IQBAL SULEMAN: Palestinians are also being massacred

Marika Sboros’s article is riddled with hysteria, Islamophobic tropes and disinformation (“Worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust still not enough for some”, December 5). The intent of the piece is clearly to trivialise Palestinian suffering, justify Israeli war crimes, criminalise Palestinian solidarity activism and remove the context from the conflict that exists between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel is the occupier and the Palestinians are the occupied.

Sboros refers to “a prophecy in the Koran of a time when “the earth itself will cry out for Jewish blood”, when “the trees and the stones will say: ‘O Muslim, there’s a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.’” These verses simply do not exist in the Koran. We are not talking here about a misinterpretation of verses — the words don’t appear at all. 

There are popular English translations of the Koran that are available, so verses that are alleged to be in the Koran can be checked. [The quote is apparently from a Ḥadīth, documents some schools of Islamic thought believe to be a record of the words, actions and approvals of the Prophet Muhammad, as transmitted through chains of narrators — Ed.]

Before concluding her piece Sboros writes that this is not a numbers game. We can all agree with her that war is not a game, especially if you are a Gazan. If anything, for the people of Gaza it is a nightmare beyond belief and a genocide of atrocious proportions.

According to Israel, about 1,200 people were killed by Hamas on October 7, 318 of them Israeli soldiers. More than 16,000 Palestinians have been killed so far by the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza, including 7,000 children, and about 1.9-million residents have been forcibly displaced. Most of the people of Gaza today are homeless and starved, spending winter nights on rubble. The numbers speak to a reality of horrors that continues for the people of Gaza.

Though numerous human rights rapporteurs have described what Israel has done to Gaza as genocide, Sboros dismisses that, writing that “the word genocide is a leitmotif running through anti-Israel rhetoric”. The director of the New York office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, left his post because of the genocide in Gaza, saying: “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organisation we serve appears powerless to stop it.” 

He added that “the current wholesale slaughter of Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs ... leaves no room for doubt”. According to Mokhiber, “this is textbook genocide”.

Genocidal intent

Preceding this Israeli leaders verbally expressed their genocidal intent: “I have ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” said Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant. These are the racist and dehumanising words from the person in charge of the Israeli war on Gaza in the aftermath of October 7.

Israeli president Isaac Hertzog said after October 7: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true.” He is clear that there are no civilians in Gaza, that all of Gaza’s 2.4-million people are fair game for Israel. Since October 7 the Israeli military has made no distinction between military combatants and the civilian population and has bombed Gaza and its civilians to ruins. 

May Golan, Israel’s minister for the advancement of the status of women, has said: “All of Gaza’s infrastructure must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza.” Action Aid’s Rihanna Jafara says “thousands of women in Gaza are risking their lives to give birth undergoing caesarean and emergency operations without sterilising, anaesthesia and painkillers”.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli finance minister and leader of the Bayit Yehudi, openly expressed the intent of the Israeli military operation against the Palestinians after the October 7 attacks when he simply said: “It’s time to be cruel.” Ariel Kallner, a member of the Israeli parliament from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party said after October 7: “Right now, one goal. Nakba, a Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948.”

Sboros says among the civilians still held hostage in Gaza by one of the Palestinian factions are Israeli mother Shiri Babas and her “flame-haired” sons, “who have become known as the red-haired babies”. Taking women and children as hostages is against international law — no-one doubts that. But the writer does not mention the more than 7,000 Palestinian children killed by Israel. She is implying that the lives of Palestinian children don’t matter, that they aren’t human because there are no red-haired children in Gaza.

It is that type of discrimination that justifies Israeli infanticide, the killing of a Palestinian child every 10 minutes, and the killing of 7,000 Palestinian children by Israel. No child should be taken hostage and no child should be killed, whether that child has red hair or black hair, whether a child has straight hair or curly hair, whether a child is Palestinian or Israeli.

In Durban, restaurant owner Saar Ben Hamoo posted this on the Facebook page of his falafel business after October 7: “We will drink the blood of your children in Gaza.” One wonders what will satisfy the thirst for revenge. Is the blood of 7,000 babies in Gaza not enough?

Sexual abuse 

The matter of rape and sexual violence is an open issue, with allegations being made by both sides of the conflict. The writer of course fails to mention allegations by Palestinian prisoners of rape at the hands of their Israeli occupiers. Barah Abu Ramouz, a Palestinian journalist, said on his release from an Israeli jail on December 1: “The situation in the prisons is devastating. The prisoners are abused. They are being constantly beaten. They are being sexually assaulted. They are being raped. I am not exaggerating. The prisoners are being raped.” Any such allegation is serious and must be investigated.

Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has said Israel should allow UN teams to investigate the allegations independently. Turk says he has been asking Israeli authorities to “deploy a team, my team, to monitor, document and investigate issues of the horrific attacks on Israelis”. Turk went on to say that the Israeli authorities haven’t responded to his requests for access. It is imperative that Turk and the UN also investigate the many allegations of rape made against Israeli authorities by Palestinians. There is already a popular perception that international law is not universally applied, particularly to the Israeli occupation; that the people of Palestine have had virtually all of their human rights violated without the Israeli violators being held to account.

Sboros takes issue with the Daily Maverick, the SA government and internationally reputed human rights organisations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Health Organisation have all been calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the cessation of hostilities and the release of hostages. These organisations are calling for the universal application of international law. This is not a call just from human rights organisations but from millions of people the world over, including Jews and Muslims with shared universal values of peace, justice, love and truth.

Palestinian solidarity activists in SA, who the writer implies are supporters of terrorism, are engaged in civil disobedience and nonviolent activism. Some SA Zionist supporters of Israel have enlisted with the Israeli Defence Forces, which is committing war crimes in Gaza.

UN secretary-general António Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the UN charter: “Facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, I urge the counsel to help avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared.” One is left to wonder in bewilderment what beats in the hearts of those who oppose a permanent ceasefire.

In the words of Bob Dylan: “How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?; How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died”

• Suleman, a social justice lawyer, is a former head of the Lawyers for Human Rights law clinic in Pretoria.