Yesterday marked the six-month anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
Still, we see the images of dead bodies wrapped in white sheets, women lamenting their fate, Gaza residents young and old with empty bowls and pots wondering when or where their next meal will come from, a man-made famine knocking on the door.
Six months of the worst tragedy, in my view, in my lifetime. It feels just like yesterday that the disaster unfolded. Odd and surreal too, but what has happened in Gaza over the past six months as a retaliatory attack for Hamas’ Oct. 7 evil is real.
Anthony Akaeze
It is a fact that people are being killed on a daily basis and the onslaught continues as I write this. Talks of ceasefire after ceasefire have amounted to nothing and so Israel, on the order of Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to wreak havoc in Gaza. From air, land and sea, the attacks have been devastating, sending men and women and children to their early graves and reducing densely populated neighborhoods to rubble.
At no other time in my experience has the phrase ‘show no mercy’ been adhered to the letter. It is horrifying.
Netanyahu, like Vladimir Putin, does not care about the verdict of history on his life and legacy. Which is why, to this day, both men continue to defy all calls to bring the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to an end.
But South Africa cares. The African country is alarmed by what is happening in Gaza, which explains why it petitioned the International Court of Justice to call Israel to account and get them to lay down their arms and cease the bombardment of Gaza.
The South African government first petitioned the ICJ in December, saying what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza is meant “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group” and that “the conduct of Israel — through its state organs, state agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”
With no change, South Africa returned to the court with another request weeks later. According to the Times of Israel: “South Africa … said it was compelled to seek more preliminary orders ‘in light of the new facts and changes in the situation in Gaza — particularly the situation of widespread starvation — brought about by the continuing egregious breaches’ of the convention by Israel.”
The United States and the UK have allowed their friendship with Israel to blind them to Israel’s atrocities and compelling it to bring the war to an end. Officials from both countries speak from both sides of their mouths and refuse to unequivocally condemn Israel. Ironically, the same supporters of Israel have been strident in their attacks of Russia for its war against Ukraine.
Also ironically, South Africa is calling out Israel but has not called out Russia. South Africa is considered to be a friend and ally of Russia the same way the U.S. and UK are close to Israel. Therein lies the double standard.
To what extent is Russia’s invasion and bombardment of Ukraine different from Israel’s destruction of Gaza? A lot, many may argue. While the statistics of death and destruction differ in both theaters of war, both are undeniable genocides.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, with another 72,000 injured, millions displaced from their homes and facing hunger and starvation. Israel, on its part, recorded about 1,400 deaths with more than 130 people taken hostage from the invasion of its country by Hamas militants.
The Council on Foreign Relations reports that two years fighting in Ukraine triggered by Russia has “inflicted over 30,000 civilian casualties, while 3.7 million people are internally displaced, and 6.5 million have fled Ukraine” with 14.6 million people needing humanitarian assistance.”
“It is the picture of an African country speaking truth to evil on the Israeli-Gaza war that stands out.”
With these staggering statistics in mind, it is the picture of an African country speaking truth to evil on the Israeli-Gaza war that stands out.
For too long, African countries have lived on the periphery of world politics, choosing unashamedly most times to stand on the fence in matters of global importance; in Gaza and Ukraine’s cases, issues concerning life and death. At other times, Africans live on foreign countries’ terms. That’s still largely the case.
Although endowed with enormous natural resources, Africa has failed to live up to its full potential mainly due to poor leadership. This has left many African governments at the mercy of aid agencies, created all manner of problems and caused all kinds of distress for people of the continent.
For its leadership failings, Africa is taken less seriously in the community of nations. And so, who would have thought an African country would be the one to break from the norm and stand out as moral arbiter and example in the disaster that is the Israeli-Hamas war?
It is an irony that South Africa, a former Apartheid country, is the moral force in this catastrophe as the country once was the epicenter of injustice and hate, a country where people had little or no love for one another due to the color of their skin, a land where marriage between a Black man and white woman was considered taboo.
South Africa’s position on the Israeli-Hamas war reminds us of what Nigeria used to be in its heyday. Nigeria, for example, boycotted the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976 in opposition to Apartheid. A July 2023 report by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs states that 45 Nigerian athletes already were in Montreal for the 1976 Olympics when their country’s government and 26 other countries, the majority of them Africans, pulled out from the Games.
“The countries withdrew due to an unresolved diplomatic row over New Zealand rugby team’s tour of the then Apartheid South Africa, where Black people were subjugated by the racist regime,” the report says. “Nigeria, then under the leadership of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, led the boycott because the International Olympic Committee refused to impose a ban on New Zealand, whose rugby team toured South Africa in defiance of the United Nations’ resolution of a total sporting embargo against the racist Apartheid regime.”
Such moral stands are necessary for a just and peaceful world where, no matter the grievances and pain we feel for the actions of people or our enemies, we need to rethink our actions, give peace a chance and work toward compromise. There should be an alternative to war and hate.
Peace and mutual coexistence are possible and negotiable and are what the world needs now more than ever. That’s a message Putin and Netanyahu and helmsmen like them the world over need to be reminded of and should come to terms with today, not tomorrow.
Anthony Akaeze is a Nigerian-born freelance journalist who lives in Houston. He covers Africa for BNG.
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