"Palestine: Utterly Destroy Them," Saith the Lord?

An African Man Observes an Inter-Semitic Genocide

It is night time in a London park, during the pandemic. A young white woman stares up into the camera from her prone position on the ground. Kneeling around her as they handcuff her from behind is a faceless group of police officers, male and female. The woman’s crime? Peacefully protesting the rape and murder of someone just like her, by a policeman.

That striking photograph encapsulates the truth that wherever one may be in the world, the citizen matters less to the state than one would think or expect. That’s true even in England, the country whose policing methods were adopted throughout the British Empire, including my home country, Nigeria.

A few months before that arrest in London, the Nigerian Army had been ordered to open fire on young people peacefully protesting police violence, killing at least twelve of them.

Police violence against European citizens is probably at its most alarming and appalling when the German police confront pro-Palestine protesters, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that the mere act of calling for a stop to an ongoing genocide is considered the most contemptible and heinous of crimes, deserving of the harshest possible treatment, short of indiscriminate machine-gun fire.

The brutality visited upon German protesters is mirrored by the Israeli Police against those protesting the genocidal prime minister and his government; and singled out for the harshest of treatment are the ultra-orthodox men who refuse to serve in the armed forces, and in some cases even openly express solidarity with the people of Palestine. These men suffer merciless beatings similar to those seen against Palestinians prior to October 7, 2023, and they should indeed be grateful that the Israeli armed forces never shoot their own citizens.

Don’t they? Really? The Hannibal Directive is a policy whereby the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) will kill any of their own (along with Palestinian combatants if necessary) rather than allow them to be taken hostage. There seems to be overwhelming evidence that this policy was extensively used on October 7 and in the days after, including, for the first time, on Israeli civilians – in kibbutzim, the music festival, and in numerous cars as they were being driven toward Gaza.

In December 2023, three Israeli hostages were shot dead by the IDF, and untold numberswould have died in the relentless carpet-bombings during the genocide.

It seems that Hamas, already aware of the brutality of the IDF, assumed that by taking as many hostages as they could into Gaza, they would be able to bargain with the Israeli regime in relative safety, both for themselves and the people they represented. This was clearly a big miscalculation, as the flawed assumption within it was that the IDF command and the Israeli government gave two hoots about their own people.

Back in the West, we are reminded of this, not just in how the armed forces treat protesting civilians, but also in how war-mongering – and genocide-enabling governments – simply ignored the outrage, protests and opprobrium of their citizens, and continue to support Israel diplomatically and militarily, even as pre-ceasefire activities have spread to the West Bank.

It is interesting that the African country with the most-recently-defeated system of Apartheid should have been the one to spearhead the international legal challenge against Israel, even if the ANC government would subsequently, in a bid to cling to power, get into bed with theparties that variously oppose affirmative Black empowerment or are vigorously anti-immigration, rather than join with parties that grew out of the African Liberation Movement. This leads one to ponder how much more than political expediency was behind their championing the ICJ case against Israel in the first place.

Another troubling thing to observe is how so many people of African descent occupy prominent positions among Western genocide-enablers. When candidate Barack Obama prostrated himself before AIPAC in 2018 and then in 2022 as incumbent president (categorically declaring his position to be on the side of the Israeli occupiers), he set a precedent. 

Perhaps most recognisable among recent players were United States UN Ambassadors Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Robert A. Wood. The world has watched aghast as they single-handedly (literally) did their masters’ bidding by vetoing resolution after resolution calling for ceasefires, recognition of Palestine or sanctioning Israel’s bloodlust. The Haitian-born press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was also steadfast in justifying the unjustifiable on behalf of the previous administration.

The UK’s foreign minister, David Lammy, is also a descendant of Africans enslaved in the Caribbean. As a young Labour politician he showed radical promise but has more latterly been so captured by Zionism that its racist, white supremacist ideology causes him to be quite literally an apologist for those who justify the wholesale massacre of Palestinians by referring to them as ‘Human animals,’ just as European enslavers referred to his and my ancestors as apes.

Drafting this in Lagos, Nigeria, I was troubled by the number of people who have bought into the narrative that the genocide has its roots in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. It is now widely accepted that the background and history are important, though it might surprise many that Africa features in these.

