A Palestinian woman hugged her olive tree one last time as Israel continues to uproot dozens of trees in the occupied West Bank โ just weeks before the traditional olive harvest known as "mawsim al-zaytoun."
This is not Auschwitz. This is not Gaza. This is the West Bank, Palestine.
They are burning people's homes while families and children are asleep inside, violating the Geneva Convention and UNSCR 242.
The difference between Palestine and Auschwitz is that the world still has an opportunity to stop the Holocaust in Palestine.
Stop calling them "settlers"; they are terrorist invadersโstate-sponsored terrorism.
โI did a leg amputation on a 5-year-old girl, and the only anesthesia that we had was the anesthesia doctor singing to herโฆ We were praying for her to faint. She stayed awake the whole amputation.โ
Absolutely devastating testimony from doctors in Gaza.
What a wonderful and touching gesture.
Arianna Hamilton lost her job at Burger King after taking a stand and saying, โFree Palestine.โ
The people of Palestine painted a mural in her honor, celebrated her, and thanked her for standing with them.
Notice how young these psychopaths are. They learnt this hate from the adults around them, who also learnt it from the adults around them. Israel's talking points, that it's the Palestinian moms - always moms - who teach their children to hate, no longer hold. The global, racist, talking point "I wish they loved their children more than they hate ours..." that you hear from Johannesburg to the UK, is exactly that, a racist talking point. It implies Palestinian women are not capable of loving their children. It dehumanizes and "others" them.
These young monstrous terrorists wreaking havoc on Palestinians and backed by the army, are perfecting the hatred they were taught. Go argue with a wall. I said what I said and I will keep saying it.
South Africans are paying ridiculous amounts for electricity in a country that literally produces electricity and exports some of it to our neighbours.
Tariffs keep climbing. Municipalities add their markups. Paying households keep absorbing increase after increase, yet electricity somehow becomes more expensive every year.
At some point we have to ask what exactly our electricity bills are funding.
Are we paying for the electricity we actually consumeโฆ or are paying customers being forced to carry the cost of municipal debt, illegal connections, electricity theft, failing infrastructure and decades of mismanagement?
Because electricity should never feel like a luxury in a country that produces it.
In South Africa we have watched a quiet but relentless slide into lawlessness. Jumping traffic lights has become commonplace. Driving under the influence is often treated lightly. Pedestrians cross roads with little regard for the danger. Informal settlements spring up overnight on any open piece of land. Illegal electricity connections are no longer treated as serious offences - they are simply accepted as part of daily life. Informal traders claim pavements and intersections as their own. Prisoners somehow manage to keep smartphones. Driving without a licence is widespread.
One could go on forever. The point is simple: there has been a clear breakdown in law and order.
On the surface, the relaxation of rules is understandable. For decades, harsh and often humiliating laws targeted black South Africans in particular. So society swung from one extreme to the other, from rigid control to an โanything goesโ environment.
In many ways this chaos is presented as freedom, the freedom that was denied to the majority for so long. We even open our borders to illegal immigration with the argument: โThey took us in when we were running from the apartheid police.โ A noble memory, but a problematic policy.
I once listened to a Minister of Correctional Services speaking about prisoners. The minister spoke much like a principal talking about learners, our collective duty to help them reach their full potential. The fact that some of these individuals were rapists, hardened killers and career criminals seemed to fade behind the focus on rehabilitation. We appear to have confused ordinary criminals with the political prisoners of the past. In our emphasis on ubuntu there is often little room left for the discipline that law and order require. It is as if, as a nation, we struggle to hold both compassion and consequences together.
This confused state is not progressive. It is setting us backwards. I know of no country that has ever become successful on a foundation of chaos. We urgently need to strike the right balance, one that honours our painful history without using it as a permanent excuse to abandon the very rules that keep a society from falling apart. #ProudlySA