The double standard is staggering, South Africa has referred Israel to the International Court of Justice yet they seem to have magically failed to refer their sponsor Russia to the same court. The South African government has failed to apply the same standard to Russia, a known country supporting terrorist activities. So, what is going on here?

Russia invaded Ukraine, there has been numerous documented incidents of Russian torture, Russian murder, indiscriminate Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities and intentional targeting of civilians. Then there is the targeting of civilian infrastructure from the power grid to communications. Then there is the targeting of hospitals, the Russians are just disgraceful, it is hard to argue any positive aspects in their flawed reasoning.

The Ukrainian cities have been flattened by Russian artillery, this is straight out of the Russian military playbook, devastated the cities, killed civilians and caused mass movement of displaced people. We have seen Russia kidnap Ukrainian children and take them over the border to Belarus and Russia for indoctrination of Ukrainian children. The war crimes committed in Ukrainian gall me, the international community has been slow to respond with military aid as they fear Russian escalation and nuclear retaliation. Yet the world knows Russia invaded Ukraine, they know war crimes have been and are currently being committed and they know there is more to come.

If we compare this to the situation in Gaza, all the foreign aid offered to Palestine was used to build tunnels and procure weapons. None of this went to the betterment of the Palestinian population, instead they celebrated in the streets after the October 7 surprise attack. Israel was caught off guard with the October 7 attacks and a large number of the hostages are still being held in the tunnel network. The world is aware of the sexual assault and abuse of Israeli women, yet this does not seem to bother the South African government, they endorse this abuse of women.