The depths of the cruelty which the current Israeli administration is prepared to inflict on innocent civilians in Gaza is making it ever more difficult to find words to condemn it.

Its refusal to allow life-giving supplies under conditions acceptable to experts in providing humanitarian aid suggests a willingness to use starvation as a tool of ethnic cleansing. This would amount to a war crime, and adds weight to the South African government’s genocide case against the State of Israel at The Hague. 

Diplomacy seems to be reeling with ineffectiveness while Israel threatens to wipe out a whole nation. In the absence of military action against Israel, which would only beget more war, the only tool we have is to speak out and pray that the whole world will push back. We pray especially that the United States will choose the right side of history, and bring a halt to Israel’s aggression, which has now taken on levels which are vastly disproportionate to Hamas’s heinous attack of October 2023.

Lord in your mercy, please hear our prayers.

††Thabo Cape Town