The left is largely unanimous in its disgust over the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel, as well as the subsequent brutal, aimless war the Israeli government is waging in Gaza, which has claimed over 28,000 Palestinian lives to date.
However, this conflict isn’t the only one where lives have recently been lost, property has been destroyed, and American resources are involved.
Many on the left refer to Israel as an “apartheid state,” drawing comparisons between the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the living conditions of Black South Africans prior to the early 1990s. While no two circumstances are exactly the same, I understand the comparison—especially since South African officials themselves have made it. But what I don’t understand or agree with is the singular focus on Gaza by much of the activist left—to the exclusion of other human-created disasters worthy of our attention and outrage.
There are 35 armed conflicts in Africa, including several in the Sahel, where in some cases there is a direct American military presence. For example, as of December 2023 there were 1,000 U.S. military personnel in Niger, a country that suffered a military coup in July. Many have decried the IDF’s carelessness in bombing and shelling United Nations facilities in Gaza, but the attacks in the Sahel on U.N. facilities have been every bit as costly. In fact, MINUSMA, the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, has been referred to as “the United Nations’ most dangerous peacekeeping mission.” It left the country for good in December 2023 at the behest of the Malian government.
Ethiopian refugees who fled Ethiopia's Tigray conflict arrive by bus from Village Eight transit centre near the Ethiopian border at the entrance of Um Raquba refugee camp in Sudan's eastern Gedaref state, on December 11, 2020.
Protests have taken place around the country in support of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank—including 300,000 people marching through Washington, D.C., in November 2023 in support of a ceasefire. Again, I agree that a ceasefire is desperately needed. But there seems to be a hierarchy of concern for my fellow leftists.
President Joe Biden was recently called out by Professor Marc Lamont Hill, a man I greatly admire. Hill referred to the president as “Genocide Joe,” but I haven’t seen him taking the president to task over the $1.9 billion in aid to Ethiopia in 2022, as that country engaged in its years-long Tigray War between the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front—a conflict that has left an estimated 600,000 Ethiopians dead and human rights abuses committed by both sides.
According to the U.N.’s World Food Programme, five million Ethiopians were in need of food assistance in 2022 in the Tigray region—which also lacked humanitarian corridors and fuel. I’m sure some of this is beginning to sound familiar, but it got barely a fraction of the attention the need for fuel, food, and humanitarian corridors in Gaza.
You won’t hear much about it in America, but the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo—the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II—continues to rage on. (A group of brave Congolese footballers recently enacted a silent protest during an international match this month to raise awareness of the war.) While the 1.9 million displaced Gazans surely deserve our attention and support, so do the 5.7 million Congolese similarly uprooted since 2022, and the estimated 25.8 million people in the DRC faced with acute food insecurity.
This instability and poverty exists in a country that contains 80 percent of the world’s cobalt which is necessary for lithium batteries. (DRC is also a source of gold, diamonds, and uranium.)
Soldiers of the South Sudan People's Defence Forces (SSPDF) prepare to be deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after their departure ceremony at the SSPDF Headquarters in Juba on December 28, 2022.
U.S. imports of lithium batteries from China rose by 99 percent in 2022, driven largely by the rising popularity of electric vehicles. The cobalt necessary for those batteries is mined by Chinese companies in the DRC. Those mines often use child labor and exploit workers. The Inflation Reduction Act attempts to free us from dependence on Chinese lithium batteries, but there is room for more advocacy on behalf of Congolese people.
According to U.N. reports, Rwanda trains and arms a militia that has wreaked havoc and committed war crimes in the DRC. Despite these damning reports, Rwanda still gets support from the U.S. provided Rwanda with $147 million in foreign aid in 2021 and is the country’s largest bilateral benefactor.
Where’s the U.S. left wing on this? Your guess is as good as mine. In places where U.S. policy plays a direct role—the atrocities fail to inspire the same kind of passion among leftist activists. Many are likely completely unaware.
It is not my intention to criticize protests on behalf of the people of Gaza. They are necessary, and they are correct. But I must ask the question of why other deadly conflicts with ties to European colonialism, imperialism, and exploitation in Africa are not a priority for the American left.
It’s not the right wing that prioritizes global humanitarianism. It’s the left we must look to for that. And the left must not ignore the epic tragedies playing out right in front of us—yet almost completely out of sight.
As Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) so eloquently stated, “The cries of Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me.” African babies’ cries also sound the same, if only we would listen.
Left-Wing Activists March for Palestine, but Ignore Africa
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22.02.2024
The left is largely unanimous in its disgust over the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel, as well as the subsequent brutal, aimless war the Israeli government is waging in Gaza, which has claimed over 28,000 Palestinian lives to date.
However, this conflict isn’t the only one where lives have recently been lost, property has been destroyed, and American resources are involved.
Many on the left refer to Israel as an “apartheid state,” drawing comparisons between the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the living conditions of Black South Africans prior to the early 1990s. While no two circumstances are exactly the same, I understand the comparison—especially since South African officials themselves have made it. But what I don’t understand or agree with is the singular focus on Gaza by much of the activist left—to the exclusion of other human-created disasters worthy of our attention and outrage.
There are 35 armed conflicts in Africa, including several in the Sahel, where in some cases there is a direct American military presence. For example, as of December 2023 there were 1,000 U.S. military personnel in Niger, a country that suffered a military coup in July. Many have decried the IDF’s carelessness in bombing and shelling United Nations facilities in Gaza, but the attacks in the Sahel on U.N. facilities have been every bit as costly. In........
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