Every western power you can shake a stick at is pledging to “stand with Israel” in its new war against the people of Gaza and Hamas.
With the catastrophic Israeli death toll topping 900, with 100s more missing and taken as hostages, the well-polished rhetoric of Israel’s fight for civilization is now on display. It will be a war of light against darkness, we are told.
Innocent, ennobled Israeli victims will take up their weapons and fight “with purity of arms” against the unwashed, barbarian hoards inhabiting the Gaza Strip.
Earlier yesterday, the Israeli defense minister announced that Israel had been attacked “by human animals.” Thus, justifying Israel’s impending savage response as it pays the Palestinians back in kind, inhumanity for inhumanity.
Such rhetoric is not new. In fact, Israeli politicians have a long history of making degrading, dehumanizing remarks against the 5.4 million Palestinians who are kept under lock and key in the dungeons otherwise known as the Occupied Territories (consisting of Gaza and the West Bank).
Yes, people are right to point out that the Hamas attack against Israeli civilians was a war crime. But when have these defenders of Israeli virtue ever cried out against the perpetual war crimes committed against the people of Gaza?
50% of the Gazan population are children. The median age is 16. It is one of the most densely populated pieces of real estate on earth, denser than Tokyo.
For the past 16 years Israel has walled these people off from the rest of the world, literally encircling all 2.2 million behind a hi-tech military fence, complete with sniper towers and automated, high powered semi-automatic machine guns.
Israel has boasted about calculating the number of calories needed to sustain the population at a near starvation level. And the minimal caloric intake is enforced. A military blockade keeps a stranglehold on everything and everyone entering or leaving the Strip.
In past bombing campaigns, Israel has already destroyed all infrastructure, including power plants and water purification facilities. Native industries have been demolished. Unemployment is 60%. Only a small fraction of the available drinking water is fit for human consumption.
So, when anyone, whether politician or church leader, heartily invokes the pledge of “standing with Israel” as that country prepares to lay siege against 1.1 million malnourished, impoverished children and their family members, struggling as best they can to survive in a nearly impossible situation, I am forced to call a time out.
Israel boasts about planning its own war crimes, and now our leaders tell us it’s time to stand with Israel?
Excuse me?!
For 56 years the Palestinian people have been suffering under Israel’s military dictatorship.
For 16 years the people of Gaza have been suffocated – nearly to death – by a military blockade, from which it is impossible for them to escape.
When has the west ever objected? When have we protested? When has the US called Israel to account for its brutal mistreatment of our fellow human beings?
Are Israeli lives more precious than Palestinian lives? While paying pious, vapid lip-service to human rights, the western states certainly behave as if Israel were merely conducting innocent experiments on laboratory animals, not Mengele-like violations on 2.2 million precious Bearers of God’s Image.
In the last 10 months alone, approximately 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. How loudly – and when and where, exactly? – did President Biden, or any other western leader, lament over the flagrant killings of those people, including the 40 innocent Palestinian children included in that death toll? When were condolences sent to their grieving mothers and fathers?
Israelis curse the home-made rockets, sans guidance systems, that rain down on southern Israel from Gaza. Where was their grief when Israeli missiles bombarded the densely populated Jenin refugee camp only months ago? Oh, I remember, they were cheering and applauding for that exercise in slaughter.
Israelis grieve over the images of families torn apart as they are kidnapped and taken away to secret locations under Hamas control.
But this is daily life for Palestinians in the West Bank. Night raids are the norm. Family members are regularly ripped from each other’s’ arms as children are “disappeared” into IDF prison facilities. This is the typical state of affairs in Palestinian homes suffering under Israeli military occupation.
So, No. It is not time to stand with Israel.
It is long past time to confront Israel with the obvious question: What the bloody hell did you expect would happen?
