Jalil Dabdoub | Beneath the shadows of Rose Hall: CARICOM leaders guilty

Last month, beneath the brooding shadows of Rose Hall Great House, where the walls still whisper with the cries of the enslaved, CARICOM leaders assembled in Montego Bay. There, on blood-soaked soil, they gathered – descendants of the brutalised – to discuss regional affairs while a modern genocide rages in Gaza. The irony could not be darker or the symbolism more damning.

Gaza burns. Children lie buried beneath concrete. Hospitals are flattened. Families annihilated. A people face extermination – deliberate, systematic, and televised. Yet CARICOM, forged in the aftermath of slavery and colonialism, offers nothing but timid gestures and tepid prose.

CARICOM’s statement issued on July 11, filled with diplomatic fluff – a whimper in the face of Israeli atrocities.

It is a failure of moral and political courage. CARICOM’s voice has become an echo, fading into irrelevance. To speak in platitudes while children die beneath drones is not neutrality—it is complicity.

To refuse to name genocide is to deny reality. It is to watch history repeat itself with the mute obedience of cowards. Genocide is not a tragedy – it is a crime. To remain mute is to be an accomplice.

Once, this region thundered against apartheid. Once, we stood tall in defiance of empire. Today, we whisper as Palestine is erased.

When it comes to Israel’s decades-long campaign of land theft, settler colonialism, and racial domination, the silence is deafening.

Where are the calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions? Where are the demands to sever relations with an entity that bombs hospitals and starves civilians?

CHOSEN APPEASEMENT

Nowhere. Because CARICOM has chosen appeasement over principle. Comfort over conscience.

This is not merely a moral collapse. It is a breach of international law. Many CARICOM states are signatories to:

• The 1948 Genocide Convention: obligating them to prevent and punish genocide.

• The Rome Statute of the ICC: binding them to prosecute crimes against humanity.

• The Arms Trade Treaty and Geneva Conventions: prohibiting arms transfers where war crimes are likely.

These are not suggestions. These are obligations. Non-negotiable. Ironclad. To ignore them is not just shameful – it is criminal and complicity.

PM Mottley of Barbados, once lionized for moral clarity, called Gaza a “televised genocide.” She named the crime. Then did nothing.

Her words ring like sirens from a tower – loud but distant. A trumpeter sounding the alarm, yet refusing to descend to the battlefield.

It is morally reprehensible that Mottley, armed with legal acumen, can identify a genocide yet decline to act. This is not neutrality. This is collaboration by silence. Mottley, now stands as a mere trumpeter – sounding the alarm without ever truly leaving the tower. She remains perched on the podium.

Then there is PM Browne of Antigua. A man whose shame is etched in steel.

Antiguan-flagged ships have reportedly ferried arms to the Israeli military – including the HC Opal, suspected of carrying weapons used in the massacre of Palestinians. This is not passive silence. This is material support.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, such conduct implicates Antigua. Under the Genocide Convention, it incriminates. Laws are not ornaments. They are commands. To enable a genocide is to stain your flag in blood.

You cannot invoke the legacy of emancipation while delivering death to the oppressed.

And then there’s Andrew Holness, PM of Jamaica – perhaps the most egregious of them all. His comic performance on the international stage – posing with Israeli leaders and former IDF soldiers, parroting hollow phrases about peace while the bombs fall – is an insult to Jamaica’s legacy.

His government refuses even to utter the word “genocide.” Either he is ignorant of the law (nothing new for this administration) – or indifferent to it. Neither excuse will survive the judgement of history.

This trifecta of silence, inaction, and complicity is indefensible. CARICOM states are bound by the various treaties. Their duty is not optional. Genocide imposes obligations: to prevent, to punish, to cut ties, to act.

NO TWO-STATE SOLUTION

CARICOM continues to parrot the tired mantra of a two-state solution. But let us confront the truth: there is no two-state solution. What remains is a two-state illusion-shattered dreams, apartheid, illegal settlement, land grabs, concrete walls, indiscriminate detention without trial and military occupation.

Israel has constantly fought against a viable Palestinian state, they said so themselves. Its settlement project has fractured the land into non-contiguous Bantustans. Its military protects settler violence. Its laws and policies apartheid, not peace.

To pretend otherwise is to mask a war crime with the language of diplomacy. The world needs action. CARICOM must and take three urgent steps:

i. Publicly and unequivocally declare that a genocide is occurring in Gaza.

ii. Establish full diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine.

iii. Suspend all diplomatic and commercial ties with Israel.

This is our legal obligation, our moral duty.

To gather under Rose Hall, that grim relic of Caribbean horror, and utter nothing of substance about genocide – is to spit upon history. Our ancestors bled for justice. Their spirits haunt those halls. And their cries echo in Gaza.

We do not lack precedent. We once stood tall against apartheid. We once resisted empire. We once knew the difference between words and action.

Let CARICOM not be remembered as the body that sat beneath the ghosts of Rose Hall while genocide unfolded. Let us be remembered instead as the region that found its voice again – not in speeches, but in deeds. The region that led the world to true freedom and equality for all.

History will judge us. And history, like justice, does not forget.

Jalil S. Dabdoub is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com