NUMSA demands that Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be arrested for genocide and war crimes against Palestinians
19 November 2023
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) continues to be shocked by the barbaric genocidal attacks unleashed by the Zionist state of Israel on Palestinians in Gaza. What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a war – it is Zionist Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their historic lands, and genocide. Netanyahu and his cabinet of war criminals have taken a conscious decision to exterminate Palestinian people, and finalize the theft of their lands, through these extremely violent processes.
Since October the 7th, 2023, Israel has rolled out a bloody bombing campaign, which so far has resulted in the mass murder of more than 12 000 Palestinians in Gaza, and 80% of these are women and children. According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped 25 000 tons of explosives, which is the equivalent of two nuclear bombs onto an area which is half the size of the City of Tshwane.
This high death toll, in just over a month, does not include the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that the Zionist state of Israel has murdered for more than 7 decades before that, and the millions of Palestinians who were displaced from their land, since its illegal colonial occupation of Gaza in 1948. NUMSA condemns the racist, Zionist Apartheid state of Israel for the heinous crimes they have committed for more than 70 years, against the people of Palestine.
One need only to look at the language used by Israeli leaders to know what their true murderous intentions are. Netanyahu called Palestinians ‘human animals’ and members of his cabinet, such as the minister of agriculture, Avi Dichter gleefully described their murderous campaign as a ‘second Nakba’. (The Nakba was the violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, and the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations, which occurred in 1948 through the creation of the new Israeli State).
Israel has rejected the ceasefire and the possibility of a peaceful resolution because their goal is to seize even more Palestinian land, and it uses the false claim that it is ‘defending itself’. Israel has described Palestinians as ‘human animals’ because they want to be able to continue to dehumanize them and deny them their human rights. Israel has openly spoken about relocating Palestinians to Egypt, and if that fails, their hope is to exterminate as many of them as possible during this bombing campaign.
For decades, Palestinians have been languishing in the biggest open-air prison in Gaza, and Israel has been systematically jailing children for long periods without trial. Save the Children released a report in July this year which states that Israel is responsible for jailing between 500 and 1000 children a year, and 86% of them have been tortured at the hands of the brutal Israeli security forces.
Amnesty International described Israel’s’ occupation of Palestine as Apartheid because it is a state sanctioned form of racist tyranny towards Palestinians, that resembles the same kind of violent discrimination that existed in South Africa under the leadership of the racist National Party.
This is why NUMSA supports the calls made by the Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, Naledi Pandor, that Netanyahu must be charged with war crimes. The South African government referred Israel to the International Criminal Court for it to be investigated for war crimes. They have issued a demarche to the Israeli ambassador, Eliav Belotserkovsky and they have recalled South African diplomats from Tel Aviv.
These are all positive steps, and we are calling for the South African government to go even further, by campaigning for the total isolation of Apartheid Israel. The South African government must support the motion of the EFF for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. It must also call for economic sanctions against Israel because of its mass murder of innocent civilians and the genocide of Palestinians by the Zionist state of Israel.
We reject the notion that condemning Apartheid Israel for its treatment of Palestinian people is anti-Semitic. NUMSA rejects all forms of discrimination and we reject anti-Semitism entirely. The situation in Palestine is caused by Zionists and they do not represent Jewish people or the Jewish faith. A group of Jewish writers, artists and activists, wrote an open letter, which was published in the online publication, The Wire, denounced the idea that criticizing Zionist Israel is an expression of anti-Semitism. The letter states that they “are horrified to see the fight against antisemitism weaponised as a pretext for war crimes with stated genocidal intent.” They go on to say,
“It is precisely because of the painful history of antisemitism and lessons of Jewish texts that we advocate for the dignity and sovereignty of the Palestinian people. We refuse the false choice between Jewish safety and Palestinian freedom; between Jewish identity and ending the oppression of Palestinians. In fact, we believe the rights of Jews and Palestinians go hand-in-hand. The safety of each people depends on the others’. We are certainly not the first to say so, and we admire those who have modelled this line of thinking in the wake of so much violence.”
There are millions of progressive Jews in different parts of the world who have condemned Israel and who denounce it for its oppression of Palestine, therefore, we should not allow ourselves to be misled by right-wing agents of darkness, who seek to justify the tyranny of colonial, racist Zionist Israel against Palestinians. The problem is Israel’s violent colonial occupation of Palestine and Zionists: the world must condemn both and co-sign them to the dustbin of history!
NUMSA has noted that South Africa’s biggest opposition party, the DA, is firmly on the side of the oppressive Apartheid Israeli state. Blacks and Africans can no longer delude themselves about the possibilities of genuine freedom and democracy under a DA-led government. We can see now that if we were ever unfortunate enough to be led by the DA in this country, then racism and Apartheid right-wing ideology would dominate. South African foreign policy under the DA would be to continue to support the genocide in Gaza.
Whilst at the same time, domestic policy would be a relentless attack on the Black and African working class and their gains. A classic example of this is the war that the incompetent DA-led government in Tshwane launched against municipal workers who are organised by SAMWU, by deliberately taking away their hard earned wage increases. In the City of Cape Town, the Black and African working class is suffering in informal settlements with little to no services, whilst the areas where white people live, are pristine.
The DA is using all the resources to serve the wealthy white minority, and make sure that they are safe and secure in their quiet well-kept suburbs, at the expense of the Black and African working class majority. We would be a country where the national minimum wage would cease to exist and labour laws and protection of workers would be done away with, for the benefit of greedy capitalist bosses.
The African continent as a whole must stand in solidarity with Palestine because we can relate to their suffering. We know what it is like to be enslaved, colonised, stripped of dignity, and to be denied of our humanity, simply on the basis of race. We are still victims of the daily violence of racist and colonial capitalism and its capacity to manufacture human suffering.
What is to be done?
1. NUMSA is demanding an immediate ceasefire and for humanitarian aid to be urgently sent into Gaza.
2. For the crime of genocide, Israel must be isolated and treated like the pariah state that it is. Its embassy must be closed and its diplomats and the ambassador must be expelled and sanctions must be imposed. (The National Assembly will vote on this on Tuesday) and we hope the ANC will support the EFF motion.
3. We also demand that Israel must return every square inch of land that it stole from Palestine. We demand a single, unified, free and autonomous state of Palestine.
NUMSA is calling on all its regions to intensify its solidarity campaigns. At the same time, the union has been doing a lot of educational and awareness campaigns on Palestine through webinars, and political education training which so far, has taken place in several NUMSA regions. The goal of this work is to mobilize NUMSA members to continue to defend it and to mobilize members to participate in rolling mass action on this issue.
It must be continuous work, because the day will come when the media will stop focusing on Palestine, but we must continue to shed light on their plight. We must not stop campaigning until Palestine has achieved full political freedom and has absolute sovereignty over all its territories at all times. Fighting against colonialism and defending those who are defenceless is our revolutionary duty as a Marxist-Leninist inspired trade union.
Aluta continua!
The struggle continues!
Issued by Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary, 20 November 2023
