AN UUCSA PRESS STATEMENT

 

The United Ulama Council of South Africa (UUCSA) is deeply appalled by Helen Zille’s recent remarks during an interview with Newzroom Afrika. When asked whether Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, her response was: “Genocide is a very big word and I haven’t been to Gaza, and I don’t know.”

 

This shocking statement suggests that one must physically “visit Gaza” before recognising genocide. Such a view is both factually baseless and morally indefensible. It trivialises the suffering of millions, undermines established international law, and seeks refuge in semantic evasion while the world watches atrocities in real time.

 

The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable:

 

• More than 65,000 Palestinians killed, the majority women and children.

 

• Over 1.9 million forcibly displaced—90% of Gaza’s entire population.

 

• Seventy-eight per cent of Gaza reduced to rubble, including homes, mosques, schools, and hospitals.

 

• Children deliberately targeted and murdered, while food, water, medicine, and fuel are systematically blocked.

 

The scale of death, destruction, displacement, and deliberate deprivation of essentials leaves no room for doubt. By any legal, moral, or factual standard, what is unfolding in Gaza constitutes genocide. One does not need to walk Gaza’s shattered streets to reach this conclusion; the evidence is documented by the United Nations, humanitarian agencies, journalists, and satellite imagery.

 

To deny or downplay this reality is to engage in genocide denial. Like Holocaust denialism, it desecrates memory, erases humanity, and emboldens perpetrators. Such abject obscurantism must be recognised for what it is: an assault on truth and a crime against the conscience of humanity.

UUCSA calls on leaders, institutions, and all people of conscience to abandon cowardly wordplay and confront reality. History will not absolve those who equivocated while genocide unfolded in plain sight. It will remember who stood for truth, and who enabled atrocity by silence.

 

Released by:

 

Y. Patel (Moulana)
UUCSA Secretary General

30 Rabi ‘al Awwal 1447 / 22 September 2025