Since atrocities have occurred on both sides in the Israel/Hamas conflict, it is difficult to sympathise with Dr Fatima Hendricks’ account of her detention by Israeli forces as a result of her participation in the Global Sumud Flotilla mission to Gaza, given the mission’s documented links with Hamas (POST, October 22-26).
Aligned with the Hamas-supporting Muslim Judicial Council of South Africa, no amount of emotional hyperventilating on her part can detract from the context of Dr Hendricks’ moorings. Despite the humanitarian nature of the Sumud mission, she rails against the treatment her group experienced at the hands of their Israeli captors, describing it as “inhumane and harrowing.”
But unlike the 251 innocent people Hamas abducted, kept in dark tunnels, tortured, starved and killed, Dr Hendricks and her fellow captives were not subjected to such treatment by the Israelis. Whereas those hapless hostages were deprived of all human rights for more than 700 days, and of whom only a small number survived, Dr Hendricks and her group were incarcerated for only six days and were all released physically unscarred.
For Dr Hendricks and her ilk to complain about “injustice” while ignoring the fact that it was Hamas that ignited the conflict on October 7, 2023, is a nauseating double standard. The barbaric hacking to death, beheading, mutilation and slaughter of 1,195 unarmed, innocent people, including infants, was a flagrant crime against humanity.
Those bloody atrocities, together with Hamas’ unambiguous objective to exterminate Jewish life “from the river to the sea,” leave no room for the likes of Dr Hendricks to sermonize on “injustice.” Yet she objects to being called a terrorist because Hamas is a terrorist organization.
In terms of her humanitarian motivation, she is not a terrorist. However, by her apparent double standards on humanitarianism, Dr Hendricks needs to consider the image she projects, given her silence on Hamas’ atrocities.
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