Francesca Albanese and Susan Abulhawa discuss the role Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza plays in the global systems of diplomacy, economics, and culture.
Hamas rejects Blinken’s visit to Ramallah, saying there are “no differences between Israel and the Americans,” as U.S. and UK naval forces shoot down 21 Yemeni drones over the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Corbyn is set to join South Africa’s ICJ delegation.
South Africa’s 84 page long Application to the International Court of Justice to begin proceedings against Israel for its genocide in Gaza is a devastating document laying out Israel’s genocidal acts and statements in horrifying detail.
Israeli airstrikes kill another Palestinian journalist in Gaza, as the Wall Street Journal writes that the current Israeli rampage in Gaza ranks among the most devastating in modern history. Israel slams South Africa’s ICJ case as “blood libel.”
South African Marthie Momberg offers first-person accounts from non-Palestinian activists on the front line of the struggle for Palestinian human rights.
Ran Greenstein argues that Palestinians will not be able to challenge Israel as an oppressive ethnonational state in the same manner that South Africans did.
In the West Bank there is “apartheid by design,” two laws for two peoples, as the Amnesty report says. But inside Israel the situation is more complex, where Palestinians participate in non-segregated institutions, Tony Klug argues. “The Amnesty report calls for an end to apartheid, but absurdly does not call for an end to occupation. Yet the paramount need now is for a worldwide campaign to end the occupation.”
Joe Biden’s upcoming trip to Israel and the West Bank is an opportunity to pave a new U.S. approach, much like Robert Kennedy did 56 years ago when he visited Apartheid South Africa.
Even the apartheid regime in South Africa never outlawed human rights defenders in the manner that Israel just did when it declared six Palestinian organizations to be “terrorist organizations.” South Africa sought to maintain a reputation that it respected the Rule of Law. Israel knows that it need not worry about its image because the West will not take action against it for any wrongdoing — in the name of Israeli exceptionalism.
Apartheid in South Africa ended in part due to sanctions and pressure from the international community. It is once again on the international community to ensure that international law is upheld and apartheid sees its demise — this time in Palestine.