Following my recent interview with Mawande AmaShabalala on Sunday World Engage, a podcast platform, I have been inundated with calls from friends and acquaintances, complaining about my opinion that South Africa should not have taken Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the conflict in Gaza.
As a matter of professional policy, I normally don’t respond to those who react to my analysis, for I believe that, in a healthy democracy, people have a right to differ – whether we like their opinions or not.
I am also aware that some people get offended by my opinions, and I don’t expect them to sprint to the nearest shop to buy me roses. When angry people sharpen their knives, I grab a book and read.
So, what follows below should be construed as a clarification rather than a response. Some of those who have watched my interview have tried to portray me as a defender of Israel, or as a heartless brute unmoved by the mass slaughter of Palestinians.
Here is my starting point: the massacre of thousands of Palestinians by Benjamin Netanyahu and his murderous government must be condemned by everyone who values human life. Netanyahu and Hamas are the same; they both murder innocent people indiscriminately.
There are some among us who feel strongly that South Africa, given the fact that its previously oppressed majority received support from other parts of the world, has a moral responsibility to do the same for every oppressed people in the world.
The moral sentiment of the advocates of every oppressed people in the world makes sense, but we must not forget that the South African liberation struggle was first supported by our neighbours. Such neighbours as Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and other African countries provided direct support to the liberation struggle.
They all paid a heavy price for their support.
The question is: Why are neighbouring Arab states not taking Israel to the ICJ? Why does it have to be South Africa, a country that is more than 9 000km away?
If a neighbouring Arab country had taken the Israel case to the ICJ, and South Africa declared its support for such a case and condemned Israel’s massacre and destruction of Palestinian property, I would definitely be among those standing behind the South African government.
There are also those who see things from the standpoint of an internationalist crusader. If South Africa was truly the international moral activist that the ANC claims it is, why has the ANC government’s voice been silent against the human rights abuse perpetrated by Zanu-PF’s rogue government in Zimbabwe?
In fact, the Zimbabwean case has more direct implications for South Africa. Millions of Zimbabweans now compete with poor South Africans for scarce jobs and public services.
Could it be that the ANC government and its brilliant lawyers are busy preparing to take Zanu-PF to the African Court on Human and People’s Rights? Maybe the ANC will not do it because the suffering Zimbabweans are black, not Arab.
If the retort is that the Palestinians are being killed, not merely abused (like Zimbabweans), we would have to wait for the advocates of every oppressed people in the world to tell us what the ANC government is doing for the black people of the Sudan who are being murdered.
There are also those who prefer to live in a country that sacrifices everything in pursuit of a “moral” cause. Let such people believe what they like, but we must never swallow up the propaganda of a quixotic foreign policy that deliberately turns a blind eye to the harm avoided by Arab countries.
Like us, Arab nations do feel pain when they see their cousins butchered in Gaza. But, unlike the ANC government in South Africa, Arab states have decided not to make themselves the target of an unhinged US president, acting in cahoots with a bloodthirsty monster like Netanyahu.
At the end of the day, there will always be those who support Palestine or Israel. If it is worth anything, my voice is raised to warn my fellow South African citizens not to entangle themselves in a faraway conflict that is more complicated and bigger than us. But we must keep in mind that those who disagree with us have an equal right to their arguments.
And finally, we must also remember that there will always be people who will never accept any sound argument if it comes from a person they dislike. But we must never stop telling the truth. Not everything that goes in the name of morality is moral.
- Mashele is a political scientist and author
