Israel’s genocide of Palestinians

US and European leaders willing partners

[Wounded Palestinians sit on the floor at Nasser hospital following Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip (Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)]

By Latheef Farook

The blood of  Palestinian new born babies, innocent children, harmless teenagers, men, women and the aged is not only on Israel’s Prime Minister turned Crime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  and his war cabinet but also on US  and European leaders.

This included US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister of Indian origin   Rishi Sunak,  French President Emanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz  and others. Following the on going Israeli slaughter  of Palestinian civilians  and the flattening of  buildings in Gaza  in  the wake of October 7  Hamas attack on Israel, these leaders have one common language  in supporting  Israel.

That is ,Israel has the right to defend itself. One after the other  Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Emanual Macron  visited Israel  and openly extended military, political and financial  support to Israel  to continue it barbarity on Palestinians. They  supported despite the media showing Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians and the destruction of houses, schools, hospitals  and infrastructure turning Gaza into a graveyard.

Peace loving people worldwide  demonstrated demanding  immediate  end to Israel’s carnage which shook the conscience of all alike. However hearts of western leaders failed to melt. They  continued to support settler colonial state of Israel’s unprecedented barbarity when it unleashed its military might   from air , sea and land    on Palestinian civilians deprived of water, food, electricity, fuel and no place to live as their houses   reduced to rubble.

Following the October 7  Hamas attack on Israel,  US  sent warships and military aircraft into the Eastern Mediterranean, supplied Israel with over 10,000 tons of military equipment and   allocated $14.5bn in military aid for Israel.  US also  transferred     bunker buster bombs to Israel that are meant to penetrate hardened structures before exploding.    

A joint statement  issued almost two months into the genocide  on Sunday December 3  by the White House after U.S. President Joe Biden initiated a call with leaders of Canada, UK, France, Germany and Italy  to reiterate   their support for Israel.

 In line with US policy UK Prime Minister Rishi  Sunak  deployed UK military to the Eastern Mediterranean to support Israel and provided  military support  to continue Israel’s genocide  of Palestinian civilians.

 Sick  of Israel’s barbarity helpless  U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of UN Charter- a rarely exercised power –  to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza  and urged members to demand an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.   

All such moves fell on US European leaders’ deaf ears. Nothing is likely to change, as in the case of   Israel’s  past war crimes, and Israel’s barbarity on Palestinian is expected to  continue as US and Europe control  UN, International court of justice and all other such institutions.

 US sided with Israel in rejecting all UN  resolutions calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. The  latest being the UN   Security Council  resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza on Friday December 8.   It was  backed by almost all other Security Council members and dozens of other nations . 

The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining. The United States’ isolated stand reflected a growing fracture between Washington and some of its closest allies over Israel’s months long bombardment of Gaza. France and Japan were among those supporting the call for a cease-fire.

In a vain effort to press the Biden administration to drop its opposition to calling for a halt to the fighting, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were all in Washington on Friday. But their meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken took place only after the U.N. vote.

This has been the attitude of US   despite Israel  killed so far more than 17,400 people, half of them children, around 3000 women, destroyed more than 70 percent of the housing units forcing people, deprived of water, food, fuel, medicine and electricity for  more than two months, to sleep on streets in cold weather.

Addressing the UN Security Council on Friday December 8  Secretary-General Antonio Guterres   said “We have already seen the spillover in the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. There is clearly  a serious risk of aggravating existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security.”

 This US-European support to Israel’s genocide won the wrath of columnists worldwide. Stating that the blood of Gaza is on the  leaders of  West’s hand as much as Israel, columnist Jonathan Cook said Israel is on the rampage again and Gaza’s population is facing a quiet, slow path to erasure. The ones funding and enabling it are the US and its European allies

Columnist Manuel Hassassian said “ Today, the new world order is epitomized by a barbaric regime that transcends all human norms and conventions to achieve absolute control over people’s capabilities. It imposes apartheid-like laws and fosters a view of non-white-Anglo-Saxons as inferior, aiming to humiliate them. Regrettably, most western European nations align with this American-led imperialism, which tramples human values, suppresses all liberation movements, and stifles global dissent. 

A large gap exists between governments and peoples who oppose this hegemony, which is symbolised by multinational corporations, the military-industrial complex, targeted media, Zionist lobbies and similar entities. Free societies comprehend the nature of this system and its goals, yet they struggle to confront it directly, lacking the courage to resist and safeguard the natural and economic capabilities of the oppressed.

 For the past 16 years, western backing for Israel has not wavered, even as Israel has turned the coastal enclave of Gaza from the world’s largest open-air prison into a gruesome torture chamber, where Palestinians are experimented on.

This conflict seeks to annex the occupied West Bank, isolate northern Gaza to serve as a buffer zone for Israel’s security, seize and then develop a multibillion-dollar offshore natural gas field in Gaza, and take the “Ben Gurion Canal Project” through Gaza, instead of building it around the territory. This canal would connect the Gulf of Aqaba to the Mediterranean Sea, rivalling the Suez Canal that runs through Egypt.said Manuel Hassassian

Wounded Palestinians sit on the floor at Nasser hospital following Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip (Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)