A bill has been submitted to the United States congress calling for a full review of the country’s bilateral relationship with South Africa following the International Court of Justice ruling that found it plausible that Israel has committed acts of genocide against Gaza.
A large billboard has gone up in Johannesburg, South Africa – calling Israel out for what has been called by many its genocide, occupation and ethnic cleansing. South Africa has long been a stronghold of Palestinian solidarity within the African continent. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank resonates deeply with South Africans, who see parallels between Israeli military law and apartheid in South Africa. Many South African activists have participated in delegations to Palestinian territories and continue to raise their voices. From Nelson Mandela to Desmond Tutu to Julius Malema to Mandla Mandela – some of South Africa’s most prominent and admired figures have spoken out consistently against Zionism and Israeli settler-colonialism in Gaza and the West Bank.
In December 1982, following Israel’s devastating invasion of Lebanon six months earlier, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution A/RES/37/43 concerning the ‘[i]mportance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination’. It endorsed, without qualification, ‘the inalienable right’ of the Palestinian people to ‘self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference’, and reaffirmed the legitimacy of their struggle for those rights ‘by all available means, including armed struggle’. It also strongly condemned Israel’s ‘expansionist activities in the Middle East’ and ‘continual bombing of Palestinian civilians’, both said to ‘constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of the self-determination and independence of the Palestinian people’. In the four decades since then, Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people and its colonisation of their land has not ceased. Up to the present moment, all over historical Palestine, from the Gaza Strip to Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians are still under that same occupation, subject to suffocating control over virtually every aspect of their lives – and the sadistic, unaccountable violence of the Zionist state.
For the second time this year, large numbers of armed Israeli settlers have rampaged through Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank terrorizing Palestinians in their homes.
In this new essay, John Pilger recalls the ‘electric’ opposition of writers and journalists to the coming war in the 1930s and investigates why today there is ‘a silence filled by a consensus of propaganda’ as the two greatest powers draw closer to conflict.
A few months later, I received a letter indefinitely suspending my membership. My request for the reasons for my suspension and an appeal has gone completely ignored. So much for the values of “stakeholder capitalism” and “cooperation in a fragmented world” that WEF publicly espouses. More like racism, abuse of power, and lack of transparency. I have learned firsthand that some YGLs are informants leaking private communications directly to the WEF’s leadership. Feels more like an authoritarian regime that spies on its constituency and loathes free speech than a global forum. As for my former YGLs, only a handful of true leaders actually protested my suspension. The silence of the remaining supposed “young global leaders” was deafening, but in retrospect, I realize that their silence is expressive of the exact type of Machiavellian leadership that the WEF seeks to foster.
What do you do when violent conflict erupts, innocent people get killed, and human rights are being violated? I believe any person with a heart and a moral compass would feel compelled to condemn the aggressors. Not doing so feels wrong on a moral level, and could raise the risk of further escalation. Are we misguided then, as an international institution, to not speak out unequivocally when conflicts emerge, and innocent people suffer? Are we “hiding” behind our impartiality?
Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups likely perpetrated war crimes during Tel Aviv’s pre-emptive offensive targeting Islamic Jihad in Gaza during August, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
While the spirit of Thomas Sankara may be behind the recent coup in Burkina Faso, his vision remains an inspiration for everyone, everywhere, committed to anti-imperialism and third world autonomy.
There is a battle brewing in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. Thousands of Israeli occupation forces will be deployed to face a growing resistance force. The ‘natives are restless’ and the Lions’ Den has mobilized to fight for their freedom and human rights.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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