Double standards

Dear Sir,

There is so much hullabaloo in the press these days about Sudan President Omar al-Bashir’s recent trip to South Africa.
Many people have got in on the act of criticising the South African government for not “properly” handling the Bashir case. Some are of the opinion that the South African government should have arrested Bashir and handed his head on a silver platter to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Bashir, who attended an African Union summit in South Africa last month, has been indicted by the ICC over “war crimes and crimes against humanity”. The ICC wanted South Africa to arrest him.
But the president later left South Africa to return home to Khartoum.
A few commentators have written about “the cost to South Africa of not arresting Bashir” and called for punitive action against South Africa. I feel that such commentators have no affinity to South Africa.
It is not as if they really cared about the people of South Sudan or about persecution. And why do they keep silent on Israeli crimes?
Israel has carried out more than 55 cases of massacres in Palestine since 1948. It has also been imprisoning and torturing Palestinians since 1948.
Israel has brutally murdered thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. Thousands of Palestinians have become refugees when Israel has stolen their lands.
The Irgun and Stern gangs of Israel have targeted Palestinian children and the leader of the Irgun Gang, Menachem Begin, was rewarded for this and made the prime minister of Israel.  
The UN has passed many resolutions on this but many of them have been blocked or vetoed by leaders of the Western world.
Israel brazenly steals Palestinian lands to this day, imprisons and tortures Palestinians and have made the Gaza Strip and the West Bank virtual concentration camps.
Last year, Israel was at it again, killing Palestinian men, women and children  and destroying the basic infrastructure of the Gaza Strip in a major onslaught.
Most Western leaders remained silent or gave feeble excuses throughout the Israeli aggression.
Yet these very commentators, who write so eloquently about the Bashir case,  have not written one word about these Israeli injustices or called for the Israeli leaders to be arrested for their crimes and  criticised Western leaders for using veto powers to shield Israel.

Yunus Patel/(e-mail address supplied)

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