The Horror of Israel’s Bragging, Self-Righteous, Live-Streamed Genocide in Gaza That Also Seeks to Eliminate Fundamental Human Decency
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It’s over two weeks since I’ve written about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, but it’s not because I’ve “moved on”, or forgotten about it. On the contrary, it still consumes my every waking hour, an aching anguish that only ever goes away when I somehow manage to distract myself through immersion in some other activity: my long-running work on Guantánamo, for example, or working on my music, or managing to snatch some precious time with my family on a recent weekend break in Dorset.
Mostly, though, the horror engulfs me permanently — the unending horror of one group of people, the State of Israel, whose leaders, media and citizens in vast numbers are committed, with a delirious, maniacal and alarmingly self-righteous enthusiasm, to the annihilation of another, the Palestinians, trapped in the Gaza Strip, a small sliver of land where their ancestors were ethnically cleansed when the State of Israel was created 76 years ago.
Everywhere I look, I see other people struggling to maintain their mental equilibrium in the face of the relentless slaughter that, over the last four months, has claimed 36,671 lives, including 14,031 children and 8,122 women — with the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which compiled the figures, estimating that 33,590 of those killed (91.6%) were civilians, and also pointing out that an additional 70,180 people have been wounded, many of them severely. Over a thousand children have lost one or both legs, with many amputations having to be conducted without aesthetic, because of Israel’s refusal to allow medical supplies into Gaza, and over 17,000 have been orphaned, known by a new designation of Israel’s making: ‘WCNSF’, which stands for “wounded child, no surviving family.”
After ICJ Genocide Ruling, Israel Shows Contempt for the UN, and Its Western Allies Deepen Their Complicity in the Genocide
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In a devastating ruling issued last Friday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), “the principal judicial organ” of the United Nations, accepted a case brought by South Africa against the State of Israel “concerning alleged violations in the Gaza Strip of [its] obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”, and imposed conditional measures on Israel to prevent what the Court judged to be the grave likelihood of a developing genocide.
As I explained in an article I published shortly after the ruling, “By a majority of 15-2, and in some cases 16-1, the Court found that South Africa had established a compelling case that Israel’s actions, in response to the attacks by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7, were so severe that it is plausible that they constitute genocidal intent under Article II of the Genocide Convention; namely, ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’, via ‘killing members of the group’, ‘causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group’, ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’, and ‘imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.’”
The Court ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of [the] Convention”, and to “ensure with immediate effect that its military forces do not commit any of the above-described acts”, to “take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip”, and to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
International Court of Justice: Israel Must Cease All Activities That May Constitute Genocide, Punish Genocidal Officials and Allow Humanitarian Aid into Gaza
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Make no mistake about it. Today’s ruling, by the International Court of Justice, imposing provisional measures on Israel under the 1948 Genocide Convention, in response to a submission submitted by South Africa, and argued before the Court on December 29, is hugely significant.
By a majority of 15-2, and in some cases 16-1, the Court found that South Africa had established a compelling case that Israel’s actions, in response to the attacks by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7, were so severe that it is plausible that they constitute genocidal intent under Article II of the Genocide Convention; namely, “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, via “killing members of the group”, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
The Court duly ordered that “Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of [the] Convention”, and “must ensure with immediate effect that its military forces do not commit any of the above-described acts.”
Why We Must All Rise Up Against the Genocidal White Supremacists of Zionist Israel and the West
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Since Israel launched its genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza over three months ago, astute commentators in the west have noted that the masks of feigned decency have fallen from the faces of our leaders, revealing them to be, fundamentally, the same genocidal, racist supporters of colonial settler violence that their predecessors were in those long centuries when they pillaged the world, killing and enslaving native populations, and, when met with resistance, often engaging in genocide.
The speed with which the masks fell has, genuinely, been shocking to watch, even though historically, of course, the countries of the west have indulged Israel, as the last great European settler colonial project, since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine (which British was administering as a Mandate after the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire), and the blood-soaked creation of the State of Israel in 1948, when around 15,000 Palestinians were killed, and around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their homes in what is known to Palestinians as the Nakba (“catastrophe”).
According to British records, 376,415 Jewish immigrants, mostly from Europe, arrived in Palestine between 1920 and 1946, and, even though most of these Jews had avoided the Holocaust, and even though the armed groups who fought to establish the Israeli state did so through terrorism, not only against the Palestinians, but also against the British, the post-war western consensus on Israel was that it must be indulged, to assuage the guilt the European powers felt over the Holocaust as well as their well-chronicled oppression of Jewish people over many centuries.
Radio: I Discuss Israel’s Genocide in Gaza and Guantánamo’s 22nd Anniversary with Misty Winston on TNT Radio
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On Tuesday, I was delighted to talk to the US radio host Misty Winston, on the Australian-based online radio station TNT Radio, about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the imminent 22nd anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The interview is available here on video, and I’ve also embedded it below, and the audio only version is available here.
Misty and I have spoken many times before, and our interview began 18 minutes into the one-hour show, after Misty spoke about the significance of the Jeffrey Epstein case, and her colleague Adam Clark spoke about the struggle against censorship — and for free speech — in the US election year.
Misty and I began by discussing Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, with Misty thanking me for acknowledging, very early on in what Al Jazeera accurately calls “Israel’s War on Gaza”, but most western media disgracefully describe as the “Israeli-Hamas War”, that, after years of remaining silent on Israel’s crimes over the last 75 years, because I feared its impact on my Guantánamo work, I could no longer remain silent as what is very evidently a genocide began to unfold. Misty also thanked me for my writing, in which I’ve been covering the unforgivable lawlessness of Israel’s three-month assault, via my articles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Ten Weeks of Genocide in Gaza: 25,000 Palestinians Killed, A Land in Ruins, And Still No Sign of a Ceasefire
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In my nearly 61 years on this earth, I’ve never felt as sick as I do now, watching in real time, as I have for the last ten weeks, a genocide taking place in the Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million Palestinians, trapped in an “open-air prison”, as they have been since 2007, with no means of escape, are being killed at a scale that is unprecedented in the history of warfare in my lifetime, while western leaders offer largely unconditional support — and weapons — and Israel continues to portray itself as the victim.
