My Shame at the West’s Uncritical Support for Israeli War Crimes in Gaza
11.10.23
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What a disgrace it was on Sunday to see the UK’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, tweeting a photo of a huge Israeli flag projected onto 10 Downing Street, accompanied by the message, “We stand with Israel.” It followed an earlier tweet in which he declared, “Israel has an absolute right to defend itself.”
The exact same message was repeated across the West. “Israel has a right to defend itself — full stop”, President Biden tweeted, while Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, tweeted, “Israel has the right to defend itself — today and in the days to come”, and also declared — unilaterally, apparently, speaking for the whole of the EU — “The European Union stands with Israel.”
My disappointment with these official Western positions doesn’t stem from any kind of endorsement of Hamas’s actions on Saturday morning; or, rather, endorsing any actions undertaken by Hamas that specifically targeted civilians. As a lifelong pacifist, war disgusts me. I know that violence always begets more violence, that civilians always suffer, and that women and children are always killed, and I cannot support the killing of civilians under any circumstances.
That said, I also recognise that, throughout history, oppressed people, and especially those whose lands are occupied, and whose occupiers routinely and savagely subject them to flagrant human rights abuses, generally reach a point where some of them conclude that armed resistance is the only solution left to them. The most pertinent example, in my lifetime, is the resistance to apartheid in South Africa, which is of particular relevance because the Israeli government is also running a vile, murderous and dehumanising apartheid regime. In South Africa, the resistance to apartheid eventually led to the collapse of the country’s violent, racist, white supremacist government, and the election as president of Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned for 27 years for undertaking acts of sabotage against government targets after concluding that violent action was necessary to end apartheid and white minority rule.
In the specific case of Israel, and its oppression of the Palestinian people, the longevity and brutality of the Israeli state’s oppression is both unparalleled in modern history, and also provides the clearest possible evidence of why uncritically supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself” is actually an endorsement of war crimes; specifically, the targeting of the entire civilian population of Gaza — over two million people, including a million children — for “collective punishment.”
Anyone in any doubt that supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself” was endorsing war crimes only had the listen to the chilling words of Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant, as he announced the Israel government’s response to Hamas’s latest attacks on Sunday.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip”, he said. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”
This was not only a very public announcement of collective punishment; even more disturbingly, it was also an announcement of genocidal intent, via the very specific decision to describe the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip as “animals.”
As Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, explained in July 2020, in a report to the UN Human Rights Council, “Collective punishment has been clearly forbidden under international humanitarian law through Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. No exceptions are permitted.”
As he also explained, although the 1998 Rome Statute [the treaty that established the International Criminal Court] doesn’t recognise collective punishment as a war crime, it was recognised as such by the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the International Law Commission has long held that collective punishment is an “exceptionally serious war crime.”
A brief history of Israel and Palestine
Sadly, and shamefully as regards the responses to Israel’s actions by those countries that support its “right to defend itself”, we have been here before.
The centenary of the start of the long oppression of the Palestinian people took place just two weeks ago, on September 29, 1923, marking the start of British control of Palestine, as part of the redistribution of territories formerly controlled by countries on the losing side after the carnage of the First World War; in this case, the Ottoman Empire. Unlike all the other countries under this mandate system, however, where the stated aim was to administer these countries until they could become independent, the British Mandate for Palestine involved fulfilling a pledge made in 1917 by Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leading figurehead in Britain’s Jewish community, to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, fulfilling the aims of the Zionist movement, which had emerged in the late 19th century, in central and eastern Europe.
At the time of the Balfour Declaration, Palestinians made up more than 90 percent of the population of the country, but between 1920 and 1946, according to British records, 376,415 Jewish immigrants, mostly from Europe, arrived in the country, creating tensions with the existing population that, between 1936 and 1939, led to the Arab Revolt, in which the seeds of Palestinian oppression were first established. Under the British military, as Al Jazeera explains, “Villages were bombed by air, curfews imposed, homes demolished, and administrative detentions and summary killings were widespread”, and the British also supported settlers as they built up a military presence.
In 1947, prior to the end of the British Mandate on May 14, 1948, the newly created United Nations attempted to implement a two-state solution in Palestine, but the Palestinians rejected the proposals. Although a third of the population was now Jewish, they owned just six percent of the land, but the UN’s plans “allotted about 56 percent of Palestine to the Jewish state, including most of the fertile coastal region.”
Instead of a negotiated solution, what happened instead was the violent creation of the state of Israel, announced on May 15, 1948, after a sustained programme of brutality that included the massacre of over a hundred Palestinian men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem in April 1948.
By 1949, as Al Jazeera explains, “more than 500 Palestinian villages, towns and cities were destroyed in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic.” Around 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including in further massacres, and around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their homes, ending up “in 58 squalid camps throughout Palestine and in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt”, where their six million descendants still live, despite a UN resolution in December 1948 calling for their right of return.
