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LONDON: Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has called for the genocide in Gaza to be taught in schools.

The 22-year-old, speaking while participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla that is delivering humanitarian aid to Palestine, said: “I think (schools) should bring up early warning signs of genocide, such as the Holocaust, and apply those to what we are currently seeing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“The current education systems have absolutely failed us in teaching an understanding of the historic times we are living in.”

Teaching pupils about the Holocaust as part of the high school history curriculum is a legal requirement in England. Schools also mark Holocaust Memorial Day on Jan. 27 in commemoration of the millions of people murdered during the Second World War by the Nazis, as well as the victims of later genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Thunberg said that she had been inspired by the example of British people who have protested against the UK government ban on the activist group Palestine Action, The Times newspaper reported.

“I’m very inspired by the huge mobilization that has been happening in the UK for the people of Palestine, which I think we can learn a lot from. People of all ages, not only student encampments but also those brave people who might face terror charges just by saying they support Palestine Action.

“I didn’t learn about what was going on in Palestine in school because it was always portrayed as a conflict.

“Then, when you discover that this is a genocide, this is an occupation, an apartheid, ethnic cleansing, then it is not at all what we have been taught in school.”

International law defines genocide as actions undertaken with the intent to destroy, partly or as a whole, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The UK government concluded this week that Israel’s actions in Gaza do not constitute genocide. However, a UN special committee previously found the actions to be “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.” Thunberg said it is now “undeniable” that a genocide is happening in Gaza.

CAPE TOWN: A streak of killings in South Africa’s dangerous ganglands in Cape Town has led communities to demand protection as city officials say they lack the resources to stop the violence.

“One gangster, one bullet,” scores chanted at a recent march led by an anti-gang group in the sprawling Cape Flats area after authorities recorded 59 murders over seven days last month.

“Our communities are fearful,” said Cape Flats Safety Forum activist Lynn Phillips at a new protest this past weekend. “We don’t have to switch on Netflix to hear gun violence. We sleep, we eat, and we wake up with gun violence.”

The toll is “deeply alarming,” said municipal safety official Jean-Pierre Smith during a nighttime patrol of another part of the neglected stretches of a city that attracts hordes of tourists to lush suburbs less than 20 km away.

“We do have a massive spike at the moment” in a murder rate that already averages about 300 every three months, Smith said, citing leadership and turf battles between gangs involved in drugs and extortion.

In the past weeks, a two-month-old boy died after being struck by a stray bullet inside his home and a 12-year-old girl was killed in crossfire.

On Smith’s late-night patrol, police vehicles wound through the streets of the Lavender Hill suburb, where children played outside cramped apartments.

Police periodically frisked people and checked vehicles, seizing from one several bottles of a codeine-based cough syrup sold on the black market, and taking the driver in for questioning.

Smith photographed gang insignia spray-painted on a public building.

In the absence of adequate intelligence gathering, police searched all men of “gang age” — late teens to around 25 years old, he said.

“There is a known deficiency in the ability of the police to detect crime, investigate it and drive prosecutions,” he said.

“The police do nothing here ... and they are disrespecting the people,” Tanya Ruyters, 55, said, angrily, after her son was allegedly shot by a gangster outside a court, his body under a white cloth behind her.

Just 2 to 3 percent of gang-related murders in the Cape Town area result in convictions, Smith said.

“Detectives are massively overloaded, with massive case volumes, too many to reasonably handle,” he said.

At the same time, “the gangs are getting more sophisticated,” he said. As they scoop up cash and experience, they recruit more corrupt judges and police onto their payrolls, he added.

Cape Town districts, also dealing with a rise in deadly clashes in the minibus taxi industry, hold the country’s top five spots for murder.

In Lavender Hill, less than 5 km  from the sandy beaches of False Bay, Mark Nicholson lives near a plot known as “the battlefield” because of its history as a gangster killing ground.

He has lost seven relatives in three years to gang violence in his suburb, one of several created decades ago when the apartheid government forced “Colored” people out of the city center.

“When I see a young boy laying dead and he’s been shot, I cry because we’ve been through this,” he said.

Nicholson runs a project to get youngsters off the street and into sports. “My fight is not against the gangsters,” he said. “I need to change these children’s lives so that they don’t get trapped into the violence.”

Others are calling for more radical action.

A breakaway group within the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, an organization that in the 1990s targeted gang leaders for assassination and whose leaders have previously been jailed, has called for the army to be deployed.

“We need to give a clear message to those gangsters that we are no longer going to allow their lawlessness to control our communities,” said PAGAD G-Force representative Zainoneesa Rashid ahead of the latest protest.