Essays
Israel has been in the act of openly committing a genocide against Palestinians since the 7th October Hamas attack on the Israeli people. But the Israeli government and its shameless western backers are in continuous denial of the whole thing. On the one hand, Israeli officials and the Zionists are saying that the number of deaths is false, on the other hand, they are openly declaring their intention of making Gaza empty suited for Israeli settlement by wiping off all the people living there for generations.
International Court of Justice, the UN, human rights organizations all have found Israel guilty of committing genocide. Yet, the condition in Gaza and other Palestinian areas has been worsening day by day. Last month Brazilian president Lula da Siva compared Palestinian genocide to the Holocaust. He said, "What's happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn't happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews." (Brazil's Lula compares Israel's war on Gaza with the Holocaust, 18 February 2024, Al Jazeera)
So far around 32,000 Palestinians have been killed and 75,000 wounded by Israeli attacks since October 7. Of those killed 13,000 are children and two-thirds are women, children and elderly people. In an article (Israel's Flour Massacre in Gaza Is a Horrific War Crime, 3 March 2024) in the Jacobin, Seraj Assi wrote: 'Nearly two million civilians have been displaced. Half of the population are starving. Several hundred thousand Palestinians are believed to remain in northern Gaza despite Israeli orders to evacuate the area; many have been reduced to eating animal fodder for survival. Footage of bone-thin children vomiting animal food and then dying has shocked observers. Gaza doctors have been warning that growing famine in Gaza is "turning children into skeletons."'
This ongoing Zionist mission of genocide before the eyes of the whole world shows how imbalance the global power structure has been and how humanity is becoming extinct in the western political practice. There have been big protests in major cities in the west including strong protests by many Jews in the world, yet these have had little impact upon the decision of powerful western countries to be with Zionist state of Israel.
Aaron Bushnell, a young active-duty member of the US Air Force self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest of what Israel has been doing in Gaza with full American support. This was meant to be a wake-up call to the current American administration. He doused himself in gasoline and lit fire with his phone livestreaming the protest event. He said, "I will no longer be complicit in genocide." Bushnell screamed, "Free Palestine," and died nine hours later at the age of 25.
His friend, Levi Pierpont, who also left air force as a conscientious objector in 2023 because he did not support what the military was doing, wrote in the Guardian (Aaron Bushnell was my friend. May he never be forgotten, 2 March 2024), "All we can do is hear the message he died to shine a spotlight on: the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity we share as military members and taxpayers of a government deeply invested in violence."
But the western media is trying to depict Bushnell as a mentally troubled person. Pro-Zionism pundits think it unimaginable for a sensible human to take his/her life in protest of an immoral thing. They simply cannot realize the amount of insanity it takes to behave "normally" watching such horrific acts committed by the Israeli forces against innocent civilians in Palestine.
These people complicit in the Israeli act of genocide removed Mehdi Hasan from MSNBC because of his popular Mehdi Hasan Show, which threw tough questions to pro-Zionism guests on the show. His grilling of Mark Regev, senior advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and catching him in the act of telling blatant lies about Hamas brought the media under pressure from the Israeli lobby. So Mehdi, the most uncompromising, courageous and talented interviewer in today's world, had to leave MSNBC. Fortunately, he has started his new media Zeteo now for doing the work independently.
Then there happened a deliberately committed massacre in Gaza when Israeli soldiers opened fire indiscriminately on the starving people waiting for flour from aid trucks. They shot them in the head and chest and ran their tanks over dead and wounded bodies. This horrific barbarous attack instantly killed more than 100 and wounded more than 1,000 people.
Seraj Assi wrote in his previously mentioned article, 'The massacre is a war crime on top of a war crime, as Israel slaughtered Palestinian civilians whom it has been starving for months, and whose only crime was queuing up to receive flour for their families. Palestinian officials have described the carnage as a "cold-blooded massacre." Palestinians have dubbed it the Flour Massacre - or perhaps more fittingly, the Red Flour Massacre, in reference to the bloodstained flour left scattered on the ground."'
Even this blood-soaked event is not enough to stop Israel on its track of emptying Gaza of any living person by killing thousands and ousting the rest from the land. The design is actively backed by the US government and its allies. The bombs that are falling on the heads of the Palestinian people are from the US arms factories. The money the country is having for making weapons is also from America. Israel is again selling these weapons to the American allies worldwide. Its policy is to give everything to Israel necessary for its expansion and occupation of the whole Palestine and on the other hand air dropping some food to the helpless starving people whom the Israeli military would be ready to gun down.
Stephen Semler's article (Joe Biden Is Shipping Weapons to Israel Every 36 Hours) in the Jacobin magazine (13 March 2024) discloses that "Joe Biden sent over one hundred weapons shipments to Israel" since the Israeli invasion against Gaza began. He wrote there, "From October 7 to mid-February, Biden had delivered twenty-one thousand bombs to Israel, and Israel had already dropped half of them." And "Israel's assault on Gaza continues because Biden thinks it should continue."
No fake, sweet hypocritical words from Mr. Biden is necessary any more, no sweet rebuke of Netanyahu, too. What is necessary is to stop supplying all the money, weapons and support to Israel from the indifferent head of the most powerful country in the present world. What is necessary is to give active respect to the last words repeatedly screamed by Bushnell: Free Palestine.
The writer is Editor, Biggan O Sangskriti
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