At the sixth World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1903, Theodor Herzel presented to the delegates an offer made by then British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, of land in British East Africa, for a Jewish Homeland. Apparently, this offer was considered seriously but eventually rejected in 1904. One area that objections to the idea came from was white British settlers already in East Africa, but the majority of the disquiet was from other Zionists who preferred Palestine. What the Africans knew or thought about the plan appears not to have concerned any of the other players, despite the fact that it was their own stolen ancestral land that was being considered.

The Balfour Declaration would eventually come in 1917, granting the Zionists Palestine: supposedly “a land without people for a people without land.” It was either wilful deceit and self-delusion at play (it is inconceivable that the British didn’t know that Palestinians already occupied the land in question) or it was plain racism, in that they didn’t consider the Palestinians people.

Whilst Africans have particular reason to empathise with Palestinians, the majority of us will be as baffled as the rest of humanity (many Jews included) by descendants of Holocaust survivorsbehaving in such unashamedly and unapologetically barbaric ways, in full view of the rest of the world.

The bafflement is not total though. In Nigeria, a relative with intimate knowledge of the Bible reminded me that Gaza today is not as bad as Jericho of biblical times: the Israelites, newly emancipated from slavery in Egypt (and emboldened by the act of God obligingly parting the Red Sea for them), were ordered by Joshua to carry out God's commandment as passed through Moses: Utterly. Destroy.Them.

Old Testament scholars likely still debate whether by the time the texts first came
to be written (not to talk of the versions available to us so many centuries later), the words ascribed to Moses and Joshua remained a true and accurate account of the instructions that came from the heavens, and not the result of any misinterpretation, manipulation or misrepresentation by the long line of priests and scribes. Scepticism about religious officials is justifiable considering that in late 2024, the Archbishop of Canterbury (the leader of the worldwide Anglican Church) resigned from his post, and one of his predecessors defrocked himself, due to their involvement in covering up sex scandals. The Roman Catholic Church’s record on that front is famously also shameful.

My relative believes, like many, that the Jews are God’s chosen people, and that what is going on in Palestine is preordained. Interestingly, they don’t accept the biblical justification of African slavery (the curse of children of Ham), dismissing it instead as an excuse for greed and exploitation. We each choose what narratives to believe and how to interpret them, of course.

Had the East Africa Plan of 1903 resulted in a Jewish State there instead of in Palestine, it is conceivable that the situation there could be worse still than contemporary Gaza (unimaginable as that may be): the genocide could potentially have started earlier, and one can only speculate about whether the levels of outrage (and indeed indifference, particularly of international leaders) would have been the same as we see now. And, mirroring the complicity of neighbouring Arab States in the Palestine genocide, it is also likely that neighbouring African states would have turned a blindeye, as they calibrated their interests not according to African brotherhood, but to the dictates of Israel and the West.

Where, for example, would Rwanda stand in a Zionist genocide of Ugandans and Kenyans? It is rather sobering to realise that their 1994 genocide claimed more lives in its 100-day duration than Israel achieved in 15 months, and without the Western-supplied high-tech weaponry used by the IDF. That genocide, itself a by-product of Rwanda’s history and continued Western (and Chinese) meddling, and the rebuilding of the country under Paul Kagame, is now almost universally described as the Genocide Against the Tutsi. This is indeed an inaccurate description because it ignores the four-year civil war that raged in the country before the genocide began, with one side being led by then-General Paul Kagame. It also ignores the fact that during the civil war, through the 100 days, and up until 1996/7 in Rwanda, Congo and Zaire, there was also a Hutu genocide – one that has been officially recognised by international human and civil rights organisations. And yet, the prevailing narrative remains the Tutsi genocide, in a reminder that the African proverb, “Until the lions have their historians, stories of the hunt will always glorify the hunter” applies as much to inter-African conflict as It does to European domination of Africa.

Challenging accepted narratives would therefore lead to some searching questions: Why, for example, did Paul Kagame address the Israel lobbying group AIPAC in Washington DC, and later visit Jerusalem during the Palestinian genocide and speak in support of Israel? Could there be some truth in the suggestion that there is an ongoing, underreported genocide happening in Congo, and that this is fuelled by Kagame’s neighbouring Rwanda aiding and abetting the plundering of the country’s resources by Western and Israeli interests?

African fratricide is also devastatingly evident over the hills in Sudan, where a civil war has been raging since April 2023, but overshadowed by Gaza and Ukraine. That situation is particularly tragic because just over a decade ago, the Arab-Spring-inspired popular protests led to the ousting of the dictator Omar al-Bashir, and the people got tantalisingly close to establishing something close to people power, thwarted only by the army’s insistence in retaining a big stake in government. Two generals, falling out and being encouraged and supported in their violence and equipped by external actors (including Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, the Wagner Group, Russia and the USA) have left the country in blood-soaked ruins.

