Israel’s extremist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now promised a ground attack on Gaza’s cities - what’s left of them that is - and saying there will be safe passage to the residents.
However, where will they go? What will they do? Conveniently, that, as with many other questions, remains unanswered as revenge still takes centre stage.
In the Netflix documentary “World War 11: From the Frontlines”, Episode 2 highlights atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler’s invading Nazi army in continental Europe.
Not only did they conquer, but they turned their wrath on the civilian population, burning homes and committing other atrocities.
If one Nazi soldier was killed by resistance groups, some 20 men, women and children would be indiscriminately killed in retribution.
The butt of their anger was the Jewish people, who suffered terribly. The Nazis characterised them as sub-humans and animals to justify their extreme cruelty against them.
Now, over 84 years later, this barbaric scene is being played out in Gaza - ironically the perpetrators are the modern state of Israel, the occupying force in Gaza - the invaders.
The victims are the Palestinians who lost their lands where they lived and worked for thousands of years - when Israel was formed from the ashes of the holocaust in the cauldron of the Western nations’ guilt.
Now a holocaust of sorts is happening in Gaza, caused by the people who were victims once, on a scale never before seen in the new millennium aimed at either the extermination or relocation of millions.
Let’s wind back to the start of this conflict. It started on Oct 7 by Hamas militants who made an attack inside Israel which killed some 800 Israelis and resulted in some 250 hostages being taken. Yes, it was violent and brutal and that act needed to be condemned.
However, decades before that fateful day, Israel had been putting its own settlers into Gaza, depriving Palestinians of whatever rights they had, forcibly moving them away from sites they wanted for their settlements - harassing and detaining them on the slightest of excuses.
If a person was deemed a terrorist, the family home was blown up very publicly.
The reprisal in the latest incident went far beyond Hamas and targeted indiscriminately the civilian population in Gaza.
Tellingly, Israel had intelligence that the attack was being planned but did nothing to prevent it, giving rise to the belief they allowed it to justify massive counterattacks.
Eventual casualties are not exact but few would dispute these figures - 28,000 Palestinians killed, 20 times the number of Israeli deaths of 1,400.
By some bizarre coincidence, this was the ratio the Nazis used in their reprisal killings in Europe. Some 68,000 Palestinians were injured while the number for Israelis was 3,000.
Most of the 28,000 Palestinians killed were women and children. Meanwhile, some 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza are homeless.
To understand the carnage that took place and is continuing, it is necessary to look at this in the context of Gaza’s population, at some two million people. They are frightening - 1.4 percent of the population has been killed, and 90 percent of the population is homeless.
That is an unimaginable human catastrophe. If 1.4 percent of the US population had been killed, that would amount to over 4.6 million people (1.4 percent of 330 million) and some 300 million people being homeless.
For the UK, with a population of some 70 million, nearly a million would have been killed and 63 million would be homeless, all in a mere few months of terror in a rain of bullets, bombs and rockets - trapped under buildings and with insufficient water, food and medical supplies. A living hell.
Western hypocrisy
Such barbaric, cruel, deliberate and systematic activities are being supported by the professed defenders of democracy - the West.
They should have stopped all support for Israel but instead voiced some meek concerns over Palestinian welfare and continued to provide Israel with the means to slaughter the Palestinians without interference.
It was left to South Africa, itself a victim for decades to a blind West which supported apartheid because the alternative would be detrimental to Western interests, to take Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Even before the hearings, Western countries, which ridiculously included Germany, were absolving Israel of guilt.
But in an iron-clad case, South Africa proved intent and showed the carnage that was taking place, including videos of homes being blown up while jubilant soldiers cheered. They showed that Israel’s actions went way beyond self-defence.
They showed footage of Israeli leaders invoking the Old Testament that the land belonged to the Jews and that Palestinians were animals who had to be killed or forcibly driven out of these lands.
What an ironic twist - the same excuse given when Nazis were exterminating Jews.
However, the ICJ’s interim ruling was tepid - merely asking Israel to stop genocidal activities and not even saying a ceasefire must take place for humanitarian assistance to happen. By the time it makes its final ruling, which could be a few years from now, Gaza could be gone.
In this continuing carnage of epic proportions, it looks like even God has abandoned the Palestinians. The wrongdoers are made to look right and the victims are made to look like murderers. The innocent suffers - a suffering beyond belief as the world looks on uncaringly.
Even many Israelis are aghast at the kind of actions that their country has taken against Palestinians.
The tide in most countries is turning against Israel but the Western nations which supply arms and money to Israel are still baulking and shoring up one of the cruellest regimes in recent times.
Israel’s relentless Nazi-like genocidal revenge in Gaza must stop.
What is required is for the four Western powers, Israel’s key supporters - the US, UK, Germany and France, to pressure the Zionist regime to stop its attacks immediately, give access to humanitarian aid and return to the negotiating table. Without their support, Israel cannot exist.
Tragically, the simple solution - an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank being set up with the security of both Palestine and Israel guaranteed by the United Nations and the superpowers - remains so elusive.
Until such a state is set up, there will be no peace for Israel or Palestine - something that Israelis, the West and Palestinians must realise. - Mkini
P GUNASEGARAM is often astounded by the crass stupidity of man, despite millennia of progress and civilisation.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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