Cleansing of Gaza started long before October 7

I am aghast at Alexander Parker’s claim, as Business Day’s editor in chief, that “commentators, politicians and entire governments — including ours — have picked their side in the Middle East long before Hamas’s attack” on October 7, and “they have absolutely no foundation in principle” (“Horror in Israel and Gaza shows the need for edited spaces”, November 13).  

On the contrary, it has been glaringly obvious that Israel is an apartheid state which, long before October 7, embarked on the deliberate ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, with the collusion of US President Joe Biden, is now engaged in the genocide of the 2.3-million residents of Gaza. 

Millions of people around the world, including about 200,000 Capetonians, have expressed their revulsion. With the world now hovering on the brink of global war, even the New York Times is backtracking from its previous blinkered support for Israel.

The so-called two-state solution since the 1993 Oslo Accords (and earlier to the 1947 partition vote at the UN General Assembly) is an apartheid “dead duck”.  The alternative is a one-state democratic and secular state comprising Muslims, Jews, Christians and those of no faith.  

Terry Crawford-Browne
Palestine Solidarity Campaign

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