Sometimes there are moments when the members and supporters of a busy and active organisation have to pause. Such a moment happened for the South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) on the night of 31 October 2026.
Sheila Barsel died, and that hurts us badly. She was a leading figure in the SAJFP.
What Sheila did is detailed in the archive website of South African History Online. No summary does her justice and none is attempted here beyond noting that, in addition to the SAJFP, over the years her areas of engagement included being an anti-apartheid activist (and banned for her pains), a former Secretary-General of the National Union of South African Students, NUSAS, a founding member of the Organisation for Lesbian and Gay Activists, and positions in the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and Palestinian Support Organisations. Sheila was always intimately connected with grassroots in all the different spheres of her work. We share our loss with many many people in the world.
That was not all, but we do not think that Sheila would have wanted the SAJFP to mourn for her by posting a catalogue of everywhere she had an impact.
We think that she would have preferred it if we kept mobilising instead, for she left us many tasks to complete. Our salute to her accordingly means gritting our teeth, and getting on with the job. We have to do this with her wisdom and insights she derived from her vast experience in organising for justice and equality, but without her presence. We will always remain conscious of her absence from matters that are solid and true in the SAJFP: the respect and affection that unites us and the warm welcome we will give to those who join us because they can no longer be silent during one of the most hideous episodes in modern history.
Sheila reminds us that it is necessary to take intersecting and interlocking structures of oppression seriously — that all our struggles are connected. In her later years, she held clear for all of us the ways in which genocide and apartheid is a process of mass disabling. She taught us about disability justice as we lived it with her, reminding us that no human life should be measured by capitalist productivity. Rather, our humanity must be defined by how we work together and imagine new more emancipatory worlds.
Liberation for Palestine is queer liberation is anti-apartheid liberation is anti-capitalist liberation is women’s liberation. A future free from fascism is a future free for everyone.
Sheila mentored young comrades and took the longevity of the movement seriously as she did the humanity and ingenuity of all who fight for justice in any way. No matter how prolific or esteemed she was, she was never ever too important to listen and guide, to support youth-led activism, to help us think, to keep our eyes on the sky and our feet on the ground. We commit to carrying her memory forward, to holding close the commitment to slowly and intentionally build pockets of energy for radical change, in big and small ways, and to supporting people to participate in movements for social justice wherever they find themselves.
Like all of us in SAJFP, Sheila struggled to come to grips with what it means to be Jewish. Understanding does not come easily, because Zionism demands from Jews something that we, as Jews, are revolted by. A few of us are still alive to remember what we learned during the 1940s of the European holocaust.
The slogan that emerged back then was “Never again!”. It is easy to use this slogan. However, when the demand is made on us to approve of what is being done in the present to the Palestinians, then our Jewishness demands that we say, “Never Again — to anyone, anywhere!”. What was intolerable when done to Jews, queer people, the Roma, the Sinti, Black people, socialists, working class people and all racialised people under the colonial Nazi regime, does not become tolerable if it purports to be done in the name of Jews.These fundamental truths drove Sheila. We know this.
We know this, because being Jewish imposes on us the same problems that Sheila spoke of on occasion. In SAJFP, our views range from atheism to deeply-felt religious faith, and yet we feel bound to each other due to a shared commitment to universal human values which we also identify as Jewish values. Together, we take Jewish lore and custom to Gaza and the West Bank to measure events there. We remain outraged that the genocide is justified by conflating Israel and its actions with Judaism, whereas we know that Zionism is fundamentally a racist political project that has nothing to do with our faith and culture. How can this genocide be reconciled with what the sages and commentators over the centuries admonished Jews to concern themselves with: תִּיקּוּן עוֹלָם— “tikkun olam” (to “repair, or to heal, the world”)?
Sheila died before our task was complete. There is a better world being shaped by people like her, and we, in the SAJFP, will measure ourselves against the standard she set. May we live up to her legacy.
From the River to the Sea — Palestine will be free!