Never Again is now
With the blessing of America's Trump, Netanyahu is killing Palestinians to evict them from their land and a world bereft of respect for international law watches
What is happening today in Gaza is unfathomable.
After the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust the world determinately said Never Again, but never again is happening again, today, in Gaza, where more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, 90 percent of their homes destroyed by Israeli bombs and rockets. The U.N. says 100 children a day, every day, are being killed or injured.
Since March 18, when Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu unilaterally ended the cease fire, nearly 2,000 Palestinians have been brutally killed. In the first 24 hours more than 200 children were killed, children. Medical health workers have been executed and Israel has stopped all food, water, everything to the tiny strip of land that is called Gaza, which is home to 2.3 million tortured people, more than half of whom are children and women.
They are starving. they are imprisoned in a strip of land, treated not as the human beings they are and international law demands they be treated as.
And to add to the daily horror they suffer, the very act of speaking out feels frightening, feels dangerous. Unfathomable.
Israel killed 15 Palestinian health workers and first responders initially saying the Palestinian health workers they killed had been menacing, travelling toward their soldiers in darkened vehicles until a phone of a dead health worker was found on his body and Israel’s lie was exposed. The images showed the bright flashing red lights of the ambulances. The scream of the sirens could be heard and then the gunfire and the health worker’s frightened voice finally trailing off in a prayer as he died.
International law says health workers are not targets, children are not targets.
What is happening in Gaza today is not about the hostages. It is not about Hamas. It not about the horrific Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas.
It is a brutal takeover of a land that belongs to Palestinians, led by Israel’s prime minister at the behest of the president of the United States, who sees a real estate bonanza.
The relentless carnage by Israel is not against Hamas, it is against the Palestinian population and it is not about religion, anyone’s religion. It is a brutal land grab.
In the Occupied West Bank, where no hostages are being held, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, injured or arrested. Israeli settlers who are illegally building houses according to international laws, laws that no so-called democracy is demanding be enforced, are destroying Palestinian homes, homes in which the Palestinians have lived for generations. The settlers are aided in their violent land grab by Israeli military.
Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children, since the brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Most without charge. Earlier this year the United Nations issued a frightening report that told of sexual abuse and torture in Israeli prisons, but no investigation has been conducted, no demands for accountability by an international community bereft of interest in international law or humanitarian law.
On Monday Israel bombed a tent housing Palestinian journalists killing one, injuring eight others. The strike was intentional. Israel has deliberately targeted journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which in February said 170 journalists, the only eyes on the carnage in Gaza, have been killed. Israel has refused to allow international journalists into Gaza, except with their forces.
The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday issued a statement demanding “the international community to act to stop Israel killing Palestinian journalists.” But the international community won’t act. For months the international community has watched as Israel defied international laws, humanitarian laws which say it’s wrong to collectively punish an entire population for the horrific acts of a few. It’s wrong to cut off water, food, fuel and imprison people in a narrow strip of land.
No Never Again.
And yet it is.