The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa has once again called for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be tried for war crimes.
Numsa spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said it continued to be shocked by the barbaric genocidal attacks unleashed by the Zionist state of Israel on Palestinians in Gaza.
It has been reported that the two-month war has caused unprecedented loss of life, with more than 5 000 children and 3 000 women reported to have died since the start of the war with Palestine.
“What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a war – it is Zionist Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their historic lands, and genocide. 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 October 7, 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,” Hlubi-Majola said on Sunday.
Numsa said reports from Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor indicated that Israel has dropped 25 000 tons of explosives, the equivalent of two nuclear bombs, onto an area half the size of the City of Tshwane.
“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 seven decades before that, and the millions of Palestinians who were displaced from their land, since its illegal colonial occupation of Gaza in 1948,” she said.
Hlubi-Majola said the union condemned the death of children and women in the war that has seen wide spread condemnation of the state of Israel and its leader, Netanyahu.
“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.
“One need only to look at the language used by Israeli leaders to know what their true murderous intentions are. Netanyahu called Palestinians ‘human animals’ and members of his cabinet, such as the minister of agriculture, Avi Dichter, gleefully described their murderous campaign as a ‘second Nakba’,“ she said.
Numsa’s call comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa said he wanted the International Criminal Court (ICC) to probe the war crimes.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation announced on Friday that Vusi Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador in the Hague, the Netherlands, personally delivered the referral to the office of the prosecutor at the ICC.
The referral document from South Africa was submitted jointly with Bangladesh, Bolivia, Venezuela, Comoros and Djibouti.
The Star