Inevitably, contempt breeds disgust.
Anyone with a modicum of awareness and sympathy for the horrors Palestinians have endured for generations knows the constant pain that boils within us like a dormant volcano ready to explode with righteous anger.
We therefore take to the streets, on the bridges and in the national shopping centers in a necessary display of irenic solidarity and to point the finger at the hypocrites and their accomplices who deny the inhumanity and injustices that we can all see perpetrated in Gaza and in the West Bank. with deliberate and murderous efficiency by a fanatical regime seized with “murderous rage”.
Lately, the hypocrites and their accomplices have worked hard – as they always do – to deny or discredit our South African allies who did the right and honorable thing by finally calling Israel to account for the crimes it committed yesterday and the outrages it represents. make sure you commit today and tomorrow.
South Africa is keen to prove in court that its principled charge is that Israel, by careful and deliberate design, carried out genocide and turned much of Gaza into dust.
The result: despite the risks and recriminations, South Africa managed to put Israel in the dock – where many countries that engaged in this historic legal challenge believe it has long had a place.
The hypocrites and those who support them have responded – as they also tend to do – with howls of hyperbole and outrage instead of addressing the substance of Africa’s detailed and compelling indictment of the South, presented with silent and devastating precision in The Hague.
True to their condescending and reeking colonial attitude, the hypocrites and their accomplices – who believe that Israel is never at fault, never responsible, never to blame and, of course, never guilty – ridiculed the scathing submission of South Africa as wrong, “unnecessary” and “counterproductive”.
Their banal and predictable reaction not only fuels widespread disgust, but raises an admittedly rhetorical question: When is the pursuit of justice and accountability ever misguided, “unnecessary,” and “counterproductive”?
And what, according to the fallacious calculation of the hypocrites and their accomplices, would be “useful” and “productive” in the odious and dominant circumstances?
Silence? Blindness? Apathy?
Maybe it’s their choice. It’s not ours.
While the hypocrites and their accomplices simply spout meaningless bromides and feign concern for the innocent victims of an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, we, alongside our loyal South African friends, stand ready to uplift voice, to act and demonstrate because history and decency demand it.
Those of us who witness the genocide and are driven by conscience to end it became South Africans in spirit last week. We should be grateful to a nation and a people who know and have experienced the smears and indignities inherent in a sick apartheid ideology.
South Africa’s good fight is our fight. South Africa, to its everlasting credit, took the lead when others refused or hesitated to come to the defense of imprisoned Palestinians, providing them with hope and empathy.
In contrast, the presidents and prime ministers of so-called enlightened Western democracies have chosen to enable, encourage and excuse the gratuitous anger of perpetrators rather than protect, provide for and console their victims, for the sake of most of them young and deeply wounded.
South Africa was obliged to take a stand because, as the immortal freedom fighter Nelson Mandela once said: “The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond so painfully and poignant.”
The pain is evident day after day. The scenes of death, destruction and humiliation in Gaza and the occupied West Bank are reminiscent of the horrific images that dominated television screens decades ago and pierced the heart and soul.
We remember the time when the leaders of the so-called enlightened Western democracies played the role of collaborators of an apartheid state full of racists, out of “strategic” interest.
Their complicity was as repulsive then as it is today.
Yet in a poignant reminder of their shared struggle for freedom and self-determination, a gathering of Palestinians who call South Africa home welcomed members of the country’s legal team at a Johannesburg airport on Sunday.
“We must stand up against oppression, wherever it is,” said a smiling woman wearing a keffiyeh and holding a Palestinian flag.
In that moment, on that day, South Africans and Palestinians were one people bound by one conviction: that justice, however late, can and will be done if the will exists to pursue it.
Meanwhile, a gallery of timid presidents and prime ministers have, as expected, closed ranks behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rejecting South Africa’s accusations that Israel has committed a litany of crimes against humanity in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Their unanimity reveals their great hypocrisy.
In early April 2022, US President Joe Biden declared that Russia had engaged in “genocide” in Ukraine.
“Yes, I called it genocide,” Biden said on an airport tarmac amid the roar of nearby engines. “It is increasingly clear that Putin simply seeks to erase the very idea of being Ukrainian and the evidence is mounting.”
Biden did not share any of his “evidence,” only insisting that Russia did “horrible things” in Ukraine.
“We’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether this is permissible or not, but that seems to me to be the case,” Biden said.
Always a reliable “junior partner,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau echoed – almost word for word – Biden’s “genocide” order.
“I think, as President Biden has pointed out, there are formal processes around the determination of genocide. But I think it’s absolutely right that more and more people are talking about and using the word ‘genocide’ when talking about what Russia is doing, what Vladimir Putin has done,” Trudeau told reporters.
He cited Russia’s “targeted attacks” on civilians and Ukrainian culture and identity as “proof” of the genocide.
Who needs a panel of judges at the International Court of Justice when the law firm of Biden, Trudeau and Quickdraw unilaterally decides that Russia is guilty of the charges against it?
When South African lawyers presented a brief filled with concrete, not grandiose, “evidence” of Israel’s intent and execution of genocide, Biden, Trudeau and company retreated into the comfort of denial and ignorance.
Much like “apartheid,” “genocide” is a verboten word among cowardly leaders of enlightened Western democracies when Israel is accused of “horrible things,” including targeting civilians and completely erasing culture and identity Palestinians across their ancestral territory. lands.
If Israel receives its reward, South Africa should take a well-deserved bow in the name of humanity and the tattered remains of international law.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
