The Editor
There is an horrific slaughter taking place at this very moment before our eyes in the Gaza Strip. As I write this, I am watching the International Court of Justice proceedings taking place in The Hague where South Africa has taken the State of Israel, on a charge of systematic genocide against the people of Gaza. On Thursday the 11th of January the panel of South Africans made a very compelling case that Israel has waged and is continuing to wage a genocidal war against the people of Gaza. I must say that I was very proud to be a South African and witness one of the only countries on the planet decrying in the most unequivocal of terms the atrocious and diabolical actions of the Israeli army and government upon the innocent Palestinians.
Make no mistake, there was an horrific attack on innocent people when the Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians. There is no excuse for this for any reason. But the action must be looked at in the context of the actual real time and real life situation in the entire neighbourhood: Israel and Palestine.
The Gaza Strip is really a very large rat cage in which rats are confined in conditions that defy all morality of human beings. I believe that the government of Israel is very much like, in many ways, the Apartheid government in South Africa, which looked at the black African population as inferior and in some way sub-human, and which had to be kept packed away, preferably behind electric fences, massively high cement walls and miles of razor wire. Without being trite, Israel’s dehumanisation of the Palestinians is even worse.
With no hope of any future for their children, no freedom of movement, no contact with anyone or any country without Israeli approval, the people of Palestine and especially those in Gaza are living in one big open air concentration camp. Try sailing into Palestinian waters off the coast and see how far you can get. The people of Gaza are sentenced to a death sentence in a prison from which there is no escape. Sort of like the Nazis did to the Jews and others before and during the Second World War. One would think that the Jews in Israel would be particularly sensitive to this.
But no, they have ramped up the dehumanisation of the Palestinians to such an extent that the pressure in the cooker came to the point of an explosion. Israel was the flame and the exploding peas in the cooker were the Hamas terrorists. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: witness the Israeli response to the Palestinian response. One could argue that the Israeli reaction was far in excess of the Palestinian response.
The carpet bombing and decimation of Gaza defies all sensibilities. Israel could have released its Mossad and Shin Bet and any other assassination forces it has, to hunt down and kill every Hamas fighter it wanted…like it did to the Munich terrorists. It could have done this with very little collateral damage. It could have done this but chose instead to slaughter tens of thousands of innocent people. Children in the main. Rumours that Israel is secretly building gas chambers are, I pray, not true.
The case put forward at the hearings was that the IDF dropped millions of leaflets and made telephone calls to individuals, that they had better immediately leave their homes and neighbourhood and move to the south, because they, the IDF, were going to bomb and obliterate the entirety of Gaza City. Can you in your wildest dreams imagine getting such a flier or telephone call? It must be a prank!
I doubt that the people of Israel, the citizens, have been in a position to watch the horror show on al Jazeera every evening. I must admit that in the early days of this genocidal war, I cried every evening as one of the most densely populated areas on the planet was systematically flattened. More bombs have been dropped on Gaza than the Americans dropped on Afghanistan. The magnitude of the Israeli bombing campaign is only matched by WWII and Vietnam.
I can see the frustration of the Israeli military that they cannot just get the whole thing brought to a head more expeditiously by just nuking the bloody troublesome Palestinians and ending their problem once and for all. I bet they have considered it!
The Palestinians are a big inconvenience to the Israeli government, especially the Netanyahu regime which is I would like to think not a true representation of the Israeli people. The war is the only thing presently keeping Netanyahu in power. No war: no power and possible jail. The war ironically and terminally is the present government’s only “lifeline”. Sad but true and there is no De Klerk in the wings to do the right thing.
The human race should hang its head in shame.
After the October 7 massacre we were all aware that a major reaction from Israel was going to happen. We thought that it was going to be a quick and intensive military campaign of the IDF against Hamas. We assumed incorrectly. The obliteration of the Gaza Strip has continued unabated and it has been made clear by the Israelis that this will continue for another year! It will be only a matter of making the dust that remains just that much finer. And much more human hamburger. The war MUST STOP NOW.
We pray that the International Court of Justice will do the right thing and sanction Israel. Hamas must also cease and desist from all its military actions and must immediately return all hostages taken. The world must immediately rebuild Gaza and restore some semblance of normal life to the inhabitants. The war must stop, and a normal civilian life must be restored as much as is humanly possible. Nothing less that this will be acceptable.
Dr Peter C Baker
Parktown North, Johannesburg