At the end of the blood-soaked establishment of Israel, 78 percent of what had been Palestine was lost to Israel, with the remaining 22 percent divided between the West Bank, administered by Jordan from 1950, and the Gaza Strip, controlled by Egypt. Only around 150,000 Palestinians remained in the newly created state of Israel.
The final stage in Israel’s conquest of what had been Palestine occurred in June 1967, when Israel seized “the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War against a coalition of Arab armies”, as Al Jazeera describes it.
Despite its resounding victory, however, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people has continued ever since. At least 680,000 Jewish settlers from around the world now live in over 250 settlements created since 1967 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, even though the establishment of these settlements is illegal under international law.
In addition, although Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip were dismantled in 2005, when Israeli soldiers and 9,000 settlers also left the territory, the Israeli government’s response to the outcome of the first Palestinian general election the year after, when Hamas — an organisation founded in 1987, which believes in using armed resistance to end the Israeli occupation — won a majority, led to the imposition in 2007 of a complete land, air and naval blockade on the Gaza Strip that, for 16 years, has led to it being regularly and accurately described as “the world’s largest open air prison.”
Collective punishment and Israel’s slide towards fascism
Three years ago, when the UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk condemned the Israeli government for its collective punishment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, he did so on the basis of the day-to-day illegality of Israel’s actions. As he described it, “Collective punishment is an inflamed scar that runs across the entire 53-year-old Israeli occupation of Palestine. Over these years, two million Palestinians in Gaza have endured a comprehensive air, sea and land blockade since 2007, several thousand Palestinian homes have been punitively demolished, extended curfews have paralyzed entire towns and regions, the bodies of dead Palestinians have been withheld from their families, and critical civilian supplies — including food, water and utilities — have been denied at various times. Notwithstanding numerous resolutions, reports and reminders critical of its use, Israel continues to rely upon collective punishment as a prominent instrument in its coercive toolbox of population control.”
These persistent deprivations of the basic human rights of the population of the Gaza Strip are indeed thoroughly unacceptable, and illegal, but they are, of course, magnified to an extraordinary extent when Israel’s collective punishment extends to massive and largely indiscriminate military assaults on the Gaza Strip, as happened in 2008, in 2012, in 2014 and again in 2021, leading to thousands of Palestinian deaths, and as is happening again now with even greater ferocity than ever before.
The reason this particular assault on the Gaza Strip is so alarming is because the current Israeli government is the most far-right in Israel’s 75-year history. When Benjamin Netanyahu formed a new coalition government in December, which required him to include members of openly far-right parties, those paying close attention warned that the country was ‘heading toward a fascist theocracy” or was “sleep walking into Jewish fascism”, as Israel’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, declared at the time, by including far-right Jewish supremacist extremists like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Since the new government was formed, “put[ting] West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities”, and “vowing to legalise dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory”, as the Guardian explained, violence against Palestinians has markedly increased — most provocatively at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Palestinians’ holiest site, which is meant to be off-limits to Israeli forces, but also throughout the Occupied Territories, in violence involving far-right settlers. In March, for example, in response to the alleged killing by Palestinians of two Israeli settlers near the village of Hawara, settlers went on a rampage, in which homes and cars were burned, one Palestinian was killed, and around a hundred were injured.
Although the local Israeli military commander, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, condemned the attack, in carefully chosen words, as “a pogrom carried out by outlaws”, Bezalel Smotrich called for the entire village to be “erased.” As the Irish broadcaster RTE explained, Smotrich “later offered a partial retraction”, but the US State Department rightfully called his comments “repugnant, irresponsible and disgusting.”
Six months on, despite Israel’s evident commitment to indiscriminately killing as many Palestinian citizens as possible in retaliation for Hamas’s brutal attacks on Saturday, the US is not only firmly endorsing Israel’s genocidal “right to defend itself”; it is even sending warships to help out.
Dehumanisation and Nazi analogies
As the death toll mounts, I can’t help but reflect on how, despite the occasional flicker of concern over the years, the West’s default position regarding the Palestinians is as fundamentally racist as that of Israel; dehumanising Palestinian Arabs — who are also Muslims — just as effectively as the men held at Guantánamo, who are also Muslims, and whose rights I have persistently been fighting for over the last 17 years. Just as it is impossible to imagine the US treating prisoners of any other religion as despicably as it did, and still does to the Muslims held at Guantánamo, so it is impossible to imagine any other scenario in which a people as oppressed as the Muslims of the Gaza Strip would be so thoroughly condemned for resisting their slow death in their open-air prison.
