Uganda must sue Israel

On this day January 22nd, in 1957, Israel withdrew its troops from the large region between its country and Egypt: the Sinai Peninsula. 

The Sinai Peninsula is referenced in the Bible, the Book of Exodus, as the Jews are led by Moses out of slavery in Egypt to their promised land of Zion.

How did Israel come to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula? 

Well, in July 26, 1956, the Suez Crisis pitted Egypt against the so called Tripartite Aggression of England, France and Israel.
 
The Suez Crisis began when the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalised the Suez Canal. 

Subsequently, international pressure was brought to bear on the tripartite countries; with Israel withdrawing troops from the Sinai Peninsula.  

Similarly, South Africa recently asked the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ) to order Israel to stop its military actions in Gaza and to desist from what South Africa says are genocidal acts committed against Palestinians during the war with Hamas in Gaza. 

Rulings by the ICJ are legally binding, but the court has no way of enforcing them. However, this is not a problem. 

That’s because South Africa is carrying out what lawyers call “strategic advocacy”. 

True, they might lose the case. But such advocacy is about highlighting illegalities, along with concomitant immoralities, in order to influence public opinion in favour of a course correction (in the Middle East). 

This is not the first time the South Africans have employed such advocacy. 

Shortly after activist Steve Biko was murdered on 14 November 1977, there was a 13-day inquest into his unnatural death. 

Although the Apartheid regime won the case, the inquest exposed the brutality of then South African security. 

More, Biko became officially the 46th victim of torture and death under the State Security Laws. 

The spotlight was thus on the Apartheid regime, thereby illumining the proverbial handwriting on the wall.  

Still, beyond strategies and tactics, South Africans who were of age during the Apartheid era will recall how Israel and the Afrikaners developed a special kinship. 

The Nationalist Party, Apartheid’s architect and dominated by Afrikaners, came to power in 1948 as the state of Israel was born the same year.

Both the Afrikaners and Jews were surrounded by hostile majorities seemingly hell-bent on their twin eviscerations.  

The two also linked their shared political ascendancy not only to a special destiny but also to a “survivalist ethic”.  

In South Africa, a secret Afrikaner organisation, the Broederbond, (Band of Brothers), pulled the strings behind the scenes and made sure this friendship was not merely fair-weather. 

This is why, in 1976, Israel invited the South African prime minister, John Vorster - a former Nazi sympathiser, for a state visit. 

Vorster visited to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where he laid a wreath to the victims of the Nazis he once romanticised!

With this in mind, I believe South Africa’s psyche was always going to jibe with Palestine’s personality on the basis of the conventional wisdom:  The friend of my enemy is my enemy.

Again, in South Africa’s mind, Palestine is also beclouded by a form of Apartheid.  

Still, it is refreshing to see that South Africa’s founding ideals; “human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights, freedom and non-racialism” are guiding its actions on the global stage.

It really makes you wonder what Uganda’s values are on the global stage and whether these values square with activities of a humanist bent. 

If so, then maybe it is time Uganda joined the case against Israel as an example of our intolerance to genocide; here and abroad. 

Mr Philip Matogo is a professional copywriter  
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