A file photo
If I could talk to the leaders of Hamas – the organisation that wishes to achieve nationhood for the Palestinian people – I would ask them: “Please tell me – what were you thinking about when you launched your campaign of violence against the Israeli state at the beginning of October 2023? Did you really think that capturing a few hundred Israeli “hostages” would make Israel accept your political demands? Hasn’t Israel unleashed its vengeance on your people before?”
But I wouldn't be surprised if the Hamas leadership replied, “Well, what else could we do? Israel has been making life intolerable to the Palestinian people ever since the Israelis drove the Palestinians out of their homeland in 1948".
“The Israelis have, through warfare, vastly expanded the territory they originally took over in 1948. And they want to make Israeli “settlements” out of more and more Palestinian land. The Palestinian people have tried to reach an agreement with Israel about their political needs on several occasions. You must have heard of the famous “handshake`’ between Israeli leaders and the Palestinian leader, Mr. Yasser Arafat, under the aegis of the agreement brokered by the United States? Did that agreement last?
“Have you not heard that since then, Israeli “occupationists” have been seizing Palestinian lands, without the Israeli Government doing anything about it? These “ultra-nationalist Israelis” rule in Israel. Netanyahu courts them for their political support.
What were we to do? Fold our arms and watch our lands and livelihood taken away day by day? Wouldn’t that encourage the Israelis to seize more of our lands?
“Are you not an African? Don’t you remember or understand why the people of South Africa, Mozambique, and Angola needed to FIGHT for their freedom, against all odds?”
I must admit that the last question would knock me out of my zone of self-confidence.
Okay, the Israelis are being particularly murderous right now. But have I forgotten Sharpeville (South Africa)? Tet Province (Mozambique)? The Renamo and UNITA murders carried out by the proxies of the Portuguese in Mozambique Angola and Guinea Bissau? Can I ignore the horrendous “black-on-black” murders carried out by South African secret military units in both South Africa and Namibia?
I would become completely silent if the Hamas leaders further put it to me: “Just because you couldn't see those killings in Africa on television, hour, does it mean that they didn't occur? That people didn't die? What is the difference between one death and another?”
Yes, the questions are enough to silence a person. Bloodshed is bloodshed.
Now, I once interviewed live, on GBCTV, the FRELIMO leader, the late Mr. Samora Machel (whose Movement wasn’t only fighting in Mozambique against the Portuguese army, but also assisting the forces of the Zimbabwe National Union’s Army (Zanla) fight Ian Smith’s army). I asked him whether the war in Mozambique would get worse than it was before independence was achieved.
In an answer that somewhat surprised me, he said, “We could make the killings much worse right now if we resorted to terrorism. But we have deliberately refused to embark on terrorism because we want to fight against the Portuguese Army, not the colonized Mozambique people. If you engage in terrorism, you must expect to kill many innocent people, including civilians, many of whom would be people who are sympathetic to your own cause.”
I suppose Mr. Machel and the FRELIMO leadership could carry out such an analysis and reach the conclusion they had reached, because the terrain of their warfare and the circumstances under which they operated, enabled them to choose the strategy to be adopted to fight THEIR particular enemy. Certainly, not all enemies can be fought in the same way, or the same weapons. Not all of them adopt the same attitude and tactics against their victims, and so a clever choice of strategy must go with any armed struggle if it is to achieve success.
Wars like what’s going on in Gaza and Ukraine create a situation of near- schizophrenia for the rest of the world. We look on and wring our hands, unable to do anything about the bloodshed.
I mean, look at the Americans. Their President doesn’t want to call for a “ceasefire” between Hamas and the Israelis, although he can see that by driving the Palestinians from their homes through saturation bombing, the Israelis ARE herding them towards genocide.
Yet, this same American President is arming the Ukrainians to help them try and resist the slaughter the Russians have unleashed on Ukraine. Russian aggression often produces the same saturation bombing of homes that we see the Israelis inflicting upon the Palestinians.
Yet The American Constitution loftily proclaims that “All men are created equal!”. Isn’t that notion quite ironic, if we look at it from the point of view of children born in Palestine, who are dying from bombing, just as much as the Ukrainian children that the Americans want to save from Russian bombs?
As it happens, neither the Palestinian children nor the Ukrainians had any say whatsoever in determining who manufactured the bombs with which they were being killed, day by day by day.
It Is definitely a mad, mad world that we live in, isn’t it?
