaza, calling it a genocide – was named as the campaign’s patron.
The unity flag icon, accessible from the campaign website, depicts the South African and Palestinian flags intertwined, representing the unity of the two nations through shared Struggle for liberation, while echoing the message of ubuntu and humanity.
In its heart form, the underlying message encourages people to “show some heart” by displaying or sharing it on various social media platforms.
There are unity flags for every country available on the campaign website.
Through the website, an open source content library offers free readyto-use artwork for anyone to express their solidarity and call for the end of apartheid in Palestine, while highlighting a number of issues related to the illegal occupation.
GOTG founder, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, said: “Everybody is invited to be a part of this. It’s available to the world because the biggest problem we found during this campaign was that a lot of people didn’t have information.”
Selvan Moodley, CEO of strategic brands communications agency 23 and brand guardians for GOTG, said: “We needed a coalition of good in order to overcome this evil the people are suffering from with the war happening, and it needed people from all diverse religions, races, nationalities to come together in order to facilitate peace and understanding, and that is how the concept was born.”
Reverend Isaac is part of a larger Palestinian delegation in South Africa, taking part in a number of engagements and participating in the Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine in Johannesburg on May 10-12. Reverend Isaac said, “we have a responsibility to continue to speak about Palestine and to continue to educate”.
“I live in Bethlehem, it’s literally 15 minutes away from Jerusalem, and I can't go to Jerusalem. As a clergyman, I can’t go to pray in Jerusalem and if I need to go, I would need a special permit from the Israeli military because we live under occupation. We are victims, like all Palestinians, of these policies of segregation that Israel implements … It’s coloniality and it’s racism, this is what’s behind it.”