Genocide in Gaza: What we should do and not do

According to Article II of the United Nations Genocide Convention[ 1 ], genocide is defined as “any of the following acts commitment with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such”:

a. Killing members of the group;

b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The actions by the Israeli government and its defence forces to deny water, food and electricity to the two million Palestinians in Gaza should not be interpreted in any other way except genocide.

This becoming increasingly clear to the global community.

What can or should we do in Malaysia in response to the atrocities being carried out in Gaza which includes the killing of women and children by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF)?

Here is a list of proposed action items which we can do as individuals and should do together with the government, and what the government can do as part of the international community.

As individuals, we can and should:

Educate ourselves on the history of the occupation

Knowledge is power and the more we educate ourselves on the history of the occupation of the land which once belonged to and was settled for millennia by the Palestinians, the more we can speak with greater conviction and persuasion, especially with those who still refuse to acknowledge the many years of brutal treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli government.

Reading the following books, recommended by the Economist, would allow us to understand the complexities of the region and the challenges which other countries in the Middle East have in terms of their treatment of the Palestinian refugee community, their views of Hamas, and their diplomatic engagements with the Israeli government over time.

Some of the books are as follows:

• A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin. Holt, Henry

•  & CompanyEnemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017, by Ian Black. Atlantic Monthly Press

• The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, by Rashid Khalidi

• Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement, by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell. Wiley

• The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron, by Colin Shindler. Cambridge University Press (cannot be shipped to Malaysia from overseas!)

• It’s Easier to Reach Heaven than the End of the Street: A Jerusalem Memoir, by Emma Williams. Olive Branch Press

I would also add the following books from my bookshelf - Thomas Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem, David K. Shipler’s Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land and Bernard Wasserstein’s Divided Jerusalem.

Donate to credible institutions

It is very difficult to get aid into Gaza at the moment because of the strict border controls imposed by Israel at the Rafa crossing.

The other crossing in southern Gaza, Kereem Shalom, has been closed by the Israeli government. I would put my trust in donating to institutions which have a good track record of doing good work in Gaza and the West Bank.

These include Doctors without Borders, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

I have donated RM500 to Doctors Without Borders and I have confidence in their outreach programmes including among the displaced people in Sudan, which the world has forgotten because of what is happening in the Middle East.

Advocate this issue as one involving all communities

I am proud that many of my party colleagues who are MPs including Steven Sim, Howard Lee, Syahredzan Johan, Young Syefura Othman, Syerleena Abdul Rashid and others have spoken out on the current conflict in Gaza.

This is a good example of how this issue should transcend race and religion. Individuals who are familiar with international law including former deputy minister Mohamed Hanipa Maidin and law professor Gurdial Singh have also written and spoken about this issue from an international law perspective.

We should continue to advocate for this issue on a cross-communal basis in Malaysia.

As individuals working together with the government, we can and should:

Support the Palestinian diaspora in Malaysia

The Palestinian diaspora has spread far and wide across the globe and many are staying in Malaysia because they find it a welcoming place for them, visa issues aside.

Many have started businesses in Malaysia often with local partners. Some also bring in products from the Middle East such as dates and other food items to sell to the local market.

We can support these businesses so that some of the profits they make can be used to help their friends and families in Gaza, the West Bank and other parts of the Middle East.

The government can also assist in this area. Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade), an agency under the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) can organise business matching sessions involving Palestinian and other businesses from the Middle East with potential customers in Malaysia and the region.

Social enterprises such as PichaEats, which aims to provide income-earning opportunities to the refugee community in Malaysia should also be involved.

State and local governments can organise bazaars, especially for traders from the Middle East, to operate with special licenses and with assurances that such markets will not be disturbed by authorities from the Immigration Department.

This will also be helpful to communities from other parts of the Middle East including Syrians and Yemenis who are refugees in Malaysia.

At the higher education level, private and public universities can consider bringing in Palestinian and other researchers from the Middle East on short-term fellowships so that they can conduct relevant research and build academic ties with the local academic community.

Ibrahim Rabaia, who obtained his PhD in Political Economy from the University Malaya (UM) and whom I got to know when he was doing his internship at the Penang Institute in Kuala Lumpur (before it was shut down), is now a lecturer at Birzeit University.

I hope that I can facilitate his return to Malaysia as a fellow at Taylor’s University, to teach students for the not yet approved philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) undergraduate programme at my university.

Treat refugees in Malaysia better

I am not calling for the government to immediately ratify the International Convention for Refugees although this would be a positive thing for a progressive government to undertake.

What I am calling for is a more humane treatment of the refugees in Malaysia including those from the Palestinian community.

Many of them can’t legally work and frequently get harassed by the authorities. A better system of recognising those with UNHCR refugee cards and allowing some of them to work would be a good start.

Privately, we can also stop our discrimination against the refugee community whom we may encounter in different settings, both private and public.

I think one proud moment for Malaysia was how the Covid-19 vaccination programme was rolled out by then-health minister Khairy Jamaluddin, where undocumented migrants were given the same right to vaccines as citizens but after that, their plight in Malaysia seems largely forgotten.

As a government, we can and should:

Consider acceding to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)

The decision by Pakatan Harapan to pull back our decision to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2019 because of pressure from the then opposition (PAS and Umno) meant that our government could not refer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the ICC for war crimes.

Although this issue is currently in the ICC (it’s complicated), there is no harm for Malaysia to consider accession so that we can have our voice in the international community and bring justice to Palestinians in Gaza.

Keep pressuring the UK and the US internationally

The governments of the UK and the US are coming under tremendous domestic political pressure because of the increasing public disapproval of the actions of the Israeli government towards Gaza and the humanitarian disaster taking place there.

The very rare decision by the United Nations secretary-general António Guterres to invoke Article 99 of the UN charter, which allows him to raise to the UN Security Council matters that “in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security” shows the severity of the situation among the international community.

US President Joe Biden is facing growing pressure from within his own Democratic Party, to take a much stronger position against what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza.

United Nations secretary-general António Guterres

This kind of pressure should continue with Malaysia working together with the international community.

Take steps to push for international sanctions against Israel

Strong consideration should be undertaken to put Israel in the same category as then-apartheid South Africa leading the international community to impose similar economic and trade sanctions against Israel.

This is a very serious action and can only be undertaken with the support of the European Union, the US and China - the three major trading partners of Israel.

The international community has not brought up this option as of yet but as the situation becomes increasingly dire in Gaza, this option must be discussed nationally and more importantly, internationally.

What we shouldn’t do

Finally, I want to make a point about what we shouldn’t do. I am not in favour of a consumer boycott of certain brands which are associated with the US.

These actions directly hurt the employees and also people who are part of the supply chain of these companies, most of whom are Malaysians and from the B40 and M40 communities.

These include lorry and truck drivers, servers at restaurants and factory workers, and they number in the tens of thousands.

Even if local brands benefit from these actions, it would not be easy for people who have trained to be baristas at certain coffee chains to switch to serving coffee at local restaurants.

Let’s not shoot ourselves in the nose to spite our face and focus on more productive ways of playing our part to end this genocide in Gaza. - Mkini

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ONG KIAN MING is a former deputy minister of international trade and industry.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.