Apart from the odd statement demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, South African universities have, by and large, remained silent about the ongoing killing of Palestinian civilians, an onslaught that the International Court of Justice recently found could plausibly amount to genocide.
Confronted with what Pankaj Mishra rightly describes in the most recent London Review of Books as the Israeli “liquidation of Gaza”, an onslaught “whose victims, as Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, an Irish lawyer who is South Africa’s representative at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, put it, ‘are broadcasting their own destruction in real-time in the desperate, so far vain, hope that the world might do something’’, no university has, to my knowledge, imposed an academic boycott on Israeli universities, or even on such universities with close ties to the Israeli military, a military whose soldiers regularly post videos of themselves committing war crimes in Gaza. (more…)
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Israel has knowingly and deliberately continued to act in defiance of the [International Court of Justice] Order. In addition to causing the death by starvation of Palestinian children in babies, Israel has also continued to kill approximately 4,548 Palestinian men, women and children since 26 January 2024, and to wound a further 7,556, bringing the grim totals to 30,631 killed and 72,043 injured. An unknown number of bodies remain buried under the rubble. 1.7 million Palestinians remain displaced — many of them permanently, Israel having damaged or destroyed approximately 60 per cent of the housing stock in Gaza. Approximately 1.4 million people are squeezed into Rafah — which Israel has stated it intends to attack imminently. Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian healthcare system has also continued apace, with ongoing, repeated attacks on hospitals, healthcare, ambulances and medics. Israel has also continued to conduct widespread attacks on schools, mosques, businesses and entire villages and areas.