Genocide in Gaza:
mere Western tolerance or full collaboration?
Ovide
Bastien
(A French
version of this article was published by Presse-toi à gauche, October 29,
2024)
https://www.pressegauche.org/Genocide-a-Gaza-simple-tolerance-de-l-Occident-ou-entiere-collaboration
A few minutes ago, I learned that yesterday, October 26, Israel had once again killed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza. This time, it claimed 70 victims, most of them, as has been the case for the past year, children and women!
Over
the past three weeks, Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinian men and
women in northern Gaza, while systematically depriving 400,000 Gazans of food,
water and medical care. Most of the latter must make do with makeshift
dwellings, their homes having been destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces.
Clearly,
Israel's systematic sowing of death and starvation is intended to frighten the
population into leaving the region.
In
early October, a conference entitled “Preparing the Resettlement of Gaza” was
held outside the Gaza Strip, attended by hundreds of Israelis. Its aim: to
decide what was to be done with Gaza and its inhabitants once the war was over.
As artillery fire rang out in the distance, a young Israeli woman suggested:
“We should kill them, every one of them”. Sounding a little more reasonable,
Israel's Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, commented: “We will
encourage voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens. We will offer them the
opportunity to move to other countries because that land belongs to us.”
“What
does such “encouragement” look like?,” asks columnist for The Guardian
Nesrine Malik. “Based on the events of the past year, it is safe to say it does
not involve reason and persuasion. What encouragement looks like,” she pursues,
“is the “relentless” airstrikes
on northern Gaza, as the UN has described the latest phase of the assault. The
burning alive of patients in hospital beds, as happened to Sha’ban
al-Dalou, with an IV line still connected to his arm. The targeting of
children with drones, and then “double
tapping”: sending a secondary strike to hit those who gathered around to
help. The creation of conditions of starvation by blocking
supplies. The ordering of medical and civil defence teams
to leave Jabalia refugee camp. And designating several Al Jazeera
reporters still working in the area as “terrorists”.”[1]
If
readers find such a strategy of 'encouragement' a little extreme, they should
be reminded that it merely mirrors that which has long been practised in the
occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Fanatical Jewish
settlers violently expel Palestinian men and women from their ancestral lands,
with the full complicity of the Israeli government.
In
September, Professor Uzi Rabi, Director of Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan
Center, said in a radio interview that he hoped “the entire civilian population
of Gaza would be withdrawn from the north, and those who refused to leave would
be legally condemned as terrorists and subjected to a process of starvation or
extermination”. These remarks are in line with the “Generals' Plan”, a proposal
made to the Israeli government in early October by a few retired generals.
Under this plan, the Palestinians would be given a few days to leave northern
Gaza, then the area would be declared a military zone. Finally, those who
refused to leave would be killed and starved.
When
will this madness, this outright slaughter of Palestinians, who became refugees
decades ago because of Israel's massive takeover of their ancestral lands, end?
When will we stop watching this news, this ethnic cleansing, even this
genocide, as if we were simply being told that the weather is cloudy? When will
the international community finally put its foot down? When will the United
States, Israel's staunch ally, and Israel's other European allies, decide that
enough is enough? When will they put an end to their incredible hypocrisy? When
will they stop telling us all these tales of a rules-based order, of human
rights, of human compassion, when their daily concrete actions make it
abundantly clear that they couldn't care less about any of these values? When
they ignore all the cries of demonstrators around the world and all the
condemnations of international organizations? While we sometimes see
Palestinian children carrying their wounded kid brothers and sisters on their
backs for long distances, and while the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is
preparing to approve a motion banning UNRA from Gaza and the West Bank, this UN
organization which for decades has offered the most massive and important aid
to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees? (This motion was in fact
overwhelmingly adopted at the very moment when I was completing the original
French version of this article)
An
investigation by Al Jazeera's Sanad monitoring and verification agency,
reported recently on the channel's Inside Story program, may help us to
understand the source of the international community's astounding inaction and
silence. For it reveals that the West is doing more than hypocritically
tolerating what the International Court of Justice regards as plausible
genocide in Gaza. It shows that the West is massively involved, militarily
speaking, in this genocide.
Israel
claims to have the most moral army in the world. It is extremely proud of its
military capability, which is not only immense but also, in many respects, at
the cutting edge of world military technology. However, would Israel have been
able to carry out such a prolonged and relentless bombing campaign in Gaza for
over a year, and now in Lebanon in recent weeks, had it not been for the
immense cooperation of the West, first and foremost the United States and the
United Kingdom?
Al
Jazeera's Sanad monitoring and verification agency has used open-source flight
data to show the scale of American and British involvement in Israel's military
operations between October 2023 and October 2024. The data shows over 6,000
military flights over the region in one year, including hundreds of missions to
transport weapons to Israel.
Significantly,
of the 1,600 reconnaissance missions recorded, Israel carried out only 20%,
while the UK flew almost half.
Sanad's
report also reveals the scale of the Western airlift built for Israel. In the
space of a year, more than 1,200 military cargo flights were carried out.
Several European bases were used, with hundreds of flights from the UK,
Germany, Italy, Cyprus and Greece.
It
is this airlift, the report claims, along with the large number of surveillance
and air-to-air refueling flights, that has enabled Israel to wage such a long,
relentless and brutal war in Gaza, and is currently helping it to extend its
operations into Lebanon, and sometimes elsewhere in the Middle East.
The
inability of the West - particularly the United States and the United Kingdom -
to put the screws to Israel does not stem from the simple fact that the West is
deeply hypocritical, tolerates what is intolerable, and lacks courage and moral
strength. Rather, it stems from the fact that the genocidal onslaught underway
is not Israel's alone. To a large extent, it is that of the West itself.
[1]
Nesrine Malik, The
lesson of Israel’s unfathomably cruel war: ours is still a world where might is
right, The Guardian, October 28, 2024. Retrieved on same day.
