WHEN historians write about the period we are living in, they would feel — they must feel — compelled to call it an era where international law became meaningless, where morality and humanity disappeared, and where even a facade of Western-democratic values such as human rights were dispensed with.
What other conclusion can there be as a mass murder, a genocide most foul, fills our every waking hour: it is almost impossible to shake off the images of battered, bruised faces of children, of their amputated limbs, or of grieving mothers who are gravely wounded themselves, and of bodies of men, bleeding and, in many cases, bombed beyond recognition as human remains?
The truth is that powerful nations with the ultimate killing machines at their disposal will use their tools of mass murder unashamedly, unabashedly and will also manufacture ‘facts’ to justify their bloodlust. Yes, the more ‘composed’ reader may think I am sounding hysterical, or worse still, am so depressed and despondent that I see no hope, no new dawn.
But I ask how can anyone not be affected, moved, or, to be more accurate, devastated by the genocide in Gaza being conducted by the Israeli Occupation Forces, sanctioned by the Israeli nation, which stakes a claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East.
The Netanyahu government has been given a carte blanche to continue with its ethnic cleansing by mass murder, devastation of homes, starvation and deprivation of the Palestinians by its main enablers, the governments of the US, UK, EU and other democracies in the West and elsewhere.
Israel has been given a carte blanche to continue with its ethnic cleansing by its main enablers, the governments of the US, UK, EU and other democracies.
Where the US provides billions of dollars of combat planes, arms and ammunition, including missile and ‘smart’ bombs (the only smartness they seem to demonstrate is in targeting young children), the UK has not denied reports in the media that its daily RAF surveillance flights from its base in Cyprus help the Israelis in target acquisition in Gaza. All of Europe, most notably Germany and Italy, exports weaponry to Israel.
In the 18 months since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed some 800 civilians and 400 security personnel and in which 251 Israelis were taken hostage, over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. The number of children among them is over a third, and the wounded also run into tens of thousands. The proportionate response argument stands shredded.
To the moral, value-preaching Western democracies, this happened during Israel’s right to self-defence. During the brief ceasefire, the terms of which, nobody will tell you, were violated by Israel as it restarted its military campaign, all but 61 hostages were swapped for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, a majority of whom were detained or kept hostage in Israel under ‘administrative orders’ issued by military courts and were never charged with, or convicted of, any criminal offence.
To many Israel supporters, the Palestinian problem cropped up in October of 2023 with the Hamas attacks. They refuse to see or acknowledge the genesis of the issue, starting with the Nakba (expulsion), occupation and the over 75-year history of the denial of rights of the Palestinians to their land, liberty, equality and dignity.
As the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land simply, yet poignantly demonstrated, Israel is a brutal occupation power and an apartheid state where even ‘Israeli Arabs’ have no equality or dignity and right to free movement, and often remain at the mercy of violent settlers backed by the Israeli security forces.
And Israel does little to hide what it does. In fact, it arrogantly makes sure the world knows the impunity with which it goes about its business. The most recent example was the murder of 15 emergency and rescue workers, whose bodies were found in a shallow mass grave in Gaza.
Israel claimed that ambulances were ‘moving in a suspicious, dangerous manner’ and, therefore, its forces opened fire on them. But, of course, there was no explanation offered why some of the victims had their hands zip-tied behind their backs before being shot at close range.
In fact, the only remaining emergency medical worker left alive, who was taken away and tortured, was released in all probability so he could tell the world of the atrocity. Who knows if this was some sick, psychopathic mind’s idea of how to put the fear into the hearts of the active emergency workers that they should not bother coming to the aid of the wounded.
Among those murdered by the Israelis was an ambulance crew member who, despite being shot twice, returned to work after recovering because he believed in the cause of helping the wounded Gazans at the receiving end of IOF brutality. Read the details of his heroic work before he was killed, on the British newspaper Guardian’s site (it is free to access).
When the movement against South Africa was gaining momentum around the world with calls for boycott of the apartheid state, then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher came up with the term ‘constructive engagement’ to justify her country’s ‘normal’ trade and other relations with Pretoria, because she said this gave her the ability to influence the decision-making there.
Today, many among the Islamic-Arab world are following a similar strategy. At the time when the Gaza genocide resumed, the UAE ambassador to Israel posted a photo of a lavish iftar in Tel Aviv with guests feasting themselves sitting around tables stacked with food, even as Israel’s complete blockade of any humanitarian assistance to Gaza, including food supplies, was underway.
Whether this was ‘constructive engagement’ is difficult to say, as it is to predict the fate of the Arab plan for peace, recovery, rehabilitation and rebuilding of the mass ruin that Gaza has been reduced to. The only public pronouncement on the issue came from the psychopathic Israeli prime minister, who described his renewed onslaught on starving Gaza as part of a journey towards the realisation of the Trump ‘Gaza Riviera Plan’.
I wonder if the Western democracies and the ummah leaders have both put their collective consciences somewhere in cold storage that is inaccessible for the entire duration of the Palestinian annihilation.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2025