Just as pertinently, however, I also wonder how decent Jews and Israelis deal with the fact that Israel’s history since its founding demonstrates so fundamentally how the abused have become the abuser. How can those who endured centuries of pogroms and the horrors of the Holocaust listen to Yoav Gallant talk about “fighting human animals”, and not recall the Nazis describing Jews as rats, and as Untermenschen; literally sub-human? How, as their government’s bombs kill yet more civilians in the Gaza Strip, can they not compare Gaza to the Jewish ghettoes created by the Nazis in Poland, “walled-off prison-islands described by … historians as little more than instruments of ‘slow, passive murder’, with dead bodies littering the streets”?
As David Livingstone Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of New England, and the author of the book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, told NPR when the book was published in 2011, “it’s important to define and describe dehumanization, because it’s what opens the door for cruelty and genocide.” As Smith explained, ”it’s very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being up close and in cold blood, or to inflict atrocities on them”, which is why the dehumanizing of others is crucial to allow people “to overcome the very deep and natural inhibitions they have against treating other people like game animals or vermin or dangerous predators” — or, in Yoav Gallant’s words, “human animals.”
The desperate need for a negotiated settlement
The only solution to the endless cycles of violence in Israel and Palestine is a negotiated settlement that returns, in some measure, to the two-state solution first proposed by the UN in 1947, and not the endorsement of Israel’s “right to defend itself” that is so uncritically espoused by the West, whose leaders should, instead, pay attention to what Haaretz noted in its editorial on Saturday.
Conceding no ground to genocidal pro-Netanyahu platitudes, Haaretz’s editors stated, unambiguously, “The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”
Uncritically supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself”, at this particularly bleak moment, is not only an endorsement of war crimes; under Israel’s current leadership, it may actually end up endorsing Israel committing the most severe war crime of all — genocide.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.
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52 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
As Israel’s most-far right government in its 75-year history bombs the Gaza Strip relentlessly in retaliation for Hamas’s attacks on Saturday, I can’t stay silent as the leaders of the countries of the West queue up to offer uncritical support for Israel’s “right to defend itself”, even after defense minister Yoav Gallant stated, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip”, adding, chillingly, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”
The West’s position not only endorses the illegal collective punishment of Gaza’s two million inhabitants, who have been living in the world’s largest open air prison since 2007 in a disgraceful manifestation of an apartheid state; it also invites Israel to follow through on the genocidal impulses behind that promise to “act accordingly” towards people collectively dehumanized as “animals.”
The only way out of the perpetual cycles of violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories is a negotiated settlement, but this is only possible if the West stops allowing the aggressor to declare itself a victim, and obliges Israel to confront its long history of oppressing the Palestinian people. Hamas may well be guilty of war crimes, but so too is Israel, and to an alarming degree that has only been allowed because its allies in the West so persistently support its systemic racism and its everyday violations of the fundamental human rights of the Palestinian people.
In contrast to the position taken by the US, the UK and the EU, Israel’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, recognized the truth in its editorial on Saturday, putting the blame for Hamas’s latest attacks on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who “completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession … while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”
...on October 11th, 2023 at 9:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10161727574068092&set=p.10161727574068092&type=3
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks to you and Alli, Natalia! Solidarity!
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:33 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Luk Vervaet wrote:
‘La Tempête Al-Aqsa : le soulèvement du ghetto’: https://lukvervaet.blogspot.com/2023/10/la-tempete-al-aqsa-le-soulevement-du.html
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:36 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Luk. Good to hear from you.
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:37 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Andria E-m wrote:
Uhm, good luck with that “negotiated settlement”, Andy. Without wanting to sound hopeless, you cannot get an aggressor to stop being sadistic when they’ve got ‘god’ on their side & 1 of the best-selling books of all time proves it … Millions know the truth of what these wars are invariably about but when you’re chosen, there’s a lot of pressure on you to win, whatever the cost …
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:38 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I’m not hopeful, Andria, but it’s one of several possible futures, shall we say? It seems much more likely that Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet members will actually be toppled from within, by their own people. They certainly deserve it.
But as a citizen of one of these Western countries uncritically supporting Israel’s horrendous assault on Gaza, I do wonder if a time will ever come when Western leaders will pay attention to critical voices within Israel – those who know that Israel’s claimed “right to defend itself” never works – and eventually decide to withdraw military and financial support.
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:38 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Brigid Mary Oates wrote:
My heart is breaking 💔 xx thank you as always x. I sleep a lot less settled tonight xx
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:40 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I’ve been feeling so shaken since the news of the attacks broke on Saturday, Brigid, knowing that death would be raining down on these poor Palestinian families yet again, but with even more genocidal intent than ever before. Will this nightmare, this unprecedented ongoing atrocity, ever be resolved?
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:41 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anna Giddings wrote:
Thanks Andy. Just appalling and this has been going on for 75 years and still they live under a brutal occupation.