As of December 14, the death toll had reached 24,711, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which takes its figures from the health ministry in Gaza, and adds those missing and presumed dead under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Of the dead — killed for the most part as a result of Israel’s relentless bombing of residential areas — 9,643 were children and babies, 5,109 were women, and 93%, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, were civilians.
The death toll is so colossal, and so relentless, that, on average, 365 people have been killed every day, including 140 children and babies; that’s six children every hour, or one every ten minutes over a period of more than two months; in other words, in response to the deadly attacks by Hamas militants on October 7, in which around 1,200 people were killed (and even disregarding the as yet unknown numbers killed by the Israelis themselves), Israel has been killing a comparative number of Palestinians twice a week for the last ten weeks.
Genocide Continues in Gaza, Exposing The Unending Depravity of Israel, and the Ongoing Criminal Complicity of the West
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For 47 days, from October 8 until November 23, the State of Israel relentlessly bombed the 2.3 million trapped civilians of the Gaza Strip — held in “an open air prison” since 2007, when Israel imposed a total blockade on its inhabitants — with such ferocity that 20,031 people were killed, including 8,176 children and 4,112 women, according to the Geneva-based NGO Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The NGO also noted that over 36,350 people had been injured — many gravely so — and that 1.7 million people, almost three-quarters of the entire population, had been displaced, as nearly a quarter of a million homes were completely or partially destroyed.
To give some necessary perspective to those statistics, what it meant was that, for 47 days, Israel was killing 174 children every day — seven children every hour, or one every eight and a half minutes. To understand quite how grotesque and unprecedented the killing of children on this scale is, on November 7 Al Jazeera analyzed the death rates of children in other major conflicts of the 21st century — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen — establishing that the death rate of children in those conflicts was between 0.6 and three children per day.
This was carpet bombing on an industrial scale, using some of the heaviest and deadliest bombs ever invented by the depraved individuals who work in the arms industry, many of which were supplied by the US, and yet, despite international experts almost immediately recognizing that this was the collective punishment of an entire civilian population, in response to attacks by Hamas militants on October 7, in which, according to initial reports, 1,400 Israelis had been killed (a figure most recently revised down to 1,200), western leaders were united in their uncritical support for Israel’s unqualified “right to defend itself.”
Radio: I Discuss Israel’s War on Gaza with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio
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I’m pleased to post below an interview about Israel’s war on Gaza that I undertook two weeks ago with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, which was previously included in a podcast here.
I hope you have time to listen to it, and that you’ll find it interesting. Anyone who knows my work will know that, when it comes to Guantánamo, which I’ve been writing about and speaking about for 17 years, I can talk about it eloquently at any time of the day or night, but this interview was the first time that I’d spoken publicly about Israel and Palestine. I have subsequently discussed it with Chris Cook on his Gorilla Radio show in Victoria, Canada, and I’m more than willing to discuss it in future with anyone who is interested in my perspective.
In my interview with Andy, I discussed my revulsion at Israel’s actions in Gaza, where, as of November 14, 11,320 people have been killed, including 4,650 children and 3,145 women, suggesting that it amounts to a genocide, a conclusion reinforced by several assessments, in the last few weeks, by experts in genocide.
The Siege of Gaza and Israel’s Premeditated Murder of Premature Palestinian Babies
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For several days now, I’ve been haunted by a photo posted by doctors in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City — the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip — of premature babies huddled together as doctors and medical staff attempt to keep them alive.
The babies were previously being kept alive in incubators, but as a result of Israel’s medieval-style “complete siege” of Gaza, imposed 38 long, blood-soaked days ago, on October 8, when Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant announced that there would be “no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed”, adding, “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly”, the fuel required to power the generators to provide electricity to the hospital has run out.
The plight of these premature babies — the death sentence to which Israel has subjected them, unless the siege is lifted — is particularly poignant for me, because my own son, now a healthy 23-year old man, was also born prematurely, at 30 weeks.
Humanity’s Greatest Failure: Turning Genocide in Gaza into a Spectator Sport
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In Gaza, the world is watching a genocide play out in real time, like a vast public spectacle, or, to provide a more current analogy, like the most gruesome reality show.
Over the last month, as the State of Israel has relentlessly bombed the 2.3 million civilians trapped in the “open air prison” of the Gaza Strip, killing over 10,000 people, including over 4,000 children, the world has watched as, via its mainstream media, neighbourhood after neighbourhood has been destroyed and the dead bodies of children and adults are dragged out of the wreckage, with barely a whisper of official dissent.
Political leaders in the west openly support it, news readers talk blandly of those who have died, as though it was some sort of unfortunate but natural occurrence, generally refusing to acknowledge that they have actually been killed, and almost always refusing to name the perpetrators, while armchair genocide supporters, in significant numbers, cheer it on via social media.
Rarely reported are the additional uncomfortable truths that, although voices from within Gaza regularly state that “nowhere in Gaza is safe”, they are unable to leave, even if they wanted to, because Israel has controlled all entry to and exit from the Gaza Strip since 2007, and they are also subjected to a “complete siege”, as promised by the defence minister Yoav Gallant on October 8, whereby supplies of water, food, fuel and medical supplies have been cut off.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
