Organisations that support Israel must be held to account

If they are not we’ll be no better than those whose silence made them complicit in genocide

DISCOVERY Health chief executive Ron Whelan told The Mercury’s sister newspaper Cape Times on November 26 that I had been engaged directly by his medical aid scheme following my decision to cancel my membership – he lied.

Since emailing Discovery expressing my disgust at their recent hosting of an Israeli hospital with close ties to the Israeli military in South Africa, I have received no reply. If Whelan or anybody from his group had made the effort to engage me, this is what I would have said was my reasoning.

Last week, Amnesty International, a globally renowned human rights organisation, released a landmark report concluding that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza for more than a year.

The 296-page report, You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, details the group’s evidence, including satellite imagery documenting airstrikes, aid sieges, agricultural decimation and destruction of cultural and religious sites. During this period, Amnesty also conducted fieldwork in Gaza and interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses of airstrikes, local authorities and healthcare workers. On multiple occasions, Amnesty notes, the organisation shared its findings with Israeli authorities but received no substantive response.

Amnesty accuses Israel of “genocidal intent” to “destroy, in whole or in part” the Palestinian people, which it determined is part of a protected group under the 1948 Genocide Convention, officially the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

According to the report, Israel’s strikes have “often wiped out entire multigenerational families”. The international rights group also accuses Israel of forcibly displacing 90% of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, forcing them “to live in conditions that exposed them to a slow and calculated death”, and of deliberately obstructing access to humanitarian aid. This is reaffirmed by UN agencies, which estimate that 9 out of 10 people are currently internally displaced due to Israeli attacks, which remain ongoing.

Amnesty Secretary General Agnes Callamard said the crimes Hamas committed during its October 2023 attack could not justify “Israel’s genocide” against Gazans.

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” she warned.

“This is genocide. It must stop now.” Considering top officials in Israel have brazenly affirmed that this was always the goal, are we surprised? Previous Defence Minister Yoav Gallant referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and Israeli President Isaac Herzog declared: “There are no innocent civilians in Gaza.”

Last month, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes. An International Court of Justice (ICJ) case led by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide has had several nations – including Nicaragua, Belgium, Ireland, Colombia, Libya, Egypt, Cuba, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Türkiye, Chile, Maldives and Bolivia – join. The ICJ has ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide (an order Israel has since continued to flout) while the case proceeds.