By Patrick Chinamasa

FOR the past three months, we have been helpless, powerless, useless witnesses to the unfolding genocide and mass atrocities: wholesale slaughter, indiscriminate, savage, criminal bombardment of civilian targets being committed by Israeli apartheid occupation forces in Gaza against the defenseless Palestinian civilian population – men, women and children —whose sole crime is to protest against the illegal occupation of their land by Israeli occupying forces. 

We are, indeed, witnesses to civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques and hospitals being bombed, destroyed and razed to the ground, with thousands of civilians massacred. 

The Palestinian people are yearning for freedom and independence. 

The Gaza genocidal war has now come home to Zimbabwe with the sad announcement that Palestinian Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Tamer Almassri, has lost his mother through this savage, criminal bombardment of the civilian population. 

As witnesses to the Gaza genocide, we cannot remain silent, as to do so will make us accomplices in the eyes of God and man.

There are four lessons to draw from this unfolding genocide, namely: 

• that any State or power or authority on this earth can freely commit acts of genocide with impunity for as long as the State, power or authority receives moral, political, financial and diplomatic support from the most powerful countries in the world: the US, the UK and their Western allies.
• the world knows that the US, the UK and Western Europe are supplying arms and military hardware to Israel to commit massacres against defenseless children in Gaza. Because the US is powerful, there is no power on earth to bring it to account. The UN Security Council has been rendered impotent.
• Zimbabweans should take serious note that when the US, the UK and their Western allies spend millions of dollars funding NGOs and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Zimbabwe, purportedly to promote the respect of human rights, we should be aware that it has nothing to do with human rights but funding attempts at effecting regime change against ZANU PF. When the US, the UK and their Western allies speak about the promotion and respect for human rights, they are speaking with a forked tongue —they don’t mean what they say. 
• These countries are masters of the art of political doublespeak. In short, the US, the UK and their allies have perfected the art of double standards. What is happening in Gaza is evidence that, in pursuit of their nefarious agendas and geopolitical interests, they will not hesitate to throw human rights overboard. They make no apologies for becoming complicit in killing the civilian population of defenseless women and children.
• all I can do as a human being whose conscience has been pricked by the atrocities being perpetrated by Israeli Forces against a defenseless civilian Palestinian population is to raise my voice in condemnation against the perpetration of the genocide against the Palestinian people. I invite like-minded people to do the same. I pray to God that I am counted among those who are abhorred by what is taking place in Gaza.

Those who have eyes, let them ‘eye’, and those who have ears, let them ‘ear’. 

Nokuti hatigoni kurega kutaura zvatakaona nezvatakanzwa.

— Source: https://x.com/ChinamasaPA/status/

 Patrick Chinamasa is ZANU PF Treasurer General