SUFFER THE PEOPLE
A mother’s grief
AN Israeli mother who had looked forward to celebrating her 21-year-old son’s discharge from the army in a few weeks’ time instead found herself at his graveside on Thursday.
According to Timesofisrael.com hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of Staff Sergeant Omer Tabib, 21, the military’s first casualty in the current round of fighting between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza.
Tabib was killed when an anti-tank guided missile was fired at an Israeli military jeep on the Gaza border last Monday. He was buried in the military cemetery in Elyakim, in northern Israel, on Thursday.
The Times of Israel reported that Tabib’s mother, Tali, said the family should have been celebrating his discharge from the army, set for just weeks from now.
Speaking at the funeral, she said: “I refuse to believe that instead of congratulating you on finishing the army, I am looking for words to sum up your life. In my blackest dreams, I didn’t think this day would come.”
She described Tabib as “a beautiful, pure child with an eternal smile on his face. You will forever be my son”.
According to The Times of Israel report, Tabib’s jeep came under attack while parked within Kibuutz Netiv Ha’asara, which lies on a hill overlooking northern Gaza, in an area within direct view of the Strip.
Tabib’s was the second Israeli vehicle to be hit by an anti-tank guided missile since renewed fighting began last Monday evening.
An officer in the jeep was seriously injured, a third soldier in the vehicle was moderately wounded and a civilian who ran to help pull the three out of the jeep sustained moderate injuries from shrapnel, it was reported.
According to The Washington Post, citing Israeli officials, Palestinian militants have fired more than 3 000 rockets into Israeli territory. Most have been thwarted by Israel’s sophisticated Iron Dome defence network.
Still, at least 10 people in Israel have been killed, including a disabled Israeli man, on Saturday in a rocket strike in a Tel Aviv suburb. Millions more Israelis have been forced to take shelter as nighttime sirens blare warnings of incoming rockets.
The pace of Hamas rocket fire has slowed over the past two days, an Israeli military spokesperson said.
They include the F15 Eagle, the F16 Falcon and the F35 Lightening II, all developed and built in America. It has also deployed battle tanks and artillery.
America is a staunch supporter of Israel and, this week, US President Joe Biden’s administration approved the sale of just over R10 billion (R140bn) worth of precision guided weapons to Israel.
Reuters reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis earlier this week that strikes against militant sites and leaders in Gaza would carry on.
“The directive is to continue to strike at terror targets,” he said in a televised speech, after meeting with military and intelligence chiefs.
“We will continue to act as necessary to restore peace and security to all residents of Israel,” said Netanyahu.
The armed wing of Hamas promised more rockets in return: “The criminal Zionist enemy intensified its bombing of homes and residential apartments in recent hours and, therefore, we warn the enemy that if it does not stop that immediately, we would resume rocketing Tel Aviv,” said spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
Hamas began its rocket assault last Monday after weeks of tensions over a court case to evict several Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, and in retaliation for Israeli police clashes with Palestinians near the city’s al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadaan.
The hostilities between Israel and
Hamas-controlled Gaza have been accompanied by an uptick of violence in the West Bank, where the Palestinians have limited self-rule.
There have also been clashes between Israel’s Jewish and Arab communities in mixed areas within the Jewish state.
Our experience with the democratic transition is a lesson about the power of empathy, negotiation and compromise.
The escalating situation in Israel and Palestine affirms once more what we, South Africans, know too well, that intractable conflicts can only be solved through peaceful negotiation.
It also demonstrates that unless the root causes of a conflict are addressed, in this case the illegal occupation by Israel of Palestinian land and the denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, there will never be peace.
The latest violence was sparked by an Israeli court decision to evict a group of families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem to make way for Israeli settlements.
The sight of men, women and children being evicted from the homes their families have lived in for generations brings back painful collective and personal memories for most South Africans – of forced removals and land dispossession.
It was a pain and humiliation faced by my own family, and by many South African families. My family was forcibly moved to different parts of the country on two occasions.
Being forced from one’s home at gunpoint is a trauma not easily forgotten, and is carried across generations. As a country we are living with the residual effects of the callous acts carried out in the name of apartheid spatial planning.
For all who believe in equality, justice and human rights, we cannot but be moved by and angered about the pain and humiliation being inflicted on the Palestinian people, for it echoes our own.
Israel’s actions are a violation of international law. They show a disregard for successive UN Security Council resolutions that call for an end to the occupation of Palestinian land and for the fulfilment of the rights of the Palestinian people.
Since Israeli security forces launched assaults on worshippers at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem last week, the violence has engulfed the Gaza Strip, large parts of the West Bank and several Israeli cities. It has claimed the lives of dozens of people, including children.
According to the UN Children’s Fund, at least 40 children were killed in Gaza since May 10. Over half of them were under 10 years old.
It is also deeply troubling that last week, Israeli forces destroyed a multistorey building that housed several media organisations, sending a chilling message to media reporting on the violence.
The senseless and continued Israeli bombardment of Gaza will have devastating consequences for more than two million people who have been suffering under an illegal Israeli blockade for 14 years.
As is always the case, it is civilians who will bear the brunt, with their homes and livelihoods destroyed. Every effort must be made to dissuade both sides from further escalation, and to end the violence that is causing fear, death and misery on both sides.
We call on all parties involved to show restraint, to respect human life, and to cease the hostilities.
Far too many lives have been lost to this intractable conflict. The continued occupation of Palestinian land and the suffering of the Palestinian people is a blight on the conscience of humanity.
As South Africa, we are committed to being part of international efforts aimed at reviving a political process that will lead to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state existing side by side in peace with Israel, and within internationally recognised borders.
The two-state solution remains the most viable option for the peoples of Israel and Palestine, and must continue to be supported.
Just as Israeli security forces were attacking worshippers at the Al Aqsa Mosque, we in South Africa were preparing to commemorate the centenary of the Bulhoek Massacre at a religious site in Ntabelanga in the Eastern Cape.
On May 24, 1921, colonial security forces, armed with machine guns and artillery, opened fire on worshippers, killing more than 160 people and wounding nearly 130.
The massacre laid bare the brutality not only of the police force of the Union of South Africa, but also the racist system that it was charged to uphold. Just like the dispute in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood, the atrocity at Bulhoek was not just about a local dispute; it was fundamentally about the forced dispossession of land, about colonial occupation, about racial discrimination and about the violent suppression of dissent.
As we reflect on the crisis in the Middle East and particularly on the suffering of the Palestinian people, we would do well to recall the words of Selby Msimang, a founding member of the ANC.
In the aftermath of the Bulhoek massacre he wrote: “History has shown that the human soul naturally revolts against injustice.”
The protests and the revolt of the oppressed people of South Africa against colonialism and apartheid proved the veracity of this prophecy.
As lovers of freedom and of justice, we stand with the Palestinian people in their quest for self-determination, but also in their resistance against the deprivation of their human rights and the denial of their dignity.
As citizens of a country that was able to turn its back on race-hatred and bloodshed and build an inclusive society rooted in human rights for all, it is our collective hope that the people of Israel and Palestine will follow a similar path; that they will find each other, and that they will find peace.