Two extraordinary events are happening in the world we live in right now. The first is that genocide is being committed against a people right before our eyes. The second is an extraordinary denial of that very same thing; that what we all see happening is not what it is and therefore should simply continue. The most horrific crime against humanity of the age is being perpetrated—almost on live television—simultaneously alongside the Great Denial of it.
If the first is a failure of politics, the second is a failure of moral leadership in the world. For, we are all witnesses to this genocide, to this crime against humanity. We all can see and read and hear Palestinian men, women and children being mauled to death for no reason other than that they are Palestinians living in Gaza. We can see the thousands and thousands of missiles thrown at them. We can see the thousands of babies and young men and women being injured from those strikes. And we can see the near-total destruction of their homes, schools, hospitals, shops and streets. We know too of the siege on their city and of the blockade of all aid in food, water and medical supplies.
And yet. We are told not to believe what we witness with our own very eyes. The length to which Western nations, institutions and media have gone to both paradoxically deny and yet justify Israel’s killing of Palestinian women and children over the past 115 days is most extraordinary.
This Great Denial begins with the name “Israel-Hamas War”. But how is this a war? If war is a violent conflict between two or more groups of active combatants, then this is no war at all. This is simply Israel killing everyone and destroying everything in sight. No one denies that Hamas attacked and killed over 1200 Israelis, including women and children. Nor does anyone deny too that Hamas be held accountable for their actions.
But it is false equivalence—on two counts—to call what we witness daily since October 7th “Israel-Hamas War” because the more than 25,000 Palestinians killed, majority of them women and children, the 63,000 injured, and 1.3 million displaced in Gaza are not Hamas members. Nor are they “collateral damage either”. They are simply defenseless Palestinians being killed in their homes, streets, or in their make-shift shelters in hospitals, schools and refugee camps, almost just for the fun of it.
If this is any “war” at all, then it is a coward’s war because both Israel and its Western backers know that Hamas members live in tunnels that they cannot reach, so they kill civilian Gazans in retaliation instead. If this is any war at all, then it is, as Al-Jazeera appropriately calls it, Israel’s “War on Gaza”, period. We know that more 25,000 Gazans have been killed, but how many actual Hamas fighters and commanders have they killed?
And then, there is a denial of the deaths; that those who have been killed simply did not exist, not even as mere numbers. US President Biden, no less, was the first person outside of Israel to say, without any evidence, that the death toll in Gaza was being inflated by Palestinian authorities. In reply, the Palestinians released the names and personal details of every single one of the dead. Yet, western government officials and media continue to deny the numbers, perhaps to make it easier for themselves to live with.
By calling it “Israel-Hamas war” implies that all Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas or are as guilty as Hamas, a false but effective rhetorical device to justify the genocidal intent behind the indiscriminate missile strikes against a whole people. It is a genocide framed as a war in which Israel is acting, not as an aggressor, but in “self-defense” to make the indiscriminate killings tolerable to the rest of the world and to numb us all into inaction.
This Great Denial takes a thousand more different forms: vetoes against United Nations resolutions on Gaza, ceaseless calls for the heads of UN bodies who dare say things are as they see them, forced resignations of university presidents for merely acknowledging the humanity of Palestinians, clamping down on western citizens protesting against it, western media simply refusing to report what they see and then reporting what they did not see. And lots more.
But amidst all these instances of moral bankruptcy, South Africa stepped up and took the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Where Europe, the United States, China and all the world’s superpowers failed to provide moral leadership to the world, the very thing they claim is their job to do, South Africa stood up to be counted, and counted they have been.
The South Africans did three things. First, they told the world that this is unambiguously a genocide; that this is worse than the apartheid they lived through but have not forgotten. Second, they systematically marshalled every single bit of evidence for their case. They collected the numbers of the dead and injured, the numbers of the bombs and missile strikes at Gaza, the homes, schools and hospitals destroyed, the genocidal comments of Israeli leaders giving the orders, and a lot more. They then sent the very best of their lawyers—black and white alike—to the Hague to argue their case.
Rather than pursue a hopeless case of genocide that could take years to determine, if at all, the South African lawyers decided to make three simple requests: that the ICJ should hear the case because it has the jurisdiction and the mandate to do so; that given the severity of the destruction of lives and the conditions of life in Gaza, there is a plausible risk of genocide being committed; and finally, that the risk of genocide must be averted by an immediate ceasefire in accordance with international rule of law.
The court granted South Africa’s first and second requests directly, and the third, indirectly. It heard the case, and then agreed, in its own words, that “the evidence is sufficient to conclude” that there is at least a risk of genocide in Gaza, and then ordered Israel to take measures to prevent it. The court stopped short of calling for a ceasefire, but were Israel to comply with them, the measures would in effect result in a ceasefire.
It is difficult to quantify the significance of what South Africa has achieved for itself, for Africa and for the world, not to mention for Gaza and Palestine. For me, South Africa’s effort is the bloodiest blow ever on the nose of Western power, which claims to be the only moral force in the world, but which, repeatedly fails to live to its own claims where and when it matters the most. South Africa can bask in its glory for standing up to the truth and for providing moral leadership where European and American leaders simply watch on or provide active support for a genocide unfolding right before our eyes.
As for Israel itself, its moral claim has been lost forever by the irony that on the eve of the 79th anniversary of the holocaust, it stands accused of the same thing in the highest court in the world. And for us here in Nigeria, South Africa’s achievement on the world stage is a reminder of how far low we have fallen as a country and as a people. Nowhere else outside of Israel is the carnage in Gaza being cheered and celebrated than here in Nigeria, a shameful statement about what we have become in this country. But even that would not diminish South Africa’s moment of glory. All hail South Africa.
•Written by Suleiman A. Suleiman
