Global Courant
Inevitably, contempt breeds disgust.
Anyone with an ounce of awareness and sympathy for the horrors that Palestinians have endured for generations knows the lingering pain that roils within us like a dormant volcano about to erupt with righteous anger.
So we take to the streets, bridges and national shopping centers in a necessary display of irenic solidarity and point an accusing finger at the hypocrites and their enablers who deny the inhumanity and injustices we can all see happening in Gaza and the West Bank. with deliberate, deadly efficiency by a fanatical regime consumed by a ‘murder frenzy’.
Lately, the hypocrites and their enablers have been working hard – as they always do – to deny or discredit our South African allies, who have done the right and honorable thing by finally holding Israel accountable for the crimes committed against it. committed yesterday and the misdeeds it committed. certainly capture today and tomorrow.
South Africa is eager to see through its principled accusation in court: that Israel, through careful and deliberate design, committed genocide and turned much of Gaza into dust.
The result: Despite the risks and accusations, South Africa has managed to put Israel in the dock – where dozens of countries that have joined the historic legal gamble believe it long belongs there.
The hypocrites and their enablers have responded – as they are also prone to do – with howls of exaggeration and outrage rather than addressing the substance of South Africa’s detailed, cogent indictment delivered with quiet, devastating precision in The Hague .
True to their condescending, colonial-smacking form, the hypocrites and their enablers – who believe that Israel is never to blame, never responsible, never to blame and of course never to blame – have ridiculed South Africa’s stinging subjugation as misleading. ‘not useful’ and ‘counterproductive.”
Their decent, predictable response not only fuels widespread disgust, but also raises a rhetorical question: When is the pursuit of justice and responsibility ever misguided, “useless,” and “counterproductive”?
And what, in the disingenuous analysis of the hypocrites and their enablers, would be “helpful” and “productive” in the odious prevailing conditions?
Silence? Blindness? Apathy?
That may be their choice. It’s not ours.
While the hypocrites and their enablers are content to spout meaningless bromides and feign concern for the innocent victims of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, we, together with our steadfast South African friends, are ready to raise our voices, into action to come and demonstrate because history and decency demand it.
Those of us who witness genocide and are moved by our conscience to stop it have become South Africans in spirit over the past week. We must be grateful to a nation and a people who know and have experienced the vilification and humiliation inherent in a sick apartheid ideology.
South Africa’s good fight is our fight. To its eternal credit, South Africa took the lead when others refused or hesitated to defend the imprisoned Palestinians, bearing within them the gifts of hope and empathy.
In shameful contrast, the presidents and prime ministers of so-called enlightened Western democracies have chosen to enable, encourage and excuse the perpetrator’s wanton rage rather than protect, care for and care for the often young, deeply damaged victims. to console.
South Africa was forced 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 in such painful and poignant ways.”
The pain is evident day after horrible 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 and pierced the heart and soul decades ago.
We remember that the leaders of so-called enlightened Western democracies played collaborators of an apartheid state full of racists for ‘strategic’ interests.
Their complicity was as disgusting then as it is now.
Still, in a poignant reminder of their shared struggle for freedom and self-determination, a gathering of Palestinians who have found a home in South Africa again welcomed members of the country’s legal team to a Johannesburg airport on Sunday.
“We must resist oppression wherever it is,” said a woman wearing a keffiyeh and holding a Palestinian flag, smiling.
In that moment, on that day, South Africans and Palestinians stood together as one people, bound by one belief: that justice, no matter how late, can be done and will be done if there is the will to pursue it.
Meanwhile, a gallery of fearful presidents and prime ministers have, on cue, 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 unity reveals their sheer hypocrisy.
In early April 2022, US President Joe Biden declared that Russia had committed ‘genocide’ in Ukraine.
“Yes, I called it genocide,” Biden said on an airport tarmac, amid the hum of nearby engines. “It is becoming increasingly clear that Putin is just trying to eradicate the idea that he is even Ukrainian, and the evidence is mounting.”
Biden shared none of his “evidence,” except to insist that Russia had done “terrible things” in Ukraine.
“We’ll let the lawyers internationally decide whether it qualifies or not, but to me it certainly seems that way,” Biden said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, ever the reliable “junior partner,” repeated – almost verbatim – Biden’s “genocide” summons.
“I think, as President Biden emphasized, there are official processes around determining genocide. But I think it’s absolutely right that more and more people are using the word ‘genocide’ and using it in terms of what Russia is doing, what Vladimir Putin has done,” Trudeau told reporters.
He cited Russia’s “targeted attacks” on civilians and Ukraine’s culture and identity as “evidence” of genocide.
Who needs a panel of judges at the International Court of Justice if the law firm of Biden, Trudeau and Quickdraw unilaterally decides that Russia is guilty of the charges?
When South African lawyers presented a letter filled with concrete, not bombastic, “evidence” of Israel’s intent and execution of genocide, Biden, Trudeau and company retreated to the comfort of denial and ignorance.
Like “apartheid,” “genocide” is a verboten word among the cowardly leaders of enlightened Western democracies when Israel is accused of “terrible things,” including targeting civilians and wholesale erasure of Palestinian culture and identity during their entire ancestral life. lands.
If Israel gets its comeuppance, South Africa must take a well-deserved bow on behalf of humanity and the threadbare remnants of international law.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