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:41 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, it’s so extraordinarily depressing and frustrating, Anna, but I think the enclosure of Gaza for the last 16 years has definitely taken Israel’s actions to new depths of human depravity, especially, as now, and as has generally been happening every couple of years, when they decide to kill civilians trapped and with no means of escape. How do these people live with themselves?
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Elisa Davinca wrote:
Thank you Andy 🙏
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
You’re welcome, Elisa. I’ve been meaning for a long time to write about Israel and Palestine, but it’s taken this particularly perilous time for the Palestinians in Gaza for me to finally get round to it.
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:43 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Hilary Homes wrote:
Some have suggested that the stance of the Canadian government – which projected the flag of Israel on the Parliament buildings recently – is because the Liberals are low in the polls, but I am quite sure their take would be the same if they held a comfortable majority. The “All Out for Palestine” protests were demonized by politicians at all levels here, including the so-called progressives who insisted on claiming motivations or support for Hamas among protesters rather than an assertion of the basic humanity of Palestinians. The failure to recognize context, history and illegality of the siege tactics on top of the blockade is incredibly disappointing. Our MOFA has suggested that special flights will be organized to evacuate Canadians from Israel, but not Gaza. It’s just so appalling.
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:43 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Great to hear from you, Hilary. Our leaders and our media are all reading from the same script, aren’t they? No one is allowed to defend the basic humanity of Palestinians without being accused of supporting Hamas, and our particularly hateful home secretary, Suella Braverman, is claiming that “waving a Palestinian flag or singing a chant advocating freedom for Arabs in the region may be a criminal offence”, as the Guardian explained.
In a letter to chief constables in England and Wales, she “urged them to clamp down on any attempts to use flags, songs or swastikas to harass or intimidate members of the Jewish community”, adding that police “should not restrict themselves to potential offences related to the promotion of Hamas.”
In the letter, Braverman stated, “It is not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern. I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.”
She also claimed, “Behaviours that are legitimate in some circumstances, for example the waving of a Palestinian flag, may not be legitimate such as when intended to glorify acts of terrorism.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/10/people-supporting-hamas-in-uk-will-be-held-to-account-says-rishi-sunak
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
For a very powerful article that brought tears to my eyes this morning, please check out the reflections of Israeli-born human rights lawyer Daphna Baram – ‘I was in Israel when Hamas attacked – now we must reflect on the senselessness of killing and being killed’:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/israel-hamas-benjamin-netanyahu-peace
...on October 11th, 2023 at 10:46 pm
Andy Worthington says...
When my friend Bernie Sullivan shared this on Facebook, he wrote:
I share your shame. 😥 And your words certainly need sharing.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 10:40 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for sharing, Bernie. It’s taken me a long time to get round to writing about Israel and the Palestine, and several days to write this, but this time I couldn’t stand back and not get involved.
Whatever horrors Hamas perpetrated at the weekend cannot justify the increase in genocidal intent against the entire population of the Gaza Strip by Netanyahu’s homicidal government, and, most particularly, Western leaders’ unambiguous support of it.
None of them, it seems, is even prepared to stand up and say that, whatever actions Israel takes, it must exercise restraint and act within international law regarding the protection of civilians.
That’s been the traditional and appropriate response from western leaders for decades, whenever Israel has embarked on its latest round of collective punishment in Gaza, however performative it was in reality. This new shift, however, is seismic in its implications for universal human rights.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 10:40 am
Andy Worthington says...
Lizzy Arizona wrote:
I have been calling Congress as if it matters.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 10:50 am
Andy Worthington says...
I hope many other Americans are doing the same, Lizzy. It is so desperately important that western politicians stop treating this as “Israel’s 9/11” and seeking to justify the indiscriminate slaughter of the poor trapped civilians of the Gaza Strip, and remind Israel that it must show restraint and act within international law regarding the protection of civilians. That’s been the traditional position taken by the West whenever Israel indiscriminately bombs Gaza – however performative it has been in reality – but it is desperately needed again now.
At present, only the UN appears to be calling for restraint. Yesterday, Antonio Guterres “reiterated the need to always protect civilians, as guaranteed by international law.” He also “underscored that UN premises, hospitals, schools and clinics must never be targeted, and stressed the urgency of humanitarian access to the enclave”, stating, “Crucial life-saving supplies – including fuel, food and water – must be allowed into Gaza. We need rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access now.” https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142177
...on October 12th, 2023 at 10:50 am
Andy Worthington says...
Pam Hardy wrote:
Well said Andy am rather fkd as i bought a flight for palestine after a ten year absence. Its going to be too bad to even contemplate and the West Bank will be a free for all and my heart breaks for Palestine.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 10:52 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, it looks very bleak indeed, Pam, and will remain so while everyone apart from the UN remains studiously silent on urging restraint from Israel. At present, there appears to be almost nothing to distinguish western political leaders from the most dangerous far-right elements within the Israeli government, as they discard international law as an inconvenience.
