Gaza and Our Common Humanity

The situation in Gaza significantly featured at the yesterday meeting of United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken with President Bola Tinubu in Abuja. Although the focus of the meeting was, of course, on the bilateral relations between Nigeria and the United States, Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Tuggar said while Nigeria and the United States agreed on the ultimate “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Nigeria stressed its support for the call for a ceasefire at least for humanitarian purposes in the Israel war on Gaza. Tuggar clearly defined the areas of “commonality” and “differences” in the policies of the two friendly countries towards the worsening crisis in Gaza.

Such a clarification is important in this age in which obfuscation and hypocrisy have become potent tools of foreign policies by some world powers.

The mood of Nigerians who are genuinely concerned about the killings and destruction in Gaza was aptly captured last Monday by a former foreign affairs minister, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, when he laid bare on “Arise News” the issue of Gaza as an open sore on the conscience of humanity.

It was Akinyemi’s first appearance as a guest on the television this year. So the anchors began with the customary HappyNewYear greetings to the professor to kick off that segment of “The Morning Show.” They expected a response of “Happy New Year.” But the veteran of Nigeria’s foreign affairs establishment said he would not respond in the expected tone because of the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, where Israel has been waging a war to free the hostages and “eliminate” Hamas. In fact, today is the 110th day of the war. In Akinyemi’s view, contrary to the nominations for the “Man of the Year” by various media organisations in the world at the end of 2023, those who actually deserved such a recognition were aid workers, medical personnel, journalists, United Nations staff etc. who have been killed by Israel’s bombings since the horrific attack on the country by Hamas on October 7 last year.

In the ensuing barbaric war, over 25,000 Palestinians have been killed including more than 10, 000 children. Even the Biblical principle of reciprocal justice is that of “an eye for an eye” as contained in the Old Testament books of Exodus and Leviticus. The principle is definitely not that of 25 eyes for an eye as Israel seems to calculate in conducting the war in Gaza with outrageous impunity. Worse still, supplies of food, water, fuel and medical to Gaza have been at the mercy of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. Children have died of hunger and dehydration. Refugee camps have been bombed. Houses, schools and hospitals have been destroyed in the Israeli mission of “destroying Hamas terror infrastructure.” Resolutions for a humanitarian ceasefire at the United Nations have been blocked by America. With the full backing of the United States, Israel has serially ignored international laws and conventions in the prosecution of this savage war. Israel has even killed in error some of the hostages that the war is partly waged to rescue. And at least 535 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since October 7 last year, including the 24 who were killed only yesterday. No country could have displayed so much impunity without America’s support. Yet western reactionary ideologues are quick to blackmail those crying for justice in Palestine by accusing them of “antisemitism.” No. Anti-Zionism should not be falsely equated to anti-Semitism. To condemn the recklessness of the Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing regime does not amount to hatred for the great people Israel, who in some respects are also victims of the blind policies of the Israeli state.

For any observer imbued with compassion the question that readily comes to mind is this: whatever happened to our common humanity in the face of the humanitarian catastrophe on display in the territories which have been occupied by Israel for 57 years?

Perhaps, the most soul-lifting aspect of Akinyemi’s statement on “Arise News” last Monday is what he called the “Mandelisation” of the foreign policy of South Africa. The legacy of immense moral capital bequeathed to the free South Africa by its first president , Nelson Mandela, has become manifest in that nation’s response to Israel’s lawless behaviour in Gaza. It is, of course, well known that the spirit of Mandela is that of justice and humanity in the affairs of men whether at national or at the international level. It is this spirit that has prompted South Africa to assume moral leadership in the world by making a case of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest legal institution of the United Nations, also called the World Court. Unlike the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is better suited for prosecution of individuals charged with war crimes, the ICJ carries immense moral weight in adjudicating on cases among nations. That’s why a lot of hope is pinned by all lovers of freedom and justice on the ruling of the court to end the Gaza disaster. However, there should be no illusion about the situation in Gaza. After the 15 judges of the ICJ must have given their rulings, the ball would, of course, be in the court of the United Nations Security Council to enforce the verdict. And America may again “stand with Israel” in opposition to the international convention.

In the course of a two-day hearing, South Africa accused Israel of the “crime of genocide” by violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. Noteworthy is the fact that both South Africa and Israel are party to the convention.

Therefore, South Africa wants the World Court to stop Israel immediately from further killings in Gaza pending the full hearing of the case. This prayer of South Africa, perhaps, could have been unnecessary if the United States had not blocked the United Nations resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire. Well, Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, has dismissed the case as “preposterous,” describing it as a “blood libel.”

As the world awaits the ruling of World Court, it would be in order to salute South Africa for asserting our common humanity in the true spirit of Mandela. Whatever comes out of the case, South Africa has made the moral point to Israel and its western backers that the world is not a jungle where might is right. After all, an Israeli minister has described the Palestinians as “human beasts” in a hate speech that may bear historical resonance for generations.

All this is happening at a time the West increasingly abandons its liberal values, a trend which actually became more explicit with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On the false pretext of disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, the United States and the United Kingdom flagrantly violated international laws and invaded the less powerful country. No one could stop the two western powers at the time. The lawlessness of Israel in Gaza 20 years after is reminiscent of the war crimes committed in Iraq in a different context.

More than 10, 000 children are killed in Gaza, yet western powers do not see the urgency of a humanitarian ceasefire! Where lies the moral content of the foreign policies of these countries?

A few days after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, President Joe Bidden was on a solidarity visit to Tel Aviv. Before his arrival, an Israeli bomb had dropped on an hospital in Gaza. Here is what Bidden told Netanyahu about the incident: “I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion of the hospital in Gaza yesterday, and based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.” Biden said so on October 18, 2003 without any evidence of independent investigations. Since then Israel has bombed nearly all the hospitals in Gaza and ordered the evacuation of patients. Israel has claimed that Hamas used the hospitals as centres of military operations and for hiding equipment. Western powers have been silent on this savage conduct of the war. The same western diplomats who made a passionate case for a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war are now opposed to a ceasefire in the Israel war on Gaza. Their justification is that Hamas should be “eliminated” in Israel’s exercise of its right to self-defence. It doesn’t matter to western powers that while they join Israel in calling Hamas a “terrorist” organisation, lovers of justice and freedom all over the world see Hamas as a liberation movement fighting for freedom, justice and human dignity in Palestine. In the process Hamas too commits its own war crimes.

Some western leaders are myopic about these things probably because of the crucial elections coming up this year in their respective countries. They, therefore, subsume the geo- strategic implications of the escalation of the crisis in Gaza for world peace and the global economy in their electoral calculations.

The response of Biden and others to the humanitarian catastrophe shows that contemporary western leaders are not sufficiently learning from their own history. In 1943, one of the leading American public intellectuals, Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian, observed on a rather triumphalist note that “the world problem cannot be solved if America does not accept its full responsibility in solving it.” Over 80 years after, America has simply abandoned its moral responsibility by giving Israel the greenlight to kill Palestinians indiscriminately in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to maintain the military control of Gaza whenever the war ends. To achieve that odious ambition, however, Netanyahu may have to declare himself the governorgeneral of the occupied territories in the true tradition of colonialism. However, like previous vicious settler-colonialisms in history, the Israeli occupation of Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem will one day come to an end and Palestine will become a land of freedom.

To be sure, the security of Israel and the statehood for Palestinians should not be mutually exclusive as Netanyahu and his extremist regime in Tel Aviv are presenting things before the world. Doubtless, the resolute opposition of Netanyahu and his fellow extremists to a Palestinian state makes the outlook for Gaza grimmer.