Hypocrisy – food for thought

Last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa stood up at a Liberations Movement Summit to proclaim that he was “particularly horrified by the deliberate starvation” of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of “apartheid Israel”. Astonishing how this week, he and his government leaders said absolutely nothing about the Hamas horror videos showing two skeletal young hostages, Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski. No comment. No showing of the videos. No declaration of horror at how people who are being held hostage can be treated like this. Nothing!

I find it astonishing how a country that claims to be proudly humanitarian can be so hypocritical when it comes to who it stands up for and who it doesn’t. I totally agree that when people are being starved, it is absolutely unacceptable. It should never happen. It should not be happening in South Africa. It should not be happening in South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Mali, or Yemen. Yet it does.

Up to 20 million South Africans do not have adequate nutritious food, according to 2024 figures from SA Harvest, with millions of children going to bed hungry every night. Approximately 27% of children under the age of five in South Africa suffer from malnutrition, which leads to stunting and other developmental issues.

According to research done earlier this year by Mark Heywood, the adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town, and Busiso Moyo, a postdoctoral researcher at University of the Western Cape, at least 15 million South Africans suffer from food insecurity, meaning they don’t have enough nutritious food to live healthy lives. They maintain that more than 1 000 South African children die of malnutrition every year. This they compare to the 350 child deaths from malnutrition annually in Brazil, with three times the population.

This is catastrophic, not least of all because we certainly have sufficient food in this country, and we are not living in a war zone. Food simply isn’t getting to those in dire need, and tonnes and tonnes of it is being wasted. And yet the South African Bill of Rights clearly states that every person has a right to sufficient food and water.

However, our president is clearly way more concerned about Gazans than he is about his own people. When will we hear him say that he is “particularly horrified” at the number of his own people starving or dying of malnutrition? Or aren’t South African lives important enough?

I have to say, again, while I find our president’s sanctimonious behaviour unacceptable, I do not believe that any starvation is acceptable. I do not want any Gazans to starve, especially not children. G-d forbid! It is a fundamental human right to have food to eat, and the world needs to ensure that people don’t starve.

But my anger is at how the world, and our own president and the mainstream media, is screaming and shouting about Gazans who are going hungry, but utterly ignore the Israeli hostages who are being systematically starved to death. The video images of Evyatar and Rom are horrifying. They are mere skeletons at death’s door. This is so obvious.

You would imagine that their captors would be loathe for the world to see what they have done to human beings, but oh no, to the contrary. They sent these videos to Israel to gloat and show Israelis what they have done to their brethren and sons.

To me, that’s the mark of a monster or a terrorist. Someone who uses other human lives simply to achieve their objectives. They cannot and do not see their humanity.

Now, I know our haters believe that Israel does that, but that isn’t true. Can I explain exactly why there is hunger in Gaza? No, I cannot. I can’t tell you whether, in fact, there is actual starvation either. There clearly seems to be a problem with sufficient food getting to all parts of Gaza, and it does look as if all attempts are being made to sort this out. Unfortunately, the information that is coming out of Gaza and being used in media cannot be trusted because it is being put out by Hamas. I say that, knowing full well that the media around the world is treating Hamas’s information as gospel.

I do understand that international media is not allowed access into Gaza and so there is no credible journalism coming out of this war zone. Having said that, while international media is chomping at the bit to go into Gaza, Israel has been blamed for killing 200 journalists in the very same place. So, exactly who was killed and by whom? Were there really 200 trained journalists killed, or were these Hamas operatives? The information about the so-called journalists emanates from – you got it – Hamas. I wish I knew the truth!

In the way that Hamas sent out those horrific gloating videos this week of Rom and Evyatar, they did the same on 7 October, showing how they mutilated, raped, burnt alive, and terrorised Israelis. They documented the horror they perpetrated in Israel, and then the world took Hamas’s side and conveniently denied the horror the terrorists wrought.

To this day, women’s rights activists around the world have not stood by their Israeli sisters who were brutalised. Yet there was documented proof because the terrorists wanted the world to know what they had done.

It works in Hamas’s favour for the world to believe Israel is starving Gazans. It ensures the world condemns Israel and sides with Hamas. It is just astonishing that the world cannot see that it is supporting a terrorist organisation which is blatantly using its own people to further its aim to destroy Israel and eradicate Jews.

While Hamas may be throwing out many lies, it has never denied its ultimate goal, namely to rid Israel of Jews from the river to the sea. Wake up! While Israel is far from perfect, Hamas is a terrorist organisation! Would that our president could see that.

Shabbat shalom!

Peta Krost

Editor

Apologies

Last week gremlins got into our print edition and while we had signed off the corrected version, one page that had already been changed earlier in the day got into the newspaper. We are doing our best to ensure that never happens again.