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South African hypocrisy over Gaza
by Scott Gilbreath ~ January 12th, 2009
South African blogger Justin Hartman looks at his country’s leaders condemning Israel for attacking Gaza and sees hypocrisy.
I am extremely upset with the ANC and SACP who have outright condemned the attacks by Israel. They’ve setup meetings with Israeli ministers to try and get them to stop and just yesterday former Congress of South African Trade Unions president and Congress of the People National Executive Committee member, Willy Madisha, has called on the government to condemn Israel over the ongoing war in Palestine.
The SABC reports that:
Madisha says Israel has for decades been killing thousands of Palestinians in a war that has been condemned internationally. He says hundreds of people are being killed, children are being stopped from going to school and people have no food at all.
“This is a major problem and we are calling the government of South Africa to rise and say to Israel that this is wrong and that it has got to be stopped. South Africa should echo other countries’ sentiments so that the Israeli onslaught on Gaza should cease,” Madisha said.
Now the only reason all of this upsets me is because our leaders are quick to jump on this political band-wagon while they’ve done absolutely nothing about the bigger problem just outside our borders – Zimbabwe. Why they’ve chosen to pick sides in this conflict and done nothing about the epidemic in Zimbabwe baffles me.
Maybe Zimbabwe is too close to home: South Africa might face actual repercussions if it were to denounce a neighbour. It’s much safer to criticise a country thousands of miles away.
h/t: Global Voices
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January 14th, 2009 at 09:21 AM
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