WITH apartheid still fresh in their psyche after more than four decades under a white government that saw blacks as inferior to whites, it is understandable why South Africa has taken the unprecedented step of filing a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

‘The ANC has always stood side by side with the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination because, like we were before 1994, they, too, are faced with a brutal apartheid regime. President Nelson Mandela famously declared that our freedom as South Africa was incomplete without the freedom of Palestine’ (Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa).

But what happened in South Africa was a case of whites viewing themselves as racially superior to blacks. However, that is not the case in the Middle East. Genetics has proven that Arabs and Jews are closely related. Therefore, there is no reason to consider what is happening in Palestine as racist animus.

According to science. org: ‘As fighting continues in the Middle East, a new genetic study shows that many Arabs and Jews are closely related. More than 70% of Jewish men and half of the Arab men whose DNA was studied inherited their Y chromosomes from the same paternal ancestors who lived in the region within the last few thousand years.’

For the black South Africans to file a lawsuit against Israel because of the racism they suffered in their homeland is a false equivalency since both sides-Jews and Arabs-are similar in genetics and appearance. The conflict in the Middle East goes back to the 19th and 20th centuries, with the advent of Zionism and the Israeli need to have a homeland.

While Caricom considers the region a ‘zone of peace’, wouldn’t the call by a group of NGOs-asking Caricom leaders to take sides in the South African lawsuit against Israel-go against that promise that we stay above the fray by demanding that they suspend all ties to Israel?

Notwithstanding, it is madness for the NGOs to see the issue with a tinted lens. The Caricom region has close ties to countries that support Israel, such as the Americans and the Britons.

Furthermore, ‘Among the G20, nine countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey) have recognised Palestine as a state (Indonesia and Saudi Arabia only recognise Palestine), while ten countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States) have not. Although these countries generally support some form of a two-state solution to the conflict, they take the position that their recognition of a Palestinian state is conditioned to direct negotiations between Israel and the PA’ (Wikipedia).

So are the signatories of the letter to Caricom leaders by NGOs, advising them to take the side of South Africa in the Israeli-Palestinian ICJ lawsuit, at odds with our peaceful promise to the citizens of the Caricom region? The letter was signed by David Abdulah, Shabaka Kambon, Imtiaz Mohammed, Zakiya Uzoma-Wadada, Ozzie Warwick, Carol Noel and Jacquie Burgess ( Newsday).

If we take sides in a conflict, as we have not done in the case of Venezuela vs Guyana, why are we getting involved in this injudicious lawsuit that could end up hurting us with a backlash and profound ramifications?

Rex Chookolingo