In a recent op-ed in Business Day, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, the highly respected chair of Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property Trust, wrote to decry Israel’s decision to ban UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) from the country, but her entire article only served to underline the biggest hurdle we face as a global community in finding solutions to the Middle Eastern conflict: the lack of moral clarity and the inability to remain objective.
These two things, moral clarity and objectivity, are essential to address the issues that impacts both the Israeli and Gazan populations, and without them, we only allow bad faith players to prolong the suffering of those being held hostage inside Gaza, and the innocent affected by the war.
When Dr Ramphele, therefore, omits several crucial issues and facts in her discussion of Israel’s decision to ban UNRWA, her words cannot go unchallenged – even if, or precisely because, she is a woman I greatly respect.
The decision to ban UNRWA was passed with an overwhelming majority in the Knesset, both by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition and the opposition. Certainly the Israeli government constantly on the back foot in the PR war, would not take such a decision lighly, given the significant fall out of this drastic decision. Israel delivered hard evidence to the United Nations outlining UNRWA’s multiple wrongdoings – both on October 7th and beyond it – but Dr Ramphele mentions none of them.
UNRWA, like any other institution, should be held accountable for its problems, and the international community must assist in removing all the hurdles that stand in the way of providing much needed aid in this region with its many complexities. The truth is that aid agencies that remain in conflicts for too long become entangled in the politics of the environment. We are human, and our ability to remain neutral in a conflict is severely tested when confronted with the real issues on the ground.
For an organization like UNRWA that has been embedded in the Palestinian territories for decades and Hamas-run Gaza for nearly 20 years, we have to ask how they were able to resist infiltration by toxic ideologies? What are the processes that the organisation employed to protect its own mandate, and given the investments of the international community, what accountability measures are in place to ensure that in conflict zones, they do not become part of the problem?
The truth is that not only could UNRWA not answer these questions to anyone’s satisfaction, the very nature of an aid agency with an indefinite mandate is that they tend to have little interest in actually solving problems, which is something that UNRWA has unfortunately proven repeatedly.
We don’t just need to look at Israel’s decision to ban UNRWA to understand how badly it failed its mandate. Earlier in the year, after evidence was submitted to the UN by the non-profit, watchdog organization, UN Watch, that at least seven UNRWA members actively joined in on the October 7th massacre in Israel and that thousands of members either had close ties to Hamas or were Hamas operatives themselves, multiple countries pulled their funding for UNRWA, even if only temporarily. This included the United States, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, multiple countries across continental Europe and the European Union itself.
The evidence against UNWRA is damning, but did Dr Ramphele ever actually look or listen to the case that Israel and UN Watch brought against the organisation?
Why Balance and Impartiality Are So Critical
Sadly, throughout her article, Dr Ramphele brings into question her own impartiality and biases with her one-sided view of the conflict, charged phrases like “occupying force” and little historical context of one of the most complicated conflicts in the world. As we saw in Amsterdam last week, such one-sided narratives can have disastrous repercussions, not just in the Middle East itself, but in instigating violent attacks against Jews all over the world.
It’s especially tragic that the South African government has taken such a one-sided view of the conflict, because our country can offer much-needed lessons and examples of how to achieve peace and reconciliation between embattled peoples. We have the potential to view the Israeli conflict from a perspective of a country that found its way out of violent conflict in 1994. Because the truth is, the lessons to be learned from the history of South Africa is not one of armed struggle, but of a nation able to overcome the breaches inflicted by our violent past.
But in order for reconciliation in the Middle East to happen, you have to be neutral. The human rights of one group of people cannot be considered superior to the other. This is true of a political entity like the ANC as much as it is true of individuals like Dr Ramphele. This conflict revealed the deep fault lines and crevices present in our leaders’ mindset. There seems to be an inability to act selflessly to maintain integrity and secure our country around the ideals of functional politics even in its international policy positions.
The propaganda and rhetoric even concerning basic historical facts of the region proves the age old adage that truth is often a casualty of war. We see it in the relentless global Anti-Israel campaign that unthinkably led to levels of Antisemitism not seen since the holocaust. It seems that both the ANC and Dr Ramphele wilfully ignores the needs of their own country let alone the people of Gaza. Both South Africa and Gaza desperately needs visionary leaders who will lead their people out of the reliance on aid! As part of a generation whose future was greatly impacted by the boycotts, and sanctions, I find it as diabolical that apartheid and colonialism are what we export and not the historic path to reconciliation and healing, that led to a democratic South Africa!
The cost of the war has become unbearable not only for the innocent within Gaza but for the entire population of Israelis in the north and on the border of Gaza who have suffered tremendous harm, physically, emotionally and spiritually. We need to acknowledge the many mothers who have lost children; the orphans, the widows and widowers, on both sides of this conflict, but we also need to think of those hundreds of ordinary human beings, who have not seen their loved ones for 400 days.
Without the global community giving empathy and compassion in their responses to both innocent Gazans and Israelis, we are only contributing to the ongoing conflict. And we allow evil to hide its ugly face behind the rhetoric and ideological spin.
Truth also cannot become a casualty in the pursuit of reconciliation. The issues around UNRWA and the evidence that has been presented must be dealt with. Honesty, transparency and accountability need to be commanded.
The cost of propagating and politicking is too high in a conflict that has seen women killed, raped, and kidnapped. It is too high for the children of Gaza whose childhood is being stolen by war and the Jewish families in the North of Israel displaced for over a year. These communities need not our toxic politics, but our courage to confront the evil that seeks no peace but the annihilation of Jews, and who are prepared to sacrifice the innocent whose lives had barely begun in Gaza. If UNRWA is part of this evil, it too needs to be held to account.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Christian Ties to Israelis
My visit to Israel as part of the peace delegation in May 2024 highlighted to me the importance of providing moral leadership. Dr Ramphele talked a lot about Desmond Tutu’s visit to Gaza in 2008 and his reaction to what he saw there, but she presents a single-sided picture - whether her own or the Archbishop’s - of Israel oppressing the people of Gaza with no mention of how Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from the area, how Hamas had been voted into power and how this internationally recognized terrorist organization used Gaza as a way to attack Israel. If this wasn’t clear then, it certainly is now.
I want to focus the attention on the valuable contribution and legacy of Desmond Tutu, his role during the truth and reconciliation commission, where both victims and perpetrators looked each other in the eye to see the humanity of the other. Under his guidance, South Africa chose to walk away from a path of vengeance by choosing peace and forgiveness. So too, the Middle East needs similar propagators for peace, but this can’t be achieved without embracing truth.
Unfortunately, the South African government has sacrificed the pursuit of truth on the altar of ideology. By doing this, and by only seeing one side of the conflict, they have lost the moral authority to make a real difference.
The South African government needs to recognize that there are millions of Christians in this country who have strong spiritual and sacred ties with the State of Israel and with the Jewish people. This in itself can provide the greatest bridge between enemies, as the Christian faith propagates faith, reconciliation and forgiveness above all things, and these are at the very heart of finding peaceful solutions in having enemies look across the table to see each other’s humanity.
When we fight for peace, we must be willing to speak the truth even to our friends. As a Christian my ties to Israel runs deep, and the Jewish nation is to millions the testimony of God’s great love. Yet, I can hold both Jews and Arabs as the offspring of Abraham and as a testimony of God’s love.
Both Arabs and Jews caught in this horrible conflict need us South Africans to stand courageously for justice and for truth. Not on the basis of a one-sided ideology, but on the principle that demands that morality should never be sacrificed on the altar of dysfunctional politics.
Marie Sukers, Founder Voice to People (VTP), and former Member of Parliament