I presume you saw Starmer yesterday, telling LBC that it was “acceptable for Israel to withhold power and water from citizens in Gaza”, even though he know full well that that’s illegal under international law. As the writer Steve Howell tweeted, “For decades, it’s been normal (albeit usually tokenistic) for Western politicians to appeal to Israel to be restrained and act within international law regarding the protection of civilians. Starmer won’t even do that.” https://twitter.com/FromSteveHowell/status/1712097808008749301
...on October 12th, 2023 at 10:52 am
Andy Worthington says...
Jane Ecer wrote:
Thanks for this Andy.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 1:04 pm
Andy Worthington says...
You’re welcome, Jane. As western politicians adopt far-right positions on Israel’s merciless carpet bombing of Gaza, I couldn’t stay silent, and I perhaps recognise more clearly than ever the power of that saying, “Silence is complicity.”
...on October 12th, 2023 at 1:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Pete Perry wrote:
Andy, the outlook is NOT good. U.S. is full gung ho support for the apartheid state of Israel. Biden did not say a word about restraint on phone call with Bibi.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 1:33 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, the West’s full and unconditional support is still in full flow, Pete, but sometime soon I expect that it will be replaced by calls for restraint, as the full implications of the unfettered endorsement of Israel’s vengeance become evident.
The latest report from the Gaza health ministry is that Israeli bombings have killed 1,417 Palestinians and wounded 6,238 since Saturday, and as those numbers rise I expect a point will be reached where – almost as if there’s an “acceptable vengeance death rates” graph that our leaders never reveal to us – the full support message will gradually give way to belated declarations regarding humanitarian concerns.
I see that Blinken, on his visit to Israel, while promising that more US arms to facilitate the ongoing massacre are “on the way”, signposted this by stating, “Israel has the right to defend itself”, but adding, “How Israel does this matters.”
What, I wonder, is the “acceptable” death rate for the West in Gaza? 2,000 civilians? 3,000?
...on October 12th, 2023 at 1:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Meanwhile, Israel’s Energy Minister, Israel Katz, spells out what Western politicians are supporting when they cling to their avowals that the Israeli government has “the right to defend itself.”
As Katz said today, “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees [seized by Hamas] are returned home. No one will preach morality to us.”
This follows his statement on October 10: “Before these days, we supplied the Gaza Strip with 54,000 cubic meters of water and 2,700 megawatts of electricity per day. Now this is not the case. They will have enough fuel for the generators for a few more days, but, in a week without electricity, the sewage system will completely stop working. This is what the nation of child killers deserves.”
According to the Gaza health ministry, to date, of the 1,417 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombings in Gaza, 447 are children.
Do our leaders believe, as Donald Rumsfeld said when confronted by the presence of juveniles in Guantanamo, that “these are not children”? Do our leaders believe these children were “terrorists”?
...on October 12th, 2023 at 2:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Pete Perry wrote:
Andy, I saw this morning that from this round of bloody tit for tat, the number of killed in Gaza has surpassed the number killed in Israel … Yes, so how many more Palestians need to be killed before we cross out of the acceptable “defense” zone?
...on October 12th, 2023 at 4:55 pm
Andy Worthington says...
We’re certainly not there yet, are we, Pete? Blinken, after meeting with the families of US citizens who were killed or taken hostage at the weekend, just said, “Their loss is immeasurable. No one should have to endure what they’re going through.”
This is entirely appropriate, of course, but as death rains down on Gaza’s children, and with the statistical probability that some poor child was actually killed as he was speaking, his inability to recognise that “no one should have to endure what they’re going through” either is, frankly, unforgivable.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 4:55 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Blinken is now saying, as the Guardian describes it, that “he and Israel’s leadership discussed ways to address the humanitarian needs of the people living in Gaza”, but claimed, absurdly, that “Hamas is using civilians in Gaza as human shields and intentionally putting them in harms way to protect themselves”, adding that “civilians should not be used as targets of military operations while Israel ‘conducts its legitimate security operations to defend itself from terrorism.'”
Is he for real? How are people being bombed from the sky supposed to use others as human shields? It doesn’t even make sense.
Then he has the nerve to say that “it is ‘vitally important’ that democracies like the US and Israel respect and follow international humanitarian law”, stating, “It’s what distinguishes us from terrorist organisations like Hamas, which have absolutely no regard for the rule of law, for humanitarian rules and rights [and] for any basic standards of human decency.”
Meanwhile, the US-supplied Israeli bombs still rain down on Gaza, and children are still dying. Which part of this is supposed to conform to a respect for either humanitarian law or “basic standards of human decency”?
