It is indeed pathetic that some political leaders holding high office, as well as the mainstream media, with a few exceptions in India and elsewhere, still speak of the ‘Israel-Hamas’ war. Addressing a virtual summit of Global South on November 17, 2023, Prime Minister Modi said:
We strongly condemn the deaths of civilians in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
It is not only the Government of India that has consistently refused to see the reality; even prestigious English language dailies refer to the slaughter in Gaza as the ‘Israel-Hamas war.’ This shows the reach of Israeli propaganda across the world, particularly in the West and the rest of the world.
Netanyahu’s government projected the narrative that Israel was responding only to the ‘terrorist attacks’ carried out by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, and that it was only exercising its right to defend itself by hitting hard at the Hamas terrorists. Israel’s propaganda reminds one of Goebbels, who said:
Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.
Israel has bombed and killed more than 12,300 Palestinians, out of which 41 per cent are children and 25 per cent are women, as per the count available as of November 19, 2023. Babies, a few months to a few years, have been murdered. Dead bodies of small children, taken out of the rubble, make for a grotesque, stomach-churning spectacle. Are women and children Hamas terrorists?
Apart from the aerial bombing, Israel is killing Palestinians by denying them food, medicines, fuel, and other essentials. Potable water has become scarce mainly because of Israel’s destruction of infrastructure and denial of fuel.
The 2.3 million people in Gaza need a million litres of fuel daily. However, after repeated requests from the U.N., Israel permitted only 6 per cent of the required fuel. Israel’s far-right Ministers of Finance and National Security have opposed the decision to permit even that.
Probably in response to such opposition, the spokesperson of the Israeli government has said that the fuel has been permitted because the Israeli military operating in Gaza was running the risk of contagious diseases already spreading there.
All this shows the utter cruelty on the part of Netanyahu, who is imitating Hitler’s Final Solution carried out in the Holocaust. Babies in hospitals removed from incubators are dying. By killing babies, children, and women, Netanyahu is carrying out a despicable genocide against Palestinians.
Article 2 of the 1948 Geneva Convention to Prevent and Punish Genocide reads:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Convention makes it obligatory for the signatories to punish the perpetrators of genocide. Article VI stipulates that ‘persons committing genocide shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.’
President Biden, far from holding Israel to account, continues to send weapons and extend diplomatic support to Israel’s atrocities. He is pathetically vulnerable to Israeli propaganda. To give an example, on October 12, 2023, Biden claimed he had seen evidence of Hamas terrorists beheading babies on October 7. However, his Press Secretary soon had to publicly correct him by stating that neither the President nor anyone else in the White House had seen any such ‘evidence’.
The background to Biden is that Netanyahu had told Biden about babies having been beheaded by Hamas. Later, after millions had seen the story on X, formerly Twitter, the Israeli military denied seeing any evidence. In short, the technique is to put out a false story and to deny it after it has had wide currency, hoping that the denial would be seen only by a smaller number of people.
I was shocked to read Biden’s article in the Washington Post. Biden writes, “Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder. America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests — and for the good of the entire world.”
Is it not ridiculous to compare Russia with Hamas? Once again, we see the Israeli propaganda. Hamas amended its constitution in 2017 to say that it would accept a state of Palestine within the 1967 boundaries. Israel has refused to comply with Security Council Resolution 242. That is the root cause of the present conflict.
Didn’t the U.S. State Department’s historian explain all this to the White House? Biden is sleepwalking; a poll shows that most Americans want a cease-fire. Many officials from the State Department and elsewhere have publicly disagreed with Biden’s policy of punching below his weight vis-a-vis Netanyahu.
Biden should know that it is an established principle in ethics that if A commits an atrocity and B has the means to stop A, then both A and B are morally responsible. It may be argued that as a candidate for standing for re-election in November 2024, Biden cannot politically afford to displease the powerful Israeli lobby in the U.S. That argument does not hold water. As President, he has responsibilities, and being a candidate does not absolve him in this case.
We do not live in a unipolar world. However, in the case of the unfolding genocide, the world is unipolar, as only Washington has the power to compel Netanyahu to stop the genocide.
What were Netanyahu’s intentions? He has repeated many times that the IDF would have a presence in Gaza for an indefinite period lest Hamas reappear again. Under the threat, over a million Palestinians have moved to the south from Gaza City in the north. Israel bombed and killed thousands who were fleeing. Many of them were killed in camps and even hospitals.
After the IDF bombed and occupied the Al Sheba hospital, it claimed that Hamas was operating from that place, a claim that Biden supported based on ‘independent intelligence.’ Till now, the world has seen no evidence to justify the claim. Israel is accused of planting the evidence. For more insight, please watch this news report from the BBC.
Under the Charter, the U.N. Security Council is primarily responsible for maintaining international peace and security. When the U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said at the General Assembly that Israel should comply with International Humanitarian Law, Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen flew into a rage and demanded that the Secretary-General should resign.
Israel threatened to stop issuing visas to U.N. officials. Fortunately, Israel had second thoughts and did not stop visas. However, it showed its contempt for the U.N. by killing over 100 U.N. staff in Gaza. They were engaged in humanitarian work, anathema to Israel, whose ungallant Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, described Palestinians as ‘human animals,’ reminiscent of ‘Untermensch’, a word coined by the Nazis to describe Jews. In short, Netanyahu is imitating Hitler.
The UNESCO Constitution says, ‘Wars begin in the minds of men.’ That is correct. We may amend it slightly to say that wars begin and continue in the minds of men.
Netanyahu knows that he will be put on the mat once there is a cease-fire and that we shall see an N-exit. Netanyahu failed to get a majority in the last election and cobbled a government by aligning with the far-right; a majority of Israelis held him responsible for the monumental intelligence failure on October 7, 2023. Therefore, once there is a cease-fire, he will lose his job. Ergo, he wants to delay a cease-fire as long as possible as he couldn’t care less about the number of Palestinians killed. as he wants a Final Solution – a la Hitler.
One might ask whether it is proper to compare Netanyahu to Hitler, who killed 6 million Jews. I have heard this question from friends I respect. First point: Hitler killed 11 million human beings, out of which 6 million were Jews. Let us not forget the Gypsies and others. Second: isn’t Netanyahu doing what Hitler did?
Let us recall that the IDF ordered the Palestinians to move from Gaza City in the north to the south and then bombed the fleeing ones, even in their refugee camps. It is Netanyahu who has killed over 100 UN staff. The number of journalists killed is 36 so far. There should be no hesitation in calling a spade a spade.
Isn’t Biden sleepwalking to defeat in November 2024 by supporting Netanyahu without any concern for the reputation of America as the leader of democracies?
To understand Netanyahu’s mindset, it will be helpful to recall the leading witch Hecate from Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Act 111,Scene V):
I am for the air; this night, I’ll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end:
Great business must be wrought ere noon:
Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a vaporous drop profound;
I’ll catch it ere it come to ground:
And that distill’d by magic sleights
Shall raise such artificial sprites
As by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion:
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear 30
He hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace and fear:
And you all know, security
Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.
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