By: Natasha Archary
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) is demanding the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for genocide and war crimes.
NUMSA said the union is shocked by the barbaric attacks unleashed by the Zionist state of Israel against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
In a statement, the union says what is transpiring in Gaza is not a war, rather an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their historic lands.
“Netanyahu and his cabinet of war criminals have taken a conscious decision to exterminate Palestinian people, and finalise the theft of their lands, through these extremely violent processes.
Since 07 October, Israel has rolled out a bloody bombing campaign, which so far has resulted in the mass murder of more than 12 000 Palestinians in Gaza, and 80% of these are women and children.
This high death toll in just over a month does not include the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that the Zionist state of Israel has murdered for more than 7-decades before that, and the millions of Palestinians who were displaced from their land, since its illegal colonial occupation of Gaza in 1948.
NUMSA condemns the racist Zionist Apartheid state of Israel for the heinous crimes they have committed for more than 70-years, against the people of Palestine.”
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the Israel Defence Force (IDF) is not targeting Palestinian civilians, NUMSA says this is a lie, as Palestinian children have been arrested by the IDF and jailed for long periods without trial.
The union says a report released by Save the Children in July, shows that Israel is responsible for jailing between 500 and 1000 innocent Palestinian children a year, and 86% of them have been tortured at the hands of the brutal Israeli security forces.
This is why NUMSA supports the calls made by the Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, Naledi Pandor, that Netanyahu must be charged with war crimes.
The South African government referred Israel to the International Criminal Court for it to be investigated for war crimes.
They have issued a demarche to the Israeli ambassador, Eliav Belotserkovsky and they have recalled South African diplomats from Tel Aviv. These are all positive steps, and we are calling for the South African government to go even further, by campaigning for the total isolation of Apartheid Israel.
The South African government must support the motion of the EFF for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. It must also call for economic sanctions against Israel because of its mass murder of innocent civilians and the genocide of Palestinians by the Zionist state of Israel.
NUMSA demands that Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be arrested for genocide & war crimes against Palestinians. Details in the statement below👇🏾👇🏾@IrvinJimSA
#FreePalestine #CeasefireNOW #BanApartheidIsrael @BTnewsroom
❤️🖤💛 pic.twitter.com/6FqRi8myUI— NUMSA (@Numsa_Media) November 19, 2023
NUMSA is calling for the African continent as a while to stand in solidarity with Palestine, because of the mutual understanding Africa has with enslavement.
“The African continent as a whole must stand in solidarity with Palestine because we can relate to their suffering.
We know what it is like to be enslaved, colonised, stripped of dignity, and to be denied of our humanity, simply on the basis of race. We are still victims of the daily violence of racist and colonial capitalism and its capacity to manufacture human suffering.
What is to be done?
- NUMSA is demanding an immediate ceasefire and for humanitarian aid to be urgently sent into Gaza.
- For the crime of genocide, Israel must be isolated and treated like the pariah state that it is. Its embassy must be closed and its diplomats and the ambassador must be expelled and sanctions must be impost. The National Assembly will vote on this on Tuesday, and we hope the ANC will support the EFF motion.
- We also demand that Israel must return every square inch of land that it stole from Palestine. We demand a single, unified, free and autonomous state of Palestine.