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Sihaam Khan wrote, in response to 27, above:
Andy, I am guessing the Israeli Minister would like the Gazans to say after bestowing upon them water and electricity all these year: “thank you, masser”. The colonialist mindset is in full display with this minister who is backed by leaders in the Americas and Europe who every so often decry their forefathers’ 18th century slavery in the Americas, Africas and Australia.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, well said, Sihaam. Good to hear from you.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote, in response to 3, above:
Thank you, Andy. When these terrible things happen, the least we can do is show up. Alli is a huge activist for Palestine too. I’m very happy she invited me to join her.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:14 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, there’s a big protest in London on Saturday, which I’ll be attending, Natalia. It’s especially important as our vile home secretary has suggested in a letter to police chiefs that even “the waving of a Palestinian flag” may be a criminal offence “when intended to glorify acts of terrorism.” https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/10/people-supporting-hamas-in-uk-will-be-held-to-account-says-rishi-sunak
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
Oh, yes, I have been following that terrible person’s statements, Andy … sorry, WTF is wrong with her? She’s worse than the last one, the one that hated Assange. Go and wave some flags, Andy. Be safe.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:16 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, Braverman is an absolute monster, Natalia, even worse than Priti Patel. I will be celebrating on the day that this government is finally kicked out – and I very much hope that she loses her seat too. This kind of evil – and I don’t use the word lightly – must be rooted out from our societies if we’re to have a chance of any kind of future that doesn’t involve the streets running with blood.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Tamzin Jans wrote:
Andy, our PM in Belgium is acting exactly the same. Instead of a balanced and unbiased view, he has decided to give his full support to Israel only.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Shameful, Tamzin. How many more Palestinian children must die in bombing raids on Gaza before our leaders become aware of their spilled blood, and remember that, without restraints, vengeance – however much those who engage in it try to justify it – becomes genocidal?
...on October 12th, 2023 at 5:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Tamzin Jans wrote:
On the other hand, the UN has spoken up and said that what Israel has done in Gaza and the West Bank amounts to genocide. Perhaps, eyes are opening.
...on October 12th, 2023 at 6:50 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I don’t think the UN has mentioned genocide, Tamzin. Yesterday, the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, “called Israel’s threat of a complete siege on Gaza – which would cut off food, water and fuel – as ‘nothing less than genocidal'”, as The New Arab described it: https://www.newarab.com/news/palestinian-un-envoy-says-israels-siege-gaza-genocidal
...on October 12th, 2023 at 6:51 pm
Andy Worthington says...
However, today, Tamzin, dozens of UN experts today, including Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, issued a very strongly worded opinion, in which, as well as strongly condemning “the horrific crimes committed by Hamas”, they also strongly condemned “Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children”, who “have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for.”
Crucially, they added, “This amounts to collective punishment. There is no justification for violence that indiscriminately targets innocent civilians, whether by Hamas or Israeli forces. This is absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime.”
So the UN experts are calling a war crime what our leaders are still defending, which really ought to be profoundly shameful for these politicians. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/israeloccupied-palestinian-territory-un-experts-deplore-attacks-civilians
...on October 12th, 2023 at 6:52 pm
Andy Worthington says...
In further detailed analysis, the UN experts have written that, as well as killing over 1,100 people, including 290 children, and injuring more than 5,000 (figures that have now risen), the Israeli attacks mean that “at least 340,000 people have been displaced within Gaza, and nearly 218,600 people are sheltering in 92 UNRWA schools across the Gaza Strip.”
As they stated unequivocally, “Indiscriminately killing civilians in the context of hostilities, with no regard for the principles of distinction, precaution and proportionality, is a war crime.”
Responding to the “human animals” statement, the experts stated that, “Besides this appalling language that dehumanises the Palestinian people, especially those who have been unlawfully ‘imprisoned’ in Gaza for 16 years, we condemn the withholding of essential supplies such as food, water, electricity and medicines. Such actions will precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at inescapable risk of starvation. Intentional starvation is a crime against humanity.”
...on October 12th, 2023 at 6:53 pm
Andy Worthington says...
As well as being the lead author of this opinion, Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, has also had to find the time to call out Keir Starmer for supporting Israeli war crimes in Gaza – “and, potentially, a crime against humanity.” As she stated, “It is extremely concerning that a senior politician expresses support for the commission of war crime and, potentially, a crime against humanity: such is intentional starvation of civilians when part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population.”
Starmer should immediately retract his support for starving the people of Gaza and cutting off their electricity. https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1712176921528750482
...on October 12th, 2023 at 8:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kathleen O’Connor Wang wrote:
‘Seeking Understanding Amidst the Horror in Israel/Palestine’: https://rabbibrant.com/2023/10/12/seeking-understanding-amidst-the-horror-in-israel-palestine/
...on October 13th, 2023 at 12:04 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for sharing that insightful and heartfelt article by Rabbi Brant Rosen, Kathleen.
