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Hamas’ actions are inexcusable and set back the Palestinian struggle, writes Palesa Morudu Rosenberg.
South Africans have a natural affinity for those whose reality echoes our own history. Many of us identify deeply with the aspirations of the Palestinian people to determine their future, to live peacefully in their own land, to raise their children, and to enjoy life without the Israeli boot on their necks. But, in the name of solidarity, we should not succumb to the siren song that equates unspeakable atrocities with “resistance”.
Last Saturday in southern Israel, Hamas carried out a pogrom. They arrived carrying Kalashnikovs and grenades in their Toyota pick-up trucks and paragliders, burst into homes and murdered men, women and children as they slept. They mowed down civilians in the streets. They killed hundreds of young people at a music festival. After the carnage, at least 1 300 Israelis lay dead and 3 300 others were wounded. Hamas kidnapped some 150 people and paraded their bounty in the streets of Gaza.
Hamas is an organisation with Jew-hatred written into its DNA, despite occasional attempts to present a different picture to the world for PR. The mass murder of Israeli Jews on 7 October will bolster its claim, for those who are receptive to the message, that it leads the Palestinian resistance. In truth, such actions set back the Palestinian cause.
READ | Ebrahim Harvey: The endless war – Why peace between Israel and Hamas remains elusive
Leaders of Hamas claim that the dead women and children were army combatants and, therefore, legitimate targets. That this is a brazen lie is no revelation. But then again, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
Gaza is one of the world’s most densely populated areas, with 2.3 million people crammed inside a 365 square kilometre land mass. Until 1967, it was under Egypt’s control. Israel took over following the Six-Day War but, ultimately, withdrew from Gaza in 2005, ceding control to the ineffectual Palestinian Authority.
In 2007, Hamas won an election and Israel responded with a brutal blockade, turning Gaza into what is often called an “open-air prison”. It looks an awful lot like a South African Bantustan – places that were similarly characterised by poverty and misery, and usually led by ruthless political actors.
The living conditions in Gaza are made worse by an armed neighbour that starves, assassinates, imprisons and humiliates Palestinians – as it has done for decades. Not a few Arab and Israeli commentators have observed that there is no making “peace” with people forced to live in such conditions.
Israel hits back
In response to the Hamas assault, the Netanyahu government unleashed large-scale bombings and a siege of Gaza, subjecting 2.3 million people to an unspeakable act of collective punishment by cutting off water, food and electricity. Washington stands emphatically with Israel and has offered not a word of solidarity with Palestinians. It is dehumanisation all around, and it is going to get worse.
Around the world, many are permanently online, trying to make sense of this unfolding misery. Canadian writer Naomi Klein argues that we should “side with the child over the gun every single time, no matter whose gun and no matter whose child”. It is a necessary starting point that centres the humanity of all in this conflict. It is sadly not a starting point for the political and military bosses in Tel Aviv, Gaza, Washington, Tehran or Damascus.
Do Hamas’ actions deserve to be celebrated or even understood as “the resistance” to 75 years of subjugation? The answer must be a firm “no.” There can be no equivocation: The mass murder of civilians is a crime against humanity, no matter who pulls the trigger. If we don’t condemn such atrocities, it will become open season on Jews anywhere in the world. It is no coincidence that we saw chants of “gas the Jews” in Sydney and the vandalisation of kosher restaurants in London over the past week.
History tells us where all this leads for the Jews; or for the Tutsis in 1994; or the Armenians in World War I; or the Hereros in the opening years of the 20th century.
READ | Mpumelelo Mkhabela: Bringing an apartheid lens to the brutal Israel-Gaza war
In South Africa, we understood that a failure to resolve deep and longstanding political divisions would only lead to more death and suffering. It was not a mistake for the ANC to characterise our struggle for liberation as a campaign to build a non-racial democratic state for all who live in South Africa. It never advocated for “one settler, one bullet”, even at the height of the campaign “to make South Africa ungovernable”.
Indiscriminate mass attacks on civilians based solely on the characterisation that they were “settlers” were never part of ANC strategy or tactics. And the advocates of “one settler, one bullet” have been relegated to a historical footnote. Today we may be a battered nation, and we may shout at each other, but we remain ever true to our view that ours is a nation that belongs to all who live in it.
It is this experience that the South African government ought to bring to the table with the Palestinians. ANC leaders in their designer clothes can adopt the Hamas chant of “From the River to The Sea” (a dog whistle for the extermination of Israeli Jews) all they want. But cheap sloganeering on TikTok or X is not the same as the real work of making history.
Genuine solidarity demands that we ask real questions about leadership and who will truly represent the aspirations of the Palestinian people. This question is yet to be settled, even in the occupied territories. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority hardly preside over open, democratic societies. Try expressing a different point of view there, or being gay or lesbian, and see what happens.
Meanwhile, the Israelis have a task to rid themselves of a brutal right-wing government that has made it impossible for them to even glimpse a peaceful future.
Beyond the current bloodshed, we can only hope that both Israelis and Palestinians will find a way to rid themselves of their respective misleaderships in Tel Aviv, Gaza and Ramallah. That seems key to moving forward to a just and lasting peace. Such an effort will take a long time – and it will take longer in the aftermath of the Hamas pogrom.
In the meantime, South Africa should avoid the temptation to disregard anyone’s humanity.
– Palesa Morudu Rosenberg is a South African writer based in Washington DC.
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