Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, the governing instrument of the world body, recognises member states’ right to self-defence. But this ‘unmoderated’ right can easily degenerate into a universal endorsement of genocide.
The stale chorus – Israel has a right to defend itself – is increasingly becoming an endorsement of impunity in the war between the Jewish state and Palestine. The October 7 Hamas aggression against Israel gives the internationally patronised Jewish state the excuse to intensify genocidal violence in Gaza.
The United States, for example, wants to give billions of dollars of additional aid to Israel to boost its military campaign. Meanwhile, the same US has vetoed a ceasefire proposal to the United Nations Security Council. Instead, the US is mediating for 20 trucks of relief supplies to millions of displaced Palestinians.
Israeli forces have already dropped more than 6,000 bombs, hitting schools, homes, hospitals and evacuation routes. Children fleeing from danger are being crushed under the rubble of what were once their havens. They have killed 4,800 Palestinians, demolished neighbourhoods in Gaza, and cut off food, water, electricity and internet after a Hamas attack killed 1,405 Israelis on October 7.
Even if Israeli arsenals don’t mow all their Palestinian victims, the beleaguered Gaza population won’t survive longer without water, electricity and medical supplies. The inhumanity of the atrocities on civilians worries.
Hamas terrorism on civilians is unconscionable, but Gaza’s children, now suffering the toll of Israeli vengeance, are innocent. Humanity owes these children compassion, no matter their side of the barbed wire fence.
The lives of partying Israeli youth are as precious as those of Palestinians. They all have a right to be.
The United Nations is warning of genocide as the United States, Israel’s chief patron, abets, fuels and cheers the atrocities. Leaders of Israel’s European co-patrons – Britain, and Germany – have visited in person to console while inciting Israel against Palestinians.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made wartime visits to show solidarity with Israel. Germany, haunted by the sick conscience of the Adolf Hitler Holocaust of the Second World War, hopes for redemption by standing with Tel Aviv against their Palestinian victims.
Israel describes this, and previous wars, as battles between civilisation and barbarism. Hamas has gone head-to-head four times with Israel since its formation in 1987. But the 2009, 2014, and 2021 clashes pale in comparison to the toll of the current war.
Hamas, whose founder was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, has since metamorphosed into a political party, and a government, ruling the Gaza Strip.
After about three weeks of Israeli vengeance in the name of freeing hostages in the cages of Hamas terrorists, the war is taking a different, but historically familiar trajectory.
It’s no longer defensible to say Israel is fighting Hamas, not Palestinians. The difference is blurred.
Hamas, an internationally recognised terrorist organisation, was founded as a Palestinian freedom movement. Its official name – Islamic Resistance Movement – shows the scope of its ideology.
Moderate Palestinians detest its excesses, more like reasonable observers should abhor Israeli oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Israel cheered as Hamas blossomed. It regarded the extremists as a counterforce to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, then under Yasser Arafat. The secularist-Marxist PLO leader was the portent danger at the time.
Israel's idea of democracy is linked to demography. For Tel Aviv, there can be no democracy in the Middle East without a Zionist majority. Therein lies the rationale for ordering 1 million Palestinians in north Gaza to move to nowhere in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Israel will cease to exist if it loses a Jewish majority in what it regards as its homeland – the ‘Promised Land’. Palestinians have always been forced out of the land that became Israel. This is executed under the guise of having found a land without people for a people without land.
Israel’s home demolition policy, now and earlier, seeks to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for Palestinians. It’s a deliberate disempowerment of Palestinians to perpetrate Israeli dominance.
Egypt is reluctant to let the refugees in because Israel won't allow the Arabs back when the bombing stops. When Arab leaders declined to meet US President Joe Bidden last week, they were showing solidarity with Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories.
The Arab world won’t allow a dominant and hostile Jewish state in their midst. When Arab ambassadors called a joint press conference last week, they were affirming their stand with besieged Palestinians.
