In Gaza, six children are murdered every hour. More than 17,000 children have been butchered. None of us, not even the poets, can summon words adequate to the horror of the fascistic bloodlust of the Israeli regime and the society that backs it. A year after the attack on Gaza began, more than 42,000 people had been killed.
This number does not include the missing. More than 10,000 people are assumed to be dead, their bodies buried under rubble. More than 100,000 people are wounded, many grievously. A study published in The Lancet, the esteemed medical journal, in July this year estimated that the total number of the dead, due to direct and indirect causes, could exceed 186,000 people as of June 19 2024. More than 70% of the dead are women and children. Over 1,000 children are now amputees, the highest number for a comparable period in history.
A study by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins of Brown University, published in October, shows that 90% of people in Gaza are displaced, 96% do not have enough food and water, there is no electricity, and just under 90% of the hospitals have been destroyed, with more than 880 health care workers killed. Four in every five children are consumed with depression, grief and fear. Infectious diseases are running rampant.
The confirmed deaths of 42,000 people as a direct result of the attacks by the Israeli military amount to almost two Sharpeville massacres every single day for a year. After Sharpeville, there was relative calm after the storm. The wounded were taken to hospital, and the dead buried with dignity. The regime was momentarily shaken by global condemnation. In Gaza, the killing is relentless.
The Zionists and their liberal allies justify this avalanche of killing as a legitimate response to Operation Al Aqsa Flood on October 7 last year. There is an internationally recognised right to armed resistance against occupation. There is no internationally recognised right of defence by an occupying power. It is true that the right to armed resistance against occupation does not extend to taking civilian hostages or to deliberate attacks on civilians. We need, though, to be clear on three things.
The first is that the Israelis, backed by their allies in the US and elsewhere, ran a brazen propaganda campaign after Operation Al Aqsa Flood. The claims about 40 beheaded babies and organised mass rape have been comprehensively debunked.
The second is that more than 300 of the people killed in Israel during the operation were soldiers on active duty, and therefore legitimate military targets. Many of the civilians killed were part of the Israeli military reserve, and therefore off-duty soldiers. Moreover, it is well documented that many of the civilians killed were killed by fire from the Israeli military.
The third point is that in these matters, it is always necessary to take context into account. The context is 75 years of colonial dispossession and murderous ethnic cleansing throughout Palestine. Around 80% of Gazans are refugees from the Israeli “ethnic cleansing” in 1948 and 1967. Gaza has suffered a bloody siege for 17 years. The civilians taken hostage were taken in order to exchange them for the thousands of hostages in Israeli prisons.
As anyone who knows the history of the revolts against slavery and colonialism will be aware, atrocities do occur when the downtrodden arise. Serious analysis understands this in context. It understands that oppression is the root of violence and that ending oppression is the route to peace.
Every innocent death is a tragedy. We are all grieved by the death of babies in a conflict, but decent people are grieved by the death of all babies
Every innocent death is a tragedy. We are all grieved by the death of babies in a conflict, but decent people are grieved by the death of all babies. Two Israeli babies died on October 7 2023. Within weeks, 70 newborns in Gaza had perished. The Israelis and their liberal allies around the world wish us to grieve for the two Israeli babies and accept the death of the 70 babies in Gaza as the actions of “the most moral army in the world”. We are supposed to accept that Israeli lives are sacred while the Palestinians are the untermensch.
This logic of dehumanisation has always been the logic of fascism and colonialism, and all decent people are called to resist. People around the world have stood up on principle. Israel’s colonial occupation and genocidal response to resistance would not be possible without the support of the US. In the year following Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the US has spent at least $22.76bn (R401bn) on military aid to Israel and related US operations in the region.
But on university campuses across the US, young people — many of them Jewish — have courageously stood up for justice. Surveys show that 40% of Jews in the US under the age of 35 oppose Zionism and support the Palestinians. They understand that Judaism existed for thousands of years before the state of Israel was formed, and that it will continue to exist long after Israel has ceased to exist in its present form. The international movement to boycott, sanction and disinvest from Israel is growing rapidly stronger, and there has been significant progress towards empowering the UN and its apex courts, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to finally act with the necessary urgency.
The South African state acted bravely to take Israel to the ICJ. There is, of course, a strong pushback from the Israeli and US states, which includes significant attempts to sway public opinion in South Africa. In late November, the “World Movement for Democracy” — a project of the National Endowment for Democracy, a US state organisation associated with many US-backed coups against elected governments — will be hosting a massive “civil society” conference in Johannesburg that will misrepresent the US and the West as the custodians of democracy around the world. Pressure for South African NGOs to boycott the conference is rapidly mounting, and some have already pulled out.
Israel’s hubris, its messianic sense of its right to kill and dominate, masks its growing weakness. As it has begun to attack Lebanon and Iran, following its bombing of Syria and Yemen, there is a growing understanding that its fascism is a threat to the wider region and, ultimately, world peace.
In over a year, Israel has failed to achieve its declared aims of rescuing the hostages and crushing Hamas. Despite significant losses, the heroic resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Yemen is undefeated. The Israeli military conceals the number of its dead and injured, but there is a growing awareness in Israel that casualties are mounting. Thousands of Israeli soldiers are suffering from psychological trauma that has rendered them incapable of combat duty.
The Israeli military basks in tactical wins but suffers strategic defeats. By expanding the battlefront, they overstretch themselves, and as the war escalates, they will grind to a halt. Israel is not a stable state. The divisions within Israeli society are at breaking point, and Netanyahu’s effective abandonment of the hostages has weakened his support.
Moreover, Israel cannot indefinitely carry on a protracted war of attrition. The economy is in crisis, with capital flight, foreign investment drying up, and GDP rapidly dropping. There was a $64bn loss last year. This year will be worse. Half a million citizens have fled the country. The settlements and towns near the Lebanon border and in the south near Gaza are deserted. Hotels are overflowing with displaced settlers at government expense. The harbour of Aqaba is empty of ships and has declared bankruptcy.
Hezbollah rockets are striking military targets in Haifa and elsewhere, including key military and Mossad bases, and Netanyahu’s home has been struck by a drone. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood proved that Israel was not invincible, and Israel’s Iron Dome and air defences are proving inadequate against the combined assaults from the region, from as far away as Iran and Yemen. Israel has been severely punished by Hezbollah in Lebanon and will fail in its invasion of that country as it has in the past. Iran is another factor entirely. It is a vast country, rich in resources and a formidable foe.
Zionism is not dead, but it is certainly dying. The cost will be devastatingly high, high beyond measure, but those for whom we weep, will win the war.
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