One also worries about the answer to questions surrounding Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the current Nigerian president. With an origin story and educational background shrouded in mystery and doubt, and a history allegedly involving major drug-dealing and money-laundering in the USA, Freedom of Information requests into his past submitted by a Nigerian investigative journalist have been blocked by the CIA, the FBI and the DEA – Drug Enforcement Agency, all of them citing or suggesting that their releasing such information (regardless of whether or not the Nigerian public are entitled to it) would not be in the best interests of the United States. In other words, according to people who know better than me, the Nigerian president is a “CIA asset.”

While on the one hand he called for a ceasefire and condemned Israeli aggression, a recent state visit made by him to France, in which he declared that Nigeria is “open for business,” might cause a collective eyebrow to rise in suspicion. The two presidents, Tinubu and Macron, have been keen to assure the public that the “business” in question does not include the establishment of French military bases in Northern Nigeria, in the wake of their expulsion from the former colonies of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, following popularly-supported coups.  Firmly anti-imperialist, anti-French and even anti-ECOWAS, those three countries have joined together to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – a mutual defence and trade bloc. That they should want to defend themselves against France is one thing, but their neighbours? 

Well, Tinubu it was whose Senate prevented him from sending Nigerian and ECOWAS forces to reverse the coup in Niger in August 2023. Whether other countries will voluntarily join and expand the AES remains to be seen, though there will be those who hope for other soldiers to follow the example of the Sahelian triumvirate and take power. 

Traore,Goita and Tiani will be well aware of the fact that popular anti-imperialist leaders have historically been assassinated by order of Western powers, but one hopes that they and those around them are adequately prepared to repel the attacks when they inevitably come.

Those protectors must include the masses whose protests and actions helped propel them to power. In Western citadels there are masses on the streets too, protesting against their governments’ complicity in the Palestinian genocide, in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere; but the people in power, owned and controlled by personal ambition or huge business interests, care more about their positions and sponsors, than they do about their citizens.

Nowhere was this more obvious than in Israel, where, despite mass protests calling for a deal so that Israeli hostages could be freed, Netanyahu, in a bid to avoid incarceration, used those hostages as pawns in his sick game, causing and prolonging untold suffering and death in the process. 

All over the world, we the people are effectively hostages to our governments and the interests they serve, and our futures under their control are bleak. There are numerous examples of people fighting back to inspire us to act – from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the actions of uMkhontowe Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, who contributed so much to the downfall of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. There are also smaller groups and actions. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose; but if we don’t fight, we don’t win.

One small group is proving to be an effective part of the fight against the Israeli regime. Started by two individuals in England, Palestine Action has grown into a movement that has through the actions of several ordinary people of all ages, shut down three sites owned and operated in the UK by the Israeli arms and technology firm Elbit Systems. They have also caused the company and its subsidiaries losses of millions of pounds in revenue, cancelled contracts, and security costs, through a sustained campaign of disruptive activity. An American factory has also been forced to close by Palestine Action Cambridge (Massachusetts).

Elbit is also active in Africa. It is probably more difficult for a Palestine Action Nigeria or Rwanda to achieve similar successes, since the authorities in most African countries are less likely to hesitate to order their minions to shoot activists on sight, or to deal with them in other violent and unjust ways. 

This is where another historical internationalist example can inspire new ideas. Oliver Tambo, uMkhonto weSizwe leader-in-exile, organised a clandestine mission in which young white volunteers from around Britain entered South Africa and carried out a dramatic operation, the purpose of which was to announce to society, to the subjugated African population as well as to the Apartheid regime, that, despite the apparent total defeat of the resistance, the ANC was still active. The psychological effect on both sides was tremendous, not least in resurrecting hope among the African population. 

This internationalism is arguably easier to generate in this digital age. Palestine in particular has made it abundantlyclear that there are two sides to our struggle: the global elite and the rest of us, and that we are their hostages. It is only we, acting in solidarity with each other locally and globally who will liberate ourselves from elite tyranny.

As Mandela famously said, “We know full well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

On pro-Palestine marches worldwide, one of the most popular chants is "In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians." 

We must hold this particular truth to be self-evident, be we young white women in London, England, or middle-aged Black men in Lagos, Nigeria.