By Nurah Tape – The Palestine Chronicle  

“It is now a program of ethnic cleansing, of collective punishment, of targeting Palestinians as a people.”

South Africa’s Minister of International Relations, Ronald Lamola, has said that South Africa’s case of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) “was for the cause of human rights,” adding that “it can’t be anti-Semitism to raise issues of violation of human rights against the Zionist state of Israel.”

Lamola spoke at the launch of the SA Chapter of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) in Pretoria, South Africa, on Thursday, which aims to hold Israel accountable for “its crimes against the Palestinian people” and “to work to dismantle Israeli apartheid.”

“I see this platform as a platform that is going to work to re-galvanize the people of the world so that they have a global platform of the anti-apartheid (movement) particularly against the state of Israel,” Lamola said, adding that the South African government fully supported the initiative.

“We know the background and the struggle against apartheid of South Africa is intertwined with the struggle of the Palestinian people,” he stated, pointing out that 1948 was the year that South Africa’s National Party instituted the apartheid state.

“Incidentally it was the same year that Israelis implemented their plan to rob and dispossess the Palestinians of their land,” Lamola continued.

Institutionalized Racism

Just as South Africa’s “evil system of fascism” was a “doctrine of institutionalized racism that privileged the minority white population at the expense of the indigenous population, he said, so too has Israel “turned Palestinians into second-class citizens in their own land for the privilege and security of the Zionists.”

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Lamola explained that the start of the anti-apartheid movement was “a crucial turning point for the global movement to mobilize and stand together to build a collective conscience of the global population to isolate the state of Israel.”

Describing Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the events of October 7, 2023, as “disproportionate,” Lamola said Israel “has gone beyond what is justifiable under international law.”

‘Ethnic Cleansing’

“It is now a program of ethnic cleansing, of collective punishment, of targeting Palestinians as a people, and it is against this background that we launched our genocide case in the International Court of Justice because this genocide, unlike any other genocide that happened before, is happening in full glee of the international community. You can see it as it happens in real time because of the advent of technology.”

Minister of International Relations and Cooperation (@DIRCO_ZA) Ronald Lamola (@RonaldLamola) says genocide itself may be a mild word to describe what Israel is truly doing in Gaza #AAM pic.twitter.com/vLnEDjbrqS

— Radio Islam (@radioislam) November 28, 2024

“It is even reported by the people committing it,” he added, “they tell us, they show us.”

Lamola said he sometimes feels that the term “genocide” might need more explanation, as it is not just “the murder and massacre of people,” it is “the destruction of everything, animals, agriculture, anything you can think about.”

“So it is to wipe out from the face of the Earth of anything that has got a Palestinian resemblance. This is really a genocide at a massive scale of unimaginable proportion happening in the full glee of all of us,” the minister added.

The anti-apartheid movement will “shine a spotlight” and help the international community, said Lamola.

‘Israel Thrives on Propaganda’

Referring to the genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, Lamola said he believed that “once we were able to show the court” the evidence of genocide taking place,  “it was able to show to the world the level, the degree of the murderous massacre that was happening in proper chronological order because the state of Israel thrives on propaganda.”

“That court case opened the eyes of people of the world that indeed there is plausible, or there is a genocide happening,” said the minister, “so that’s why many people across the globe started to see the matter differently.”

https://t.co/bO9KozLAEb #AntiApartheidMovement #StopIsraeliGenocide

— South African Jews for a Free Palestine (@SAJFP_) November 29, 2024

Lamola said the anti-apartheid movement should not “undermine this work that you are doing because it will help to conscientize, to show the different side of the conflict but also the different side of the people’s involvement and solidarity with the people of Palestine.”

He emphasized that the movement will “indicate that they are not alone but it will also be able to respond to the amount of  propaganda that is out there and a narrative that any fight against the state of Israel is anti-Semitism.”

“It’s a human rights battle that all of us have to stand on,” said Lamola.

‘Expel Israel from UN’

Other speakers at the launch of the anti-apartheid movement included Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, who reiterated his call “for the war criminal and genocidal apartheid Israeli state to be suspended for the United Nations, just as apartheid South Africa was suspended for much lesser brutal crimes on 12 November 1974.”

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“In fact, given its brutal war crimes, ongoing genocide and systematic ethnic cleansing, I call for apartheid Israel to be completely expelled from the United Nations and its membership revoked until a permanent ceasefire is reached and justice prevails,” he added.

According to the chair of the AAM SA Chapter chair, Reverend Frank Chikane, the South African chapter of the anti-apartheid movement will have specialized focus groups to deal with the programme of action which includes an arms embargo, disinvestment and boycotts.

Johannesburg Declaration

In May, South Africa hosted the Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine at which delegates declared that they “will be unrelenting” in their mobilization to pressure governments to sanction Israel which has subjected the Palestinian people to 76 years of ongoing genocide, colonialism and apartheid.

Roadmap to Solidarity – Johannesburg Declaration Vows to Dismantle Israel’s Settler-Colonialism

“The war prosecuted for decades by Israel and its genocidal enablers is not only against the Palestinian people, it is against humanity as a whole,” the Johannesburg Declaration on Israel’s Settler-Colonialism, Apartheid and Genocide, issued at the conclusion of the conference in Johannesburg, stated. “But the Palestinians and the people of the world have not been silent.”

The Declaration said these voices have been amplified in multilateral institutions, in international courts, by those of our political leaders and governments with conscience.

It noted “The relentless efforts of the Government of South Africa at the International Court of Justice stand out in this regard. These efforts must include the prosecution of all Israeli war criminals. We will be unrelenting in our mobilization to pressure governments to sanction Israel.”

(The Palestine Chronicle)