Photos: YouTube Screenshots
“Sad and outraged (by explosion at the hospital) done by the other team”, says US President Biden standing alongside the PM of Israel, parroting the Israeli propaganda’s claim without a shred of evidence. The explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital has left over 500 dead and hundreds wounded. The hospital is located in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City and is considered one of the oldest hospitals, founded in 1882 and is currently managed by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem. Al-Jazeera reports there were Israeli ‘warning shells’ fired at the hospital telling people to evacuate before the air strike.
In a classic oppressor tactic of blaming the victim, Netanyahu’s government was quick to blame Islamic Jihad for the hospital bombing, the same way it blames Hamas (using the population as human shield) for the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians by the indiscriminate air strikes of residential buildings. The facts tell us otherwise- Israeli Defense spokesman Daniel Hagan made it clear “The emphasis is on damage not on accuracy.” For anyone willing to listen, Israeli officials have been letting the world know of their intention. The defense minister of Israel Yozov Gallant put it bluntly “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” In case anyone missed the defense minister’s racist remarks, Major General Ghassan Alian added “human animals must be treated as such.”
Alarmed by the words and actions of the IDF and officials of the Apartheid state, over 800 international lawyers and experts of genocide and holocaust studies have issued a statement- “We are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. We do not do so lightly, recognizing the weight of this crime, but the gravity of the current situation demands it.”
In a case of the tail wagging the dog, the United States has been dragged into being a participant in this genocide by repeatedly expressing its policy of ‘standing by Israel” no matter what. In addition to the billions of dollars that our pliant congress will likely approve without a debate, additional weapons are pledged, US troops are on the ready, and an aircraft carrier and a destroyer are dispatched to the war zone in support of Israel.
Leaders of US, UK, Germany, and other European countries are tripping over each other to be seen with Netanyahu, again to show their unshakable support.
They see this crisis as welcome opportunity to get absolution for the centuries of crime against the Jews culminating in the Holocaust. It is a cheap price to pay, as long as that price is paid in Palestinian blood that is flowing in Gaza, a tiny enclave, home to over 2 million people now rendered practically uninhabitable by the bombing. Over a million are displaced with nowhere to go in the blockaded narrow strip of land. A UN call for a pause in the fighting to allow for humanitarian assistance to go through has been vetoed by our government in the Security Council. Who could object to humanitarian aid, you may wonder.
As the world’s attention is rightly focused on Gaza, the West Bank has seen an upsurge in settler violence against the Palestinians. Settlers killed 5 Palestinians in the village of Qusra last week alone, and the PA health ministry reports 61 Palestinians killed, 1250 wounded since the war on Gaza began, as a result of combination of settler violence and shooting by Israeli security forces. Homes were demolished, all echoes of the 1947-1948 ethnic cleansing campaign-Read Ilan Pappe’s book-The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Amidst this orgy of killing Palestinians by dehumanizing them, with the most powerful nation on earth, playing cheerleader seemingly egging the Israelis on, there are voices that are pushing back, refusing to accept the false narrative. It is coming from those who have had experience with colonial and imperialist domination. South Africa where the African National Congress (ANC) waged decades of stubborn resistance against its own Apartheid regime not long ago, has stood by the Palestinian resistance against present day Apartheid Israel. The South African foreign minister has spoken over the phone with the Hamas leader offering assistance.
Another leader familiar with American imperialism, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has likened Israel’s actions to Adolph Hitler’s Nazis. Israel has, as would be expected, called his statement ‘anti-Semitic’. The definition of anti-Semitism has been stretched beyond recognition when one is called anti-Semitic for condemning what many are calling a genocide already. Petro was not intimidated by such time worn tactics and stood his ground.
President Biden’s trip to Israel to express his support for Netanyahu’s government in person is currently underway but the carefully planned summit that was to follow with some friendly Arab states has been shelved for now as one Arab state after another snubbed the president by cancelling following the hospital bombing. The purpose of the trip was primarily to press the Arab states to condemn Hamas more forcefully than hitherto expressed and to help with release of American and Israeli hostages. President Biden, the self-professed expert on external affairs and diplomacy has managed, in one stroke, to damage perhaps irretrievably, the decades old alliance with some loyal and willing Arab potentates who always did America’s bidding.
The framing of the current conflict as Israel/Hamas war is itself part of the obfuscation effort to eliminate the word Palestinian from the narrative as if the conflict started on 7 October 2023 with the attack by Hamas. This narrative, swallowed in whole and amplified by the Western media helps shift the focus from the 75 years of domination of Palestinians by Israel starting with the Nakba followed by continued ethnic cleansing, settler violence, home demolitions, incarceration of children and stealing Palestinian land for settler expansion in the occupied territories since 1967.
The international community that has stood idly by as these war crimes were being committed is now, yet again witnessing quietly as a second Nakba is unfolding.
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Principle, a lofty and humane idea may make the framers of the principle proud of themselves but it remains just words on paper bereft of any willingness or mechanism to enforce by the international community.
An immediate ceasefire and establishing a humanitarian corridor to reach the trapped and displaced Palestinians in the now unlivable ‘’open air prison’ is the least that can and needs to be done with the utmost urgency.
In solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, a Luta continua.
Mohammed A. Nurhussein MD
