The genocide which Israel has been mercilessly perpetrating against more than 2.3 million Palestinians squeezed into the Gaza Strip for a month now is no top grossing horror movie. It is real, it is madness, and we can’t describe ourselves as human beings if we continue to watch indifferently while the most incredible massacre of innocent civilians in decades proceeds uninterrupted, with thousands of children dying daily.
By what measure is the killing of 10,000 human beings in the course of one month acceptable? Is the vicious bombing of every possible target, including hospitals, churches, refugee camps, fishing boats, ambulances, universities and schools where hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians have been seeking shelter acceptable? The lengthy list of murdered Palestinians includes 4,000 children and 2,000 women; over 2,000 civilians remain unaccounted for and are believed to be dead under the rubble that has become the main feature of Gaza’s horizon. Each victim has a name and a family, dreams and ambitions. Each one is an equal human being, no different from the Israeli civilians killed in the Hamas attack on 7 October, or the Ukrainian civilians killed in the war with Russia which broke out two years ago.
For those living in this part of the world, no more atrocious expression of the Western governments’ double standards in dealing with human life in recent memory even compares with what we’ve seen since Israel launched its revenge attack against Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The civilised, democratic West preaching human rights, topped with the present US administration along with key European Union countries, have cited only Israel’s terror and anger on 7 October, never stating the obvious fact — for which action the UN Secretary-General António Guterres got flak — that the attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum or occur out of the blue. Indeed, many countries condemned the death of Israeli civilians in the surprising, unprecedented and humiliating attack by Hamas on 7 October. Yet, long before that, there had been nearly six decades of occupation, a tight blockade of Gaza, and wanton disregard for Palestinian lives and rights, expansion of settlement, apartheid laws and denial of most basic human rights for millions of Palestinians.
But even if revenge and collective punishment were the purpose of the ongoing onslaught, this cannot be a justification for violating all sorts of international agreements, including international humanitarian laws clearly stating that even wars have their own laws and regulations which must not be violated. For this purpose, the international community agreed to form transnational courts, such as the International Criminal Court, that have already dealt with similar cases of war crimes committed in Serbia and several African nations.
What Israel’s army has been doing in Gaza over the past month can only be described as a series of war crimes, including the threat to forcibly deport Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai which is firmly rejected by Palestinians themselves, as well as the Egyptian people and government. Yet, for Washington and Brussels, Israel is only practising its “right to self-defence.” To help calm widespread anger all over the world, the most that Israel’s Western accomplices have been ready to concede is allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as an unheeded appeal for limited “humanitarian pauses,” the real purpose of which would be to facilitate the release of hostages with dual Israeli nationalities, including over 30 Americans.
The message from Washington to Israel: pause bombing for one to two hours over 1 km until the Red Cross evacuates out a few American citizens, then you are most welcome to resume the killing and maiming of Palestinian civilians using the most advanced US-made bombs and F-35s to penetrate Hamas tunnels allegedly hidden beneath civilian homes, even if this means killing dozens of innocent children. The latest sign of official US sympathy to worldwide calls to stop the genocide was agreeing to provide Israel with reportedly smaller, more precision-guided bombs so as to avoid a repeat of what happened in Jabaliya Refugee Camp, with Israel dropping the second largest bomb in its arsenal, weighing nearly 1000 kg.
The US’ critics say this stand is to be expected of a superpower that has launched its own wars to invade and occupy other countries, most recently Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, according to American military experts and talking heads, not even in Iraq and Afghanistan did the US army apply this level of tolerance for so-called collateral damage in terms of the death of civilians while hitting suspected enemy targets. Thus, while the rate in Iraq, for example, could have been 1 suspect “terrorist” to 30 civilians, the living example we have been witnessing in Gaza as Israel blindly pounds the narrow strip has skyrocketed to 1 to 200 and even more, with not even a word of condemnation from major Western governments.
It is no wonder that not only Palestinians, Egyptians and Arabs too are outraged. People all over the world who believe in justice, equality and the value of human life, including people within the United States and Europe, are staging protests. Yet the key threat and danger is that the current Western bias in favour of Israel and its incredible disregard for human life can only fuel future hatred. The Palestinian children who are lucky enough to survive as well as generations of young Arabs are unlikely to forget the horrific images of dead babies and toddlers being conveyed in garbage bags by their own parents and the dead bodies in hospitals and at hospital doors. And the memory does not bode well for peace.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 November, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: