Because Israel is an occupying nation, Israeli violence and Palestinian resistance should not be portrayed as equivalent
GAZA
These Gaza days
Dear Bibi You slaughter my people at your gate like dogs You deny their civility and call them terrorists You claim they are combatants on your blogs You hold up your soldiers as heroes for killing innocents You parade around like you’re not wholly corrupt You shout the odds on Iran like a expert pundit […]
Reflections on Gaza: How should my people be?
By Pedro Tabensky As the son of a Holocaust survivor and a refugee of mid-20th century turmoil, knowledge of the precariousness of existence has always been part of the fabric of my life, and has motivated me permanently to ask: How should I be in a way that pays respect to the suffering of my […]
#Bringbackourgirls, Lwandle, Gaza and detaching from this world
It started with the #Bringbackourgirls campaign. I hadn’t followed the story closely, but when I read articles to make sense of what had happened, I couldn’t make sense of it. I tried to imagine people coming into my school and taking away the students and there being no sense of security or outcry. I tried […]
David Saks and the naturalness of white contempt
In Ubuntu: Curating the Archive (edited by Leonhard Praeg and Siphokazi Magadla), Ama Biney notes in the chapter “The Historical Discourse on Humanism: Interrogating the Paradoxes” that Aimé Cesaire notably made the case that Hitler’s crime was mainly that “he applied to Europe colonialist procedures, which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs […]
‘Hitler got it right’ goes multiracial
A posting by Rene Smit, an obscure ANC party worker in the Western Cape, quickly went viral when it emerged that it sang the praises of Adolf Hitler for killing off the Jews and intimated that had been retro-actively justified by the behaviour to date of those Jews who survived. The post featured a picture […]
Aid donors perpetuate Palestinian hate
Countries and aid agencies offering aid and assistance to Gaza have blood on their hands. While food and other humanitarian assistance has been pouring into Gaza, the democratically elected ruling party Hamas, has been funneling funds and huge resources into manufacturing and acquiring rockets. Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, have carefully cultivated an image of […]
The ICC: Justice denied to Gaza victims
There was a sense of hope across the world in 1998 when 120 countries signed a treaty that would establish an international court. This court would, among others, follow noble principles to protect citizens from violence and abuse by their own governments, rebels or even foreign nations. The International Criminal Court which was to be […]