The American-Israeli genocide in Palestine: Twelve months on
Oct 9, 2024
The past twelve months have been the most catastrophic for Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba. Everything that is needed to sustain life in Gaza has been destroyed.
Most of the hospitals, schools, all of the universities, (not only bombed but deliberately blown up) places of worship, local government infrastructure and the homes of nearly two million people have been obliterated. The agricultural lands have been devastated. Gazans have been deliberately starved of essential food, water, medical aid, fuel, electricity and adequate sanitation. Access to these life saving essentials has become a weapon of war. All of these actions are war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Gaza Strip, is about half the size of Canberra and has a population of over 2 million people, 80% of whom are refugees under UN protection. Over this past year the UN reports that around 42,000 citizens, the majority women and children, have been slaughtered. But these horrific figures are conservative as the Lancet, a British medical journal of high repute, has estimated that at least 180,000 people have been killed. The war on Gaza is a war conducted by the Israeli Government and Military forces with American and European bombs, and Australian spare parts for the F35 fighter jet used daily.
It is a war using a new, very dangerous AI mass killing system the IDF call “Lavender”. This AI system marks thousands of Gazans for assassination with little human oversight and a permissive policy for causalities. Hence the horrendous slaughter of civilians.
It is a war against the thousands of Palestinian citizens, mostly women and children with an estimated 130 people murdered every day. This does not including those who are lost under the rubble, or who have been suffocated by sand as 2,000 lb American made bombs pulverise citizens living in tents, in IDF so called “safe areas”.
It is a war against Palestinian children with 16,000 killed, the largest number in any conflict in the past two decades and nearly 20,000 orphaned.
It is a war against doctors and nurses with over 800 murdered and more than 300 in illegal detention. Medical staff have been abducted from their hospitals, held in horrific and violent conditions, starved, tortured, sexually abused and raped in Israeli detention.
It is a war against the aid workers and the United Nations with 287 staff murdered, the most in any conflict since the establishment of the UN.
It is a war against UNRWA schools with 86 percent of all schools damaged, 53 of which have been totally destroyed. Thousands of innocent refugee’s and displaced, seeking shelter in theses schools, have been mercilessly slaughtered
It is a war against the truth tellers with 173 journalists and media workers targeted and assassinated by the IDF. Again, the most recorded in any conflict. Shutting down the eyes and ears of the community. And recently Israel has shut down the Al Jazzera office in Ramallah, in a Palestinian Territory.
It is a war where 86 percent of food aid to Gaza has been blocked by the Israeli military forces with settlers playing a part in this obstruction as well.
It’s a war against Palestinians in the West Bank conducted by the IDF and violent messianic settlers with 740 persons killed or assassinated, over 6,000 injured, 10,000 arrested, with 3,100 displaced, and 500 inhabited structures destroyed, affecting almost 200,000 Palestinians.
And now it is a war against Lebanon and Lebanese citizens with over 2,000 already killed, again many women and children, over a million displaced, 10,000 injured, and with 300,000 having crossed into Syria before Israel bombed the main highway.
Again, as in Gaza, Israel has targeted health facilities with according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, 58 medics killed, including many doctors, with bombing resulting in the closure of around 40 health facilities, including six hospitals and over 25 water facilities damaged, disrupting water supply for over 360,000 people as of 30 September.
This carnage is carried out by the self described “most moral army in the world” that has for decades acted with utter lawlessness and total impunity. In the face of these crimes the highest Court in the world, the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) has called for, among other resolutions, an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and the removal of all Illegal settlements in the West Bank. It has called for countries to abstain from any form of diplomatic relations, economic dealings, or trade with Israel whilst it persists in the occupation.
Our government’s reaction to these ICJ rulings has been silence and lack of action that is both complicit and full of moral cowardice. The UN General Assembly just last week overwhelmingly voted to support the ICJ ruling. But Australia abstained from the vote, shaming us all.
Our Foreign Minister has been well informed by her department, to the extent of a 300 page document, of the “catastrophic” situation in Gaza, the “mass graves” around hospitals, and rising starvation and disease, but her response has been minimal. We have all been warned that the longer Israel’s impunity prevails, the more international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions will become irrelevant.
Where will that leave us?? And we hear people in Gaza repeatedly asking us, why is the world silent? Where is your humanity ? We are shamed by young people – among them many Jewish students – speaking up, often at risk to themselves.
This is the most brutal, barbaric