800 Days of Genocide in Gaza: The Equivalent of 3,500 9/11s Or Ten Million Dead Americans
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Sunday, December 14, marked 800 days of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and yet you could be forgiven for not knowing anything about what is, by any objective measure, an unforgivably grim milestone, because no news network or newspaper in the western world could be bothered to report it.
If you’re reading this because of the headline, then yes, the death toll of the genocide is equivalent to 3,500 9/11s, or the equivalent of ten million Americans having been killed, but I’ll be discussing that in more detail at the end of the article, after running through every aspect of how the last two months of the “ceasefire” don’t constitute any meaningful kind of conclusion to Israel’s atrocities at all.
Since Donald Trump, to his credit, managed to stop Israel’s relentless carpet-bombing of Palestinian civilians two months ago, in return for Hamas handing over the last 20 surviving hostages seized on October 7, 2023, and, subsequently, all but one of the 28 dead hostages, most of the countries of the west, many of whom had started to become a little uneasy about Israel’s naked genocidal intent, have been behaving as though the genocide — or the “war”, as they manipulatively prefer to call it — is over, even though that is patently untrue.
Israel, the US, the UK and Germany Have Destroyed Human Rights
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Yesterday, December 10, was Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the proclamation and adoption by the United Nations, on December 10, 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a hugely commendable and aspirational template for a better world, in which, to quote from its Preamble, “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” were recognized as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
Translated into 577 languages, from Abkhaz to Zulu, the UDHR is, as the UN explains, “the most translated document in the world”, and is “generally agreed to be the foundation of international human rights law”, having “inspired a rich body of legally binding international human rights treaties.”
These include, as I discussed in an article year ago, entitled, Is Hope Still Alive on the Anniversaries of the Genocide and Torture Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (more generally known as the Torture Convention), which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1984, the 36th anniversary of the UDHR, expanding on Article 5 of the Declaration, which states, unequivocally, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Why The UN Resolution For Trump’s Colonial Takeover of Gaza Is Wrong, and Will Fail
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Over two days last week, the United Nations, formed in 1945, with its primary motive being “to maintain international peace and security”, sadly demonstrated all of the weaknesses that have prevented it from fulfilling that core aim of its Charter over the last 80 years.
On November 18, the UN General Assembly, which represents all 193 member states of the UN, overwhelmingly passed a worthy resolution affirming “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”, including “the right to their independent State of Palestine.”
The resolution was introduced by Armenia, China, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Norway, the Russian Federation and Viet Nam, with Egypt’s contribution undertaken on behalf of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
164 countries voted in favor of the resolution, with just 7 votes against (including the US and Israel), and nine abstentions.
The Slow But Significant Erosion of Israel’s Genocidal Impunity in the West
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As the second anniversary looms — in just nine days’ time — of the attacks on southern Israel by Hamas and other militants on October 7, 2023 and the start of Israel’s sickeningly disproportionate and still ongoing genocidal response, it seems increasingly unlikely that the occasion will be marked by even the tiniest fraction of the outpouring of collective support that was on display two years ago, when world leaders queued up to declare that Israel had an open-ended and irresponsibly undefined “right to defend itself.”
By now, the outright lies that fuelled approval for Israel’s genocide — lies about 40 beheaded babies and mass rapes — have been thoroughly debunked, and the scale of Israel’s revenge has been so horrific that none of its supporters can credibly ignore the blunt truth that, in response to the 1,195 people killed on October 7, 2023 (including an untold number killed by Israel itself under the Hannibal Directive), Israel has routinely been killing the same number of Palestinians every few weeks for the last 100 weeks (at least 60,000, officially, but almost certainly many times more), and that, despite their protestations to the contrary, the vast majority of those killed have been blameless civilians, amongst them at least 20,000 children, as I discussed in my recent article, Gaza Horror: IDF Admits 83% of Those Killed Were Civilians, But the True Total May Be 95%.
Israel has so carefully cultivated support in western governments and in the mainstream media — and has so flagrantly ignored UN resolutions without punishment for decades — that it thought it could exterminate the Palestinians, in response to October 7, and get away with it, seeking to hide the extent of its dehumanizing genocidal intent through its usual combination of lies, threats, distortions and self-pity, and also seeking to hide the appalling truth that its true purpose was to destroy the whole of Gaza to make it unliveable, while killing as many people as possible in the vain hope that those who somehow managed to survive would subject themselves to what was euphemistically described as “voluntary migration.”
What Now, After the World Court Condemns As Unlawful Israel’s Entire 57-Year Occupation of the Palestinian Territories?
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In a devastating opinion issued on Friday (July 19), the International Court of Justice (one of the six organs of the United Nations, also known as the World Court) condemned as illegal Israel’s presence, and its behavior, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) ever since they were first militarily occupied in 1967. The case, “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” was initiated by a request from the UN General Assembly in 2022.
This was, of course, prior to the attacks by Hamas and other militants on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s extraordinarily violent and ongoing military response, in which, according to a recent assessment, it would be reasonable to expect that the final death toll, even if hostilities ended tomorrow, would be no less than 186,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Israel’s actions are subject to a separate case brought to the ICJ by South Africa, in which the Court first issued “provisional measures” against Israel in January, on the basis that what it has initiated and is engaged in is a “plausible genocide.”
What the Court decided, and how the judges voted
The 15-member court, whose judges are drawn from across the member states of the United Nations, declared, by eleven votes to four, that it was “of the opinion that the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful,” and was also “of the opinion that the State of Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.” Judges from countries including Israel’s staunchest allies, the US and Germany, agreed, as they did for every other decision taken by the Court, along with the recently-appointed Lebanese President, Nawaf Salam, and judges from Australia, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Somalia and South Africa.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
