“I am anti-Zionist and will remain so until it is destroyed because it is an unjust, illegal, immoral, and racist system,” Kwame Ture.

On September 24, 2026, at the 81st UN General assembly, an estimated 77 delegates walked out of the hall at the beginning of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech. Several delegates from European countries remained, but what was most appalling is that some representatives of the Global South remained. What makes this so disgraceful is that some of the countries that remained are countries with people of color, countries that have experienced colonial occupation and oppression firsthand. Countries of the Caribbean and Africa have opted for a path of cultivated ignorance regarding Israel’s decades-long Zionist project in the region, resulting in occupation, displacement, apartheid, and genocide against an entire population. The Gaza Health Ministry has reported that the death toll from the slaughter of their population by Israel has surpassed 74,000, at last count 21,000 of them were children; further, since the “ceasefire” last October 2025, 1,400 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces. To sit in a session and listen to the architect of this bloodbath, and showing no resistance is tantamount to complicity and cowardice in confronting Israel’s defiance for the world community.

The Cultivated Ignorance of Black Leaders

The Jamaican Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson-Smith gave the most vulgar excuse for her government’s political cowardice and “spinelessness” in capitulating to genocide, when she remarked that “we’re not a walkout country.” Since Israel’s disproportionate retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas incursion into Israel, the Israeli government has carried out the most brutal, inhumane, and reckless military assault against the Palestinian people, never before seen in modern times. Apart from the tens of thousands slaughtered, including entire families, the Israeli forces have destroyed infrastructure, hospitals, schools, desalination plants; they have murdered health care workers; in one instance they killed a medical emergency crew and buried them and their ambulance in a mass grave. To keep their atrocities hidden from the public, the Israeli security forces has killed a reported 250 journalists.

In an article in CounterPunch it is reported that the equivalent of 6 Hiroshima bombs has been dropped on Gaza. At least one million Palestinians have been forced out or bombed out of their homes and forced to live in makeshift refugee camps; worst, the Israeli government have forced famine on the people of Palestine, by not allowing an adequate supply of food and other humanitarian supplies to reach the people of Gaza.

 The devastation in Gaza is not a secret. Independent news agencies, civil society organizations and individual social activists, has informed the world through words and images, what Israel has done and is doing to the people of Palestine. Israel has now extended its colonial expansion to the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. To be an enlightened leader or politician and ignore or deny these empirical facts, are proofs that they are not only “brain dead” but have not transcended their mental colonization. They have become collaborators with the enemy. The logical conclusion of that is, those on the side of social justice, those who express and support solidarity with the oppressed, have to fight against these collaborators too; they are an hinderance to peace, working class democracy and progressive social development.

Todays “leaders”: Old Wine in Old bottles

The action of those European countries that chose to remain could be expected; some are either colonialists themselves or have practiced genocide, racial oppression, land seizure, or apartheid. The United States, France, Great Britain, Italy to name a few all have a shared history when it comes to racism and the oppression of minorities and indigenous peoples. For any country of the Global South to remain is a disgrace and unconscionable. An objective look at the leadership of the countries of the Global South, will show that an unsettling amount of them are traditional, “establishment” leaders in power today; they are not intellectually or ideologically equipped to deal with the new conditions facing imperialism. They were trained from a colonial viewpoint, they were trained and conditioned in a colonial mindset, and worst they are not well read. In first order, they do not understand white supremacy and its role in imperialism; they definitely do not understand imperialism. If they are to remain in power and do any good for their people and by extension the global community, they have to be voted out of office or their minds have to be decolonized.

Psychiatrist, intellectual, political activist, the late Frantz Fanon - Photo: deutschlandfunkkultur.de

The late intellectual and political activist from Martinique Frantz Fanon, spoke about the importance of mental decolonization: “It infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of men, with a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is truly the creation of new men. But such a creation cannot be attributed to a supernatural power: The “thing” colonized becomes a man through the very process of liberation.” From Fanon’s book The Wretched of The Earth. What is implied is that the process of mental liberation comes from facing and engaging in resistance to injustice, capitalist exploitation, and domination. It involves a “new” thinking on the part of the individual, formed in the crucible of struggle and interaction with the working class in the liberation struggle. Many who were formerly engaged in liberation struggles quickly abandon it once they get into power or became an elected official; others have no history of struggle, no intimate contact with the working class of their respective country and are nothing more than elected bureaucrats. Their thinking is old, archaic, ideologically bankrupt and reactionary.

Photo: Grenada forever

All the empirical evidence is there that Israel, with impunity, has violated numerous International Laws and has continued to do so; the spineless actions of these coward leaders have served to further embolden a colonial and genocidal regime, to continue their ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is an historical fact that Palestine has always stood with oppressed people. During the Civil Rights era in the United States, it was known that Palestinian leadership openly voiced their support for the Black liberation struggle in the US and the Continent of Africa. Palestine has always stood with the oppressed peoples of the world. They have commented on the podium of the UN their solidarity with the Civil Rights Movement in the US, and Yasser Arafat welcomed a group of Black activists to Palestine. The late Nelson Mandela of South Africa was definitive about his support for the Palestinian’s struggle for self-determination; he was unequivocal regarding the parallel with Israeli occupation in Palestine and apartheid in South Africa. There is a long history of Black activism’s support for the struggles of the Palestinian people.

Black Leadership’s Betrayal of Self-determination

The struggles of the Palestinian people are not alien to the social history of the Global South or Blacks and indigenous people, within the borders of the United States. It is a history of conquer, occupation, racial discrimination, attempts at obliterating local cultures and customs, domination, oppression, and especially in the United States the genocide perpetrated against the Indigenous people.

These so-called leaders of today, desperately need to go back and look at that pivotal 6th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) held in Havana, Cuba, in 1979 which is still relevant today. Central to the Political Declaration was a resolute condemnation of imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism (including Zionism), and apartheid as interconnected threats to sovereignty and self-determination. It defined non-alignment's "quintessence" as the "struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, racism including Zionism and all forms of foreign aggression," On the issue of Palestine the Political Declaration read: “The Conference reaffirmed that the Zionist occupation, and the usurpation of Palestine and of the rights of its people are the core of the Middle East conflict and consequently rendered any solution to that conflict impossible without the exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable national rights, including the right to return, to attain self-determination and to establish an independent Palestinian State in Palestine”

Former Prime Minister of Jamaica, the late Michael Manley - Photo: jamaicans.com

Apart from being “well read” and an established intellectual, former Prime Minister of Jamaica, the late Michael Manley, was a principled and courageous leader, committed to liberation struggles and the right of peoples to self-determination, and that the Global South should chart its own socioeconomic and political course, without outside influence or coercion. Manley was unequivocal regarding he and his government’s support for the self-determination, statehood, and sovereignty of the Palestinian people. He advocated a foreign policy of anti-colonialism, occupation, and expansionism. These are principles that a lot of present-day leaders and elected officials know nothing about; they have been weighed in the balances and found grossly wanting.