FOR how long will the world remain silent?
A genocide is happening right in front of our eyes and the world remains silent.
Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza, its refusal to permit life-saving vaccines to enter the Strip, and its consistent bombardment of civilian infrastructure reveal a grim reality: Israel is more of a bully and a heartless warlord than the paragon of virtue it claims to be.
The blockade of essential polio vaccinations for Palestinian children and the testing of new bombs by this nation is a blatant disregard for humanitarian principles — yet the world remains silent!
Will the world only act when all the people of Palestine have been wiped off the face of earth?
As the Gaza Strip continues to suffer under one of the harshest blockades in modern history, Israel’s brutal actions have made it crystal clear that the occupation regime has become a global pariah.
Every day, Israel demonstrates its willingness to violate international humanitarian law and ride roughshod over the principles of democracy, human rights and compassion.
The decades-long cruel and calculated policies employed against Palestinians should have made the Palestinian issue the sole focus of this year’s UN General Assembly (UNGA). With the ongoing human rights violations, the international community’s silence remains troubling. Addressing the plight of the Palestinian people deserves urgent global attention and meaningful action to end their suffering.
As an African journalist, as a people who have endured the scars of colonialism, oppression and apartheid, we understand all too well the consequences of unchecked power, systemic racism and international indifference.
The story of Gaza, of Palestinian suffering, is one of the greatest human rights crises of our time, and yet the world remains largely silent. Just as the global community once rallied behind the oppressed in South Africa, it must now rally behind the oppressed in Palestine. The parallels are undeniable.
Gaza has become a cage for the innocent.
The Gaza Strip has become the world’s largest open-air prison — and Israel has decided so.
The people of Gaza have been cut off from the world, trapped in a cycle of malnutrition, conflict and despair.
Since the recent escalation of the conflict, Israel’s military attacks have left over 40 800 Palestinians dead, the vast majority of them women and children. The scale of devastation is unimaginable, with entire neighbourhoods razed to the ground and hospitals turned to rubble burying the already suffering patients.
Access to food, clean water and medical supplies has been severely restricted while Gaza’s health system has collapsed.
Diseases that should have been eradicated, such as polio, are once again threatening the lives of children. The recent case of a 10-month-old child contracting polio in Gaza is a stark reminder of the precarious situation.
Despite the urgency, Israel has blocked the delivery of polio vaccines into Gaza, preventing medical teams from reaching children in need.
This heartless act is a violation of international law, human rights conventions and basic decency.
It is hard to fathom how a nation that claims to champion democracy and human rights can deny children a chance at life — and how the world remains silent!
Let us not lie that the world is condemning Israel; as long as no action is being taken by the international community and Palestinians are dying every day it is an indictment of the world’s conscience and morality.
If WHO, UNICEF and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) have all pleaded for access, but their appeals have fallen on deaf ears, can we say the international community is acting?
Israel remains unmoved, a bully who is a law unto itself.
The denial of polio vaccines to Palestinian children represents a new low in Israel’s ongoing blockade. Polio, a preventable and life-threatening disease, is now a serious threat to the children of Palestine.
For years, Gaza has been under siege. But this is not merely a territorial battle. It is a war against the very essence of life, against the hope and dreams of Palestinian children.
By denying polio vaccines, Israel has crossed yet another red line. The action is not just a direct violation of international humanitarian laws and conventions, including the Geneva Conventions which mandate the protection of civilians, particularly children, during conflicts but an affront to basic human decency and a clearest crime against humanity.
A coordinated vaccination campaign, launched by Gaza’s Health Ministry in partnership with WHO, UNICEF and UNRWA, aimed to vaccinate more than 640 000 children under the age of 10 did not happen as Israel blocked vehicles carrying the vaccines and other medical supplies from entering Gaza, citing no justifiable reasons for halting an operation aimed at saving innocent lives.
Gaza has become a land suffocated under occupation, deprived of its basic right to exist.
This has become not just a war fought with bombs and guns but one waged through policies of deprivation, starvation and psychological warfare.
What makes this blockade even more egregious is its utter disregard for the pleas of the international community.
On August 16 2023, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a seven-day humanitarian ceasefire to allow the vaccination campaign to proceed. This request was supported by UN agencies such as UNRWA, yet Israel refused to cooperate, continuing its brutal military assault on the Gaza Strip and blocking all forms of humanitarian assistance.
Can Israel claim membership to the family of nations with a clear conscience?
The question we must ask ourselves as Africans, as global citizens and as human beings is: How long will we allow such tyranny to continue unchecked?
Israel’s actions mirror those of colonial powers who justified their subjugation of African nations under the guise of ‘civilisation’ and ‘security’.
The apartheid regime in South Africa, too, was built on the foundation of these same arguments. Today, Israel’s policies in Gaza mirror the systematic dehumanisation that black South Africans endured during apartheid — segregation, collective punishment, the denial of basic rights and the suffocation of any resistance.
Israel has positioned itself as a militaristic state that uses brute force and collective punishment as its primary tool of governance.
The silence of the international community, particularly Western nations, in the face of Israel’s atrocities, is deafening.
We must remember that: Israel is because Palestine is not!