Human rights for all: Why I am in Egypt to join the Global March to Gaza

Gaza, right now, is the largest concentration camp the world has ever seen, dwarfing in size the camps set up by the British in South Africa or by the Germans in Namibia and Poland. In Gaza, two million people are incarcerated by Israel’s powerful military, backed by US bombs. They live without homes (which have all been bombed), without hospitals (which have also all been bombed) and without safe drinking water (Israel has bombed that too). 

The people of Gaza are also starving. They have no access to food.

This is by design. Thousands of trucks packed with food and medical supplies have been waiting at the border for more than two months. Israel has refused to let them in. Instead of opening the border it is setting up militarised distribution points, and then shooting the starving civilians who gather, desperate for food.

Israel is purposely starving Gazans to force them to give up their struggle for freedom and accept their removal out of the strip. This is the definition of ethnic cleansing.

I do not merely give my opinion here. This is actually the stated policy of the Israeli government, which has boasted that the “Trump Plan” to remove Palestinians from Gaza is one of their central war aims.

Even a former Israeli prime minister, who has been defending the war for 20 months, now concedes that Israel is committing war crimes.

But this isn’t just a war crime. According to Holocaust experts like Raz Segal as well as independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, this is a textbook case of genocide.

We are looking at what is arguably the worst atrocity of the 21st Century. If not that, certainly the most documented.

The Global March to Gaza is a humanitarian protest that seeks to pressure the Israeli government to stop the blockade and end its genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.

Along with more than 50 other South Africans, we have flown to Cairo. From there we will take a bus into the Sinai Peninsula and march for two days (50 kilometres) all the way to the Rafah Crossing. 

The march will also be joined by the Sumud humanitarian convoy of 7,000 people that began in Tunisia and will also reach Rafah on 15 June.

Despite the obvious danger, we have decided to join this first-of-its-kind global march to the doorstep of genocide. 

For over 20 months, we have been protesting against the genocide in our own countries. (Some of us have been protesting Israeli apartheid for decades.) We have been publishing articles, writing books, painting murals, hanging banners, speaking at Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith events. We have also been lobbying our governments to act against and sanction the Israeli regime. 

Yet the genocide has continued. 

Where is the backbone of those governments who claim to support the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians?

We feel we have no other choice but to try something new.

Never before have thousands of civilians travelled thousands of kilometres to converge on the site of an ongoing genocide to try to stop it. 

We are doing this because we are desperate for real change rather than platitudes. When we see photos of starving children, when we watch videos of a man pushing a wheelbarrow of dismembered body parts through the ruins of Khan Yunis, when we hear the last words of little Hind Rajab before being shot by surrounding tanks, we see what could so easily be ourselves. 

And we see the necessity of our intervention.

What if this were happening to us? What would we want the world to do about it?

This is why we chant we are all Palestinians. This is why we call for freedom from the river to the sea.

When Jews have asserted “never again” after the Nazi Holocaust killed tens of millions of Roma, Slavs, homosexuals, disabled people and people of the Jewish faith, we know that its real meaning was not “never again” just for Jews. 

For those of us who believe in the equality of all human beings, we recognise that this means that we should stand against the persecution of all people. We mean that we must fight all structures of colonialism, racism, sexism, queerphobia and of all other forms of oppression — wherever we encounter it. 

Since never again must mean never again for anyone; we march to make this a reality. 

As we head to Rafah, you can support our call to end the siege and end the genocide by following our journey, by amplifying it on social media, and by calling on your government to sanction the Israeli regime. DM