This August the world is gripped by the most burning moral issue of our times: the livestreamed genocide taking place in Palestine. I am at pains to understand how we go there and why the situation persists. I found some insight in the archives of Nobel laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

There is much suffering and oppression in too many parts of the world orchestrated by foreign corporates and often camouflaged by local political fronts. For over a century, internationalism has been a significant pillar of our approach in South Africa to the struggle against injustice and apartheid. Our nation benefited from global solidarity in the struggle for political freedom. We came to understand our struggle in its international context; an understanding that still drives us to work across borders for better conditions for women, for children, for workers, climate justice and a just global economy.

In an era when global systems of power continue to support and profit from injustice, the recent focus on Palestine has brought into sharp perspective the connection between struggles in various contexts such as Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, southern Cameron and more recently Ethiopia and northern Mozambique. It’s not good enough to reduce these situations to mere statistics so I encourage readers to find independent and varied sources of information to familiarise themselves with the intricacies of each context.

Those who hold a ‘whatabout’ position should understand that it’s not a focus on Palestine at the expense of another nation. There is a common thread underlying these struggles: empire (imperial capitalism). If empire succeeds in ‘the Palestine Laboratory ’it will go on to succeed elsewhere, everywhere. Standing in solidarity with Palestine is not at all a minimisation of the manmade devastation, starvation, massacre and mayhem taking place, especially wherever there are precious natural resources to be grabbed. It could even be argued that the success empire has had in starving the Sudanese or de-humanising the Congolese enables it to better implement the ethnic cleansing being pursued in Palestine. The ‘whataboutism’ has the effect of silencing, normalising and desensitising us to the horrors of war.

Supporters of Zionism (or of the balanced view approach) are disconnected from their moral compass, enabling them to base their argument on myth rather than fact. In addition, they silence any call that the widows and orphans of Gaza be treated the same as the rest of God’s people with the unproven claim of anti-Semitism. Their narrative of religious conflict has not held ground with Jews across the world calling out the establishment of Israel and the occupation of Palestinian territories for decades and more recently declaring the genocide a Zionist imperial project (funded by the USA). Even inside Israel, some, including military personnel, are actively protesting their moral outrage.

For those who insist on a religious lens, all Abrahamic religions are vocal on the importance of caring for society’s most vulnerable and specifically mention widows and orphans. This barbaric treatment of humankind, playing out in the Holy Land, goes against the common values of the Abrahamic religions and against teachings and practices that affirm our humanity. This means your moral outrage should be loud as thunder. Yet we wake up every day and learn of people being maimed, sexually assaulted, starved and killed. Of children being orphaned. We dare not disconnect for then we risk being dangerously close to dehumanising others.

This is how woman, children and patients are no longer collateral damage but become targets in warfare. With the incessant flow of social media, it is easy to become desensitised to this industrial scale slaughter of women, children, babies and patients. The mainstream media’s mainly Zionist controlled narrative also manipulates our capacity for empathy with the genocide’s victims. However, tolerance of the relentless dehumanising genocide in Palestine calls our collective humanity into question.

The carnage persists, despite all we have said, in defiance of the rule of law and in full view of us all! How have we tolerated this for almost two years? Have we asked Palestinians to tolerate too much and for too long? Have we, too lost our dignity and our humanity? Browsing Archbishop Tutu’s archive, I am struck by the number of country files that speak to his global solidarity work. He never failed to use his stature as a Nobel laureate, respected faith leader and as one of The Elders to intervene in conflict situations across the world. He travelled to Palestine as Head of a UN investigation team, and later again to compassionately bear witness with the people.

One of Archbishop Tutu’s timeless observations that is appropriate for this moment is: “When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognising the humanity in others. “Alex de Waal, expert on both famine and Sudan considers the weaponisation of starvation by the Zionist war machine as unmatched: “I’ve been working in this field of famine, food crisis and humanitarian action for more than 40 years, and there is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today”.

Surely if Tutu was here, he would cut through the defensive excuses, the ‘whataboutism’, the notion of a ‘balanced approach’ to genocide and the weaponisation of food, aid and relief with language that would cause us to reflect on our morals. “Any right-thinking person would want to condemn unequivocally all of that massacre and killing and genocide without qualification.” This is what Tutu had to say about the horrendous Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Tutu also supported the nomination of long time (since 2002) prisoner and MP, Marwan Barghouti of Fatah. “I decided to support this campaign alongside seven other Nobel Peace Prize laureates as a reflection of our belief that freedom was the only path to peace… I hope the Nobel Committee will take a bold decision bringing us closer to thready this holy land, charged with unique symbolic value, can stop being a living testimony of injustice and impunity, occupation and apartheid, and can finally be a beacon of freedom, hope and peace” he stated.

Tutu undertook quiet diplomacy while also openly supporting many solidarity initiatives across the world. He was wrongfully branded an anti-Semite. Even at the news of his passing, the Zionists persisted, hatefully likening him to Hitler. Like Tutu, many of us have been victimised or silenced for unequivocally condemning the killing in Gaza. In fact, just this week Dr Ramphele of the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust was accused, in a shocking display of journalistic bias, for likening the genocide to the holocaust.

Tutu was also accused for “minimising the holocaust” when he stated that Palestinians are paying the price for it. We will not be bullied into silent complicity by the corporations that benefit from this imperialist network, nor by the Zionists and their friends. As the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese implores in her latest report, what comes next depends on everyone.

Our consciences tell us that minimising ethnic cleansing is wrong. As bystanders in solidarity with those suffering, we must guard against being desensitised to the violent truth. We must resist being stripped of our humanity in a world where we are forced to witness the obliteration of a nation in this televised genocide.

Therefore, we must heed the call by the Israeli B’Tselem Human Rights Centre to use “every means available under international law” and weaken the hands that fuel this genocide financially and through narrative control.

Charlene Houston is Archive Manager for the Archbishop Tutu Intellectual Property Trust and a PhD candidate focusing on decoloniality and re-indigeneity in the heritage sector. She writes in her personal capacity.

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