No time for silence, speak out on Israeli attacks now

THERE are many advantages to silence. If you don't express a view on a fight between two of your friends, for example, you don't risk incensing one of them.

Silence can be safe and prudent. Many white South Africans remained silent during apartheid while the state obliterated black people's dignity around them.

Silence was easier for many, as opposed to joining a liberation movement, getting involved with the End Conscription Campaign or voting for Helen Suzman. You just go about your business, silently, with no risk of the state harassing you or less verligte (liberal) friends ostracising you.

Silence has a variation on itself that masquerades as a virtue, it is called neutrality. It requires speech for the world to be made aware of your neutrality.

In debates about the right mechanisms to bring about justice in a country where citizens' human rights are trampled on, neutrality can be comfortable too. Many of us have been neutral about whether sanctions against Zimbabwe are a good idea.

Neutrality might seem marginally better than silence. When someone remains silent, there's no guarantee they even think about an issue. Expressing neutrality in respect of a burning debate at least confirms you have actively reflected on the matter and taken a view.

Silence and neutrality are a moral cop-out when you are a witness to injustice. Silence and neutrality are morally culpable even if you can, at little cost to yourself, speak out, condemn or help halt and reverse injustices.

Many people are silent about Israel's attack on Gaza and many choose neutrality rather than taking sides. These responses are poor ones and morally culpable.

I notice many friends, peers and acquaintances who are deeply committed to social justice in South Africa choose silence about what's going on in Gaza. Silence helps them avoid awkwardness, but does it help reduce deaths?

Neutrality, too, raises its pointless head. If it took a simple call for peace to bring about peace, the world would not be filled with so many conflicts.

The DA recently released one of these moral neutrality statements that are inherently useless. Neither the Israeli government nor Hamas have been waiting to have their consciences pricked by neutral calls for world peace.

It's easier to release this kind of statement than face the consequences of taking a substantive view about whether or not Israel's response to the senseless and wrongful deaths of some youth is proportionate.

Yet it's clear that the scale and intensity of the Israeli response is not justified in terms of just war principles. There's no need here for neutrality as an observer.

The ANC got it spot on in condemning Israeli actions. Jessie Duarte compared Israel's actions with Nazi Germany.

That comparison is not justified. People in Gaza are not being systematically exterminated.

But the ANC is right to not remain silent or neutral, not while many are killed unnecessarily. It's morally culpable to remain silent or simply make neutral calls on the sides to find each other.

I notice an attempt to be nuanced about this neutrality has become popular on social media. The issues, some argue, are "complicated", "deeply historical" and "difficult to understand".

This too is a cop-out. You don't need to become a historian before you can or should have a view about that which is clear.

It's time to speak out.

Rev Dr Xolani Tengo, Tengo Dialogue and Foundation 4 Business and Community Development Network, Port Elizabeth