Iqbal Jassat
Israel is drowning in war crimes and unable to save itself
Like most of the world, South Africans are outraged and shocked beyond belief that a nuclear-armed military power Israel - backed unconditionally by a superpower, has unleashed a genocidal war on the besieged Gaza - an enclave of Palestinian refugees.
Latest reports at the time of writing reveal the death toll of relentless carpet bombing across the Gaza Strip has risen to over 8000.
The number is expected to grow to frightening levels as thousands are feared dead under the rubble of bombed buildings.
Israel is drowning in war crimes and is unable to "save" itself without continuing to commit more horrendous violations of international humanitarian laws.
While acts of genocide broadcast live on many TV platforms around the clock, allows viewers to witness savagery of inhumanity by the architects of Israel's war cabinet, some such as David Saks of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, foolishly argue to rationalise it.
In his article “Hatred for Israel drives the pro-Hamas voices” (Sunday Times, October 29), his deceptive analysis is not only embarrassing for many Jewish voices opposed to Israel's apartheid policies, but calculated to mislead public opinion.
To get a sense of his faulty logic, Saks justifies Israel's imposition of its crippling air, sea and land blockade of 2.3 million Palestinians in what the world has come to know as a concentration camp.
And in utter disregard of international laws and civilised humane values, Saks writes "...as it has every right to do (Israel), has implemented rigorous border controls and a tight blockade...".
As Israel's failed propaganda units known as #Hasbara had hoped to mobilise the world against Palestine's resistance movement Hamas, so too has Saks.
His revision of historical facts by claiming that Hamas "initiated this conflict" will fail too.
And proof of this is evident in the remarks made by UN chief Antonio Guterres, much to the anger and frustration of the Netanyahu regime, who have called for his head.
"It is important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished."
Hence, whatever spin emanates from either the settler-colonial regime’s department of propaganda, or local agents such as Saks allied to it, must be rejected with the contempt it deserves.
In addition, to profile the merciless slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza as a “War on Hamas”, must be rejected with disdain.
Misrepresentation of the genocide in Gaza and distortion of the humanitarian catastrophe engulfing the tiny enclave, intended to whitewash Israeli atrocities, is both disingenuous and dishonest.
Blaming Hamas and slandering it as a “... violent, tyrannical and racist Islamist movement...” Saks jumps to the conclusion that the moral outrage against Israel in South Africa and around the world, is “... simply hatred for Israel.”
In other words, the millions of protesters across western capitals from London to Paris and New York, who include Jews, do so not because they are concerned about the suffering of Palestinians, but because they hate Israel.
By his incongruous logic, the majority of member-states who voted in favour of UN General Assembly Resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, are Israel “haters”.
120 countries voted in favour, while only 14 opposed it.
Though not enforceable, the overwhelming number of countries demanding an immediate durable and sustained humanitarian truce, is an affirmation of worldwide public opinion in solidarity with Palestine.
From reports we continue to monitor, it is abundantly clear that Israel’s barbarism has not earned it any friends.
Having no claim to holding a moral high ground, its apologists are desperately seeking to divert attention from the pogrom Israel has unleashed in Gaza as well as in the Occupied Palestinian Territories across the West Bank.
To mischaracterise it as just a war on Hamas while pounding civilian, medical and religious infrastructure wiping out entire families, is intended to obfuscate Israel’s main goal: ethnic-cleansing of Palestine.
It is precisely what is being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza via deliberate military attacks,
bombings, missiles, murder, extrajudicial executions and the displacement and planned deportation of the population to the Sinai desert in Egypt.
Instead of phoney arguments to conflate Hamas with Mein Kampf and the futility of invoking antisemitic tropes to malign the resistance movement, Saks has chosen to ignore hateful incitement by Israel’s right-wing facist rulers.
For example, Yoav Gallant, Defense Minister said on 9 October: “I have ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Why?
“(...) We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
The bottom line is that Israel is a settler-colonial regime in illegal occupation of Palestine.
Wiping out Hamas as Netanyahu declared “root and all from the face of the earth” is a tall order his army of mercenaries may find extremely painful and impossible to accomplish.
The devastating Hamas surprise attack - an act of self defense against a colonial power occupying and blockading the Gaza Strip illegally - is an attack against Israeli apartheid-colonial oppression.
Palestinians will never give up their rights or their land; no matter how hard and how long the road to freedom.
Hamas as the vanguard of Palestine’s Resistance movements, has, like most liberation struggles against colonialism and apartheid, the obligation to free its people.
