US silence fuels Gaza's destruction

THE United States has correctly gained an international reputation as a dishonest peace broker. There is no need to look beyond Gaza, the epicentre of the failure of global diplomacy.

Every credible institution in the world has described the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza since October 2023. It is the human tragedy never seen in both scope and history. Within a period of only two years, the Gaza Strip, home to some 2 million Palestinians, lies in total ruins.

Officially, an estimated 65 000 Palestinians have been killed. Unofficial estimates put the death toll at more the 100 000. Additionally, scores of Palestinians remain trapped in heaps of rubble from the ruins. On social media visuals and on the Arabic international news channel Al Jazeera, the destruction of Gaza is captured instantaneously, thanks to technology.

Twelve times the UN Security Council (UNSC) has attempted to rein in Israel by passing legally binding resolutions to halt its extermination of the Palestinian people, and 12 times Washington has vetoed the resolutions.

This has given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouragement to “finish the job”, as he put it.

It is impossible to lament the demise of the Palestinians without pointing out its enablers — the US, European Union and the international community, with very few exceptions, notably South Africa.

South Africa is the notable country to dare the US and Western hegemony — the oxygen behind Israel’s brutality towards the illegally occupied territories of Palestine and its annihilated men, women and children — by hauling the untouchable Jewish state before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In return, Pretoria has faced the wrath of Washington, standing accused of “genocide” against the white minority Afrikaner community. The trumped-up charges have failed to stick, but the attack on South Africa has been relentless.

They include the US opting to send Vice President JD Vance to the G20 gathering of the heads of state, instead of sending President Donald Trump. The US is scheduled to take over the G20 presidency later this year in South Africa, hence the imperative to attend.

Methinks had it not been the pending handing over of the G20 baton from Pretoria to Washington, a full boycott of the G20 in South Africa would have been on the cards.

The US’s blind support of Israel in international and regional affairs leaves too much to be desired. It makes a mockery of international law, the UN system, as well as the international governance framework.

Additionally, it removes the aura of the global leader that the US so steadfastly maintains. The penchant to sidestep the UN and impose punishment on ideological adversaries has set the US apart from the diplomatic equilibrium of the rest of the nations of the world.

The so-called rules-based world order that the US and its G7 backers oftentimes cite as a template for international relations is nothing but a playbook of the powerful against the weak.

The silence of the international community in the light of the Gaza genocide, precipitated by deep fear of antagonising the US, has thrown into total disarray the conviviality of the UN Charter.

That the US, aided by the sheepish complicity of the West, has turned into a brutal law unto itself. There is no need to argue. One only needs to look at Gaza today, and the accompanying silence or crocodile tears of the hypocrites in the international community.

It is impossible to fathom a world order that would be premised on the principles of equality, human rights and the rule of law. Quite clearly, the US and its backers, or followers, have made it categorically clear that there are rules for the powerful and rules for the weak in Gaza and the Global South.

It is the reality of our times. It is what it is. And there is punishment for speaking out. It is what it is. Period.

* Abbey Makoe is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Global South Media Network (gsmn.co.za). The views expressed are personal.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, IOL, or Independent Media.

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