Powerful words indeed. Here’s one paragraph of particular relevance right now, but I encourage people to read it in its entirety:
“It is not an understatement to suggest that the Jewish community is now faced with a profound moral challenge. Even as we mourn our dead in Israel, we must acknowledge and protest the genocide Israel is currently perpetrating in their memory in no uncertain terms. I cannot say this forcefully enough: those of us who ignore this reality – who mourn the Jewish dead exclusively without even a mention of the massive crimes Israel is actively committing against the Palestinian people – will be quite frankly, complicit in this horrific bloodshed.”
...on October 13th, 2023 at 12:05 am
Andy Worthington says...
Peter Searles wrote:
Spot on Andy. Thanks for sharing. 👏
...on October 13th, 2023 at 10:16 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for appreciating it, Peter. I fear, however, that the worst is yet to come – the darkest days for atrocities committed in the name of ‘exceptionalism’ since the aftermath of 9/11.
...on October 13th, 2023 at 10:16 am
Denise Vaspory says...
To Whom This May Concern:
Why don’t the Palestinians get it?!? There comes a time to stop before it gets too far! The Gaza animosity towards Israelis has been growing for centuries, so don’t give me some bullshit story expect me to take the bait! If they don’t like it there, then go back to Palestine, because no where else for them to go, and they’ll have even less with their indoctrinated hateful idiots than no one wants to live amongst them!!
Cutting off babies heads, burning them alive and murdering innocent people will get the Palestinian Jihadist, Hassam, and Hezbollah ranking now worse than Isis!!! Most Muslims that don’t want this war are very peaceful not meaning harm to others, and have been getting shamed since the wars in Afghanistan, the Gulf, and since 9/11.
Desperate measures are being used for desperate times because Americans are amongst those held hostage, and we are ready to stand up for Our hostages with American Families here in the US. We Aren’t Playing Bingo or Chutes and Ladders! We play Battleship, and the USS Gerald Ford and Eisenhower are ready for action. We shot down one Iranian missile headed for Israel already! We are ready to set those terrorist bastages to light. The war crimes of the Geneva Convention is on Palestine in Gaza. Wait and see!
Denise
...on October 20th, 2023 at 12:55 am
Andy Worthington says...
The above message is the first I’ve received criticising the position that millions of us have regarding Israel’s demonstrable war crimes in Gaza, and I’m letting it stand in part because of its incoherence. “If they don’t like it there, then go back to Palestine”, the author of the comment says, in complete ignorance of the fact that there is no Palestine; there are only the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
...on October 20th, 2023 at 1:44 pm
Anna says...
Hi Andy, I did not read you until now but I knew what to expect, just as you know that I fully share your shame, without me having to say it.
I never particularly liked von der Leyen, but I will never forgive her for unconditionally supporting Israel (adding that it should act within the laws of war without adding any sanctions when that does not happen, means the support is de facto unconditional), supposedly in the name of all EU citizens.
Her sanctimoneous hypocrisy condoning Israel’s stranglehold on Gaza after having condemned Russia for doing the same in Ukraine, is infuriating. No point even getting worked up about the zombie whom the US have as a president, he seems beyond redemption. Ireland & Spain seem to be the only European countries with serious political protest. Don’t we all miss Jeremy Corbyn?
We now have oppressive autocracies lecturing us on human rights. And rightfully so.
I’ve been increasingly worried about Palestinians since in Gaza the Israeli army was systematically murdering protesters – was it 2001? – and lately the increase in settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. The hopelessness of their situation made it even so much worse than the more than 40 years of Afghan drama, where people at least could try and flee their country and hope to return to it one day. But even in my wildest nightmares I did not expect this carnage. Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians was dreadful but also ‘stupid’, as it undercuts their credibility which they now try to restore by releasing prisoners. But I bet that these are anyway treated much better than the countless innocent children, women & men in protracted ‘administrative detention’ in Israeli prisons.
And after so many years of occupation and humiliation, I can understand their despair. When in 1944 mostly young people in Warsaw started a desperate uprising against Nazi occupation, it was doomed and now also increasingly is labeled as ‘stupid’. But they thought that the Soviet army stationed on the other side of the river would step in to help (which it never did), just like Palestinians now must desperately hope for some miracle – from us. Hamas is moving around through tunnels, they used the sewage system. In Warsaw, after some two months the city was reduced to rubble, the German army going from house to house with flamethrowers. Heaven knows what the ‘ground invasion’ in Gaza will be like. But WWII at least ended in 1945, no German settlers had moved in, and Warsaw’s inhabitants could return to the ruins of their homes and rebuild them. Palestinians do not even have that option, as long as we let Israel have its way.
This of course is not about any legitimate self-defense, but about rabid hatred of ‘those Palestinians who refuse to give up their land’ and revenge. Revenge for the public humiliation of this regional superpower by a bunch of ‘Untermenschen’, just like the US attack on Afghanistan was all about revenge for a similar humiliation, but I suspect even more so mindless revenge for the genocide of their forefathers in WWII. Revenge on a nation which was in no way responsible for that, but it is so much easier to massacre a powerless target than those who actually were responsible for their own people’s tragedy. A criminal carnage cannot be undone by another criminal carnage.
Witnessing the US & assorted ‘civilised nations’ revenge on Afghanistan for 9/11, the attacks on hospitals, night raids on people’s homes, the cynical lies, total lack of accountability for war crimes committed, and my shame for my country taking part in that war of agression & occupation and the one in Iraq. All this is too much déjà vu on steroids, with no end in sight.
Sending into Gaza pityful quantities of ‘humanitarian aid’ for plausible deniability of our responsibility for their death, is like doctors in GWOT torture making sure the victims stay just alive enough to be able to continue to torture them. So we keep them from starving, and then?
What makes it so heartwrenching is that they are so utterly alone, apart from equally powerless Guterres & the Pope no one stands up to not only condemn Israel, whose 75 years of unrelenting occupation has provoked the ‘unprovoked’ attack by Hamas, but actually do something about it. No military aid, political & social ostracism, sanctions, no visa free travel, BDS. Illegal settlers ‘back to where they came from’, Palestinians back to where they came from in today’s Israel as citizens with equal rights, and free in what is left of their own Palestine.
Hopefully one day, if ever. What options right now?
If they stay in Gaza, they will be butchered, there is no other word for it. Those who remain in the northern part are already considered to be rightful targets as ‘Hamas terrorists’. Even if they are only two years old?
Then to the southern part, if carpet bombing will not already have ‘eliminated’ everyone there.
If they leave Gaza – assuming that any country would accept them – they’ll never be allowed back in, despite the incredibly cynical suggestions of this Israeli ex-official, Dany Ayalon:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/15/palestinians-in-gaza-can-go-to-tent-cities-former-israeli-minister
More positive voices, with excellent – both contents & presentation – context from Noura Barakat:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/upfront/2023/10/20/israel-gaza-when-will-the-world-say-enough
Denise (48) : in addition to repeating unsubstantiated accusations about ‘decapitating babies and burning them alive’ – which actually is now happening in Gaza, albeit not with knives & matches, but precision bombs – I wonder how “the Gaza animosity towards Israelis has been growing for centuries”, when Israel exists since only 75 years and the Gaza strip as such even less? As for the killing of babies, I suggest this documentary about the ‘hilltop’ youngsters who threw a molotov cocktail into the house of a sleeping Palestinian family on the West Bank, burning a 1.5 year old toddler alive – and proud of it. They are followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the same one whom Ben Gvir so much admires: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/radicalised-youth/2018/11/13/thou-shalt-not-kill-israels-hilltop-youth
And by the way, this is not some ‘anti-semitic’ documentary, but one of a series about ‘radicalised youth’ in various countries.
...on October 22nd, 2023 at 2:10 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your thoughts, Anna. I had been wondering when I would hear from you. And just as you knew what to expect from my article, and share my shame, I fully endorse your assessment of the situation. The evil is so intense now that I’m almost beyond words, as Israel has been intensifying its bombing raids over the last two days.
Today, finally, a western news outlet, the Guardian, deigned to report the stories of some of the nearly 5,000 Palestinians killed since Israel’s vengeance began – children, students, doctors, writers, artists: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/doctors-poets-families-babies-victims-of-israels-war-on-gaza
It only begins to scratch the surface of the slaughter, but how appalling is it that I haven’t seen anything in the western media up until now that recognises the utterly barbaric murder of so many civilians?
I know you’re not on social media, but I’ve been spending a lot of time on X (formerly Twitter) over the last two weeks, because it contains so much frontline reporting from Gaza itself – from those living and dying there – compared to the mainstream media. And, of course, I’ve also been watching Al Jazeera. I literally can’t watch western news anymore.
I hope that eventually UN Rapporteurs and NGOs will hold western leaders complicit in Israel’s genocidal intent over the last two weeks, but in the meantime almost every waking hour in my life is consumed by the seemingly unanswerable question of when this carnage will stop. The only saving grace has been seeing the extraordinary numbers of people marching in support of the Palestinians in London, and similar protests around the world.
...on October 23rd, 2023 at 10:41 am
Andy Worthington says...
For a Spanish version, on the World Can’t Wait’s Spanish website, see ‘Mi vergüenza ante el apoyo acrítico del Oeste de los crímenes de guerra de Israel en Gaza’: http://www.worldcantwait-la.com/worthington-mi-verguenza-ante-apoyo-acritico-oeste-crimenes-de-gruerra-isreal-gaza.htm
...on November 3rd, 2023 at 1:30 am