There are no amount of words or writings that can describe what is happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza and across the occupied Palestinian lands right now. South Africa rightly took the genocide call to the International Criminal Court in January 2024 and called worldwide attention to the Israeli genocidal military campaign against the entire population of Gaza particulary men, women and children. The ICC has since considered issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes that's being committed 24 hours, which would be a first for an Israeli and Western leader. There is a mountain of evidence that Israeli army and government is committing continual war crimes in Gaza. There is no debate needed.
The South Africans are speaking from decades of experience and understand the horrors and utter pain that ordinary Palestinians are living through being broadcast almost by hour worldwide. Like Palestine, South Africa was occupied by a foreign people backed by a world super power first Britain and later the United States. Like the Israelis, the white colonialists including Afrikaners saw themselves in an exceptional light that went beyond the mission civilisace of colonialism. They saw themselves bringing civilization, superior European values and worldviews, development including a high standard of living to South Africa. The Afrikaners even tried to say that South Africa was an empty land in need of people. Sound familiar? The Zionists have used the same logic saying Palestine was an empty land without a people. In both countries, the empty land mythos was a lie. South Africans lived under a brutal apartheid system that was propped up by the world super powers United States, United Kingdom and in recent times beginning in 1948 (the same year Israel was established) and lasting until 1994. Ordinary South Africans were demonized and dehumanized by the White South Africans and other Europeans as terrorists, savages, dangerous, a threat to national security, etc for standing up and fighting back against colonialism and the Apartheid system throughout its existence. Nelson Mandela who became a near Christ like figure and a South African version of Gandhi in his later life was maligned as a terrorist in 1960s throughout his imprisonment for being part of the armed revolution and carrying out revolutionary violence against the colonialist, apartheid South African govenrment. Mandela and Desmond Tutu had spoken out and criticized the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine and its war against the Palestinians on several occassions.
The Indigenous South Africans were also seperated from their ancestral land and denied the right to access their lands or to even live wherever they choose as their land was given to thousands of European colonialists and settlers. Again if this sounds familiar despite some differences with Palestinians and Israel it is not a coincidence. As it has been said many times here, Israel wasn't just established as a homeland for Jewish people nor as a return to an ancient biblical holy land, Israel was created as and still acts as a settler colonial state much like South Africa, Algeria under France and the United States. This is not an exaggeration. As a matter of fact, Israel was an ally of Apartheid South Africa. Nevermind the irony of Israel who constantly laments the suffering of Jewish people under brutal regimes than being allies with a brutal apartheid regime in South Africa. For the record, Israel was critical of the apartheid regime South Africa in its early years in hopes of gaining new allies in various African countries still under colonial regimes. Israelis remained critical until 1967 war, where Israel occupied the reminder of 22% of Palestine ie East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Israel and South Africa would go on to colloborate militarily, nuclear program exchanges and sharing intelligence. It should come as no surprise to anyone that South Africa not only took the intiative to charge Israel with genocide against Palestine to the international court and didn't fear the repocuations from Israel and its supporters. The rest of the world has applauded South Africa and so have the Palestinian people.
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