Palestinians held funerals Monday for 15 medics and emergency
responders killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza, after their bodies
and mangled ambulances were found buried in an impromptu mass grave,
apparently ploughed over by Israeli military bulldozers [photo credit:
Palestinian Red Crescent]
What is happening in Gaza today is reminiscent of European ghettos
and Nazi concentration camps in WWII. Israeli impunity is another
appalling example of the complete insignificance of international law
today. “We who have grown up in the shadow of the Holocaust can’t deny
the parallels we see with our community’s own subjugation and
dehumanisation” commented Jewish Voice for Peace.
A few more examples: for the last month Israel has prevented the
delivery of all food, water, fuel, medicine and everything else for the
Gaza Strip’s population of more than 2 million Palestinians,
systematically starving the population during Ramadan and Eid. Warsaw
ghetto anyone?
UNICEF says that at least 322 children have been killed since March 18 and at least 609 others wounded. Last week Al Jazeera reporter Hossam Shabat became the latest journalist to be killed by an Israeli strike on his car. According to the Costs of War project,
since October 7, 2023 Israel killed more journalists in Gaza than the
U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War
(including Cambodia and Laos), the 1990s and 2000s wars in Yugoslavia
and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined, concluding that it is
“the worst ever conflict for reporters”.
Almost every IDF platoon in Gaza keeps a sub-army of innocent Palestinian
slaves to be used as human shields to enter houses in Gaza to make sure
there are no resistance fighters or explosives - the so-called
"mosquito protocol". This week, Israel ordered
mass evacuations from Rafah and launched a ground offensive killing
more Palestinians. Israel’s strategy is to force those who do not die
from hunger or bombs into concentration camps from which they will ‘voluntarily’ agree to migrate. Critics have compared Israel's ‘voluntary migration’ plan to the Nazi Madagascar Plan that was endorsed by Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler himself. Offer Cassif, a member of Israel's parliament, compared
the new Israeli expulsion committee established to oversee the
"voluntary" expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland to the Nazi
"Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration", established in August 1938 to
encourage Jewish "voluntary" emigration from Nazi Germany and
Nazi-annexed Austria.
Every genocide has its architects, executors and sycophants. This
time Israel is the architect, the IDF the executor and western
intelligentsia, politicians and press the sycophants. The UK government
is among those supporting, arming and militarily assisting Israel to
commit these war crimes. Without western weapons and ammunition, none of
this would be possible.
All 125 member states of the International Criminal Court are legally
obliged to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu and transfer him directly to The
Hague to face charges of using starvation as a method of warfare,
intentionally attacking civilians and the crimes against humanity of
murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. With the conspicuous
exception of the rebel Huthi movement in Yemen and South Africa which are acting as required by international law to stop the genocide, the opposite is happening.
In an ostentatious and shameless violation of his obligations under
international law, including the Geneva Convention, on Thursday,
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban rolled out the red carpet for Netanyahu, a wanted war criminal. This follows a meeting
on Tuesday between Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and
Netanyahu, and another one last week between Israeli defence minister
Israel Katz and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and
Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
Millions of decent human beings worldwide see that respect for
international law, and ‘western humanitarian values’ are being
jettisoned. They are left vacillating between incredulity, rage,
frustration, impotence, depression and pain at the suffering of
Palestinians. Meanwhile, the rogue Israeli state continues to kill,
starve, and mutilate Palestinian children and adults with complete
impunity, as it has done for decades and with the complicity, or worse,
of our governments.
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