We salute SA for being on the side of justice

The state of Israel is entitled to its own sovereignty but what it is not entitled to do is to use its military might, part of it sponsored by the US, to bully and exterminate the occupied Gaza Strip, that little enclave that is home to just over 2-million Palestinians.

The indiscriminate slaughter of nearly 23 000 Palestinians is genocidal and should be stopped, and Israel must be censured and punished for unleashing the Israeli Defence Forces on unarmed Palestinians, under the pretext of hunting down Hamas – the Palestinian resistance movement.

And SA must be commended for taking the bull by the horns and placing its case before the 17 judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Last Thursday, the court began to hear South Africa’s application to declare that Israel has violated the 1948 Genocide Convention by their disproportionate annihilation of Palestinians, even as they seek to justify the massacre by arguing they had been provoked by Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack.

As we understand it, SA’S application is detailed and populated by facts and incidents of atrocities perpetrated by crude brutality and ferocity on the harmless citizens of the Gaza Strip.

We also saw, in keeping with the audi alteram partem rule, Israel launched its own defence, arguing and claiming among other things, that it was Hamas that must be blamed for the Gaza Strip’s woes, and that they, Hamas, were using the population of the tiny Gaza Strip as human shields for their own nefarious ends.

The civilised international world is on the side of SA, including the support the country gets from some legal eagles in the US. US professor of international law Francis Boyle is on the side of SA. He argued that the ICJ might take a view that the US could be seen as complicit in Israel’s alleged genocide. This, he argued, is supported by its stance of militarily supporting the rogue Israel state.

Last month, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in the war-torn Gaza, with 153 countries aligning themselves with the resolution. British former prime minister David Cameron and now its foreign minister is quoted as saying: “I am worried that Israel might have breached international law.”

The international community this week made a strong presence at the Hague in solidarity with South Africa.

And so, South Africa, is again ascending the world stage, akin to the time when it waged a liberation struggle against the apartheid regime.

We applaud President Cyril Ramaphosa for leading the country on pathways of justice, and in defence against the suffering Palestinians.

There can be no justification, in any form, for the extermination of thousands of Palestinians. They have had their land unjustly occupied by Israel. They have had their human dignity stripped from them. They have known no justice in a long time, and the world dare not turn its back on the besieged Gaza residents.

We salute South Africa for the courage of their conviction to choose to be on the side of justice in a war the world must roundly condemn.