Recognising a Breakaway Somali Region to Divert Attention from the Gaza Genocide

[Deeq A.]

The President of Somaliland administration Abdirahman Abdullahi taking a call from Netanyahu earlier today.

Garowe (PP Editorial) — Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, has today claimed that he recognises the Somali secessionist entity, the Somaliland administration, as possessing a right to self-determination. The man held responsible for the killing of more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza now seeks to use Somalia as a political gimmick to divert attention from crimes against humanity.

The United Nations, the African Union, the European Union and the Arab League will reaffirm the political and territorial unity of the Federal Republic of Somalia.

Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, the President of the Somaliland administration, appears to have been deluded into believing that seeking recognition from Israel could facilitate the break-up of Somalia. Netanyahu himself has rejected the Palestinian state recognised by many Western countries, with the exception of the United States. This represents a new phase in the undermining of the global order and a move that risks emboldening predatory states.

The reaction of religious elites in Hargeisa to this flimsy gesture of recognition by Netanyahu remains unknown. The crimes committed by Israeli forces in Gaza will be taught in schools across countries where a sense of justice is still valued. Somalia will never accept its name being associated with any attempt by Netanyahu to divert attention from his criminality. His decision to violate Somalia’s sovereignty will only deepen the moral panic that has gripped Western countries in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide.

Normalising injustice inevitably leads to ever more heart-rending crimes against humanity. “…what he [the 20th-century Christian bourgeois] cannot forgive Hitler for is not the crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa” wrote Aimé Césaire in Discourse on Colonialism. The colonial designs of Netanyahu will not succeed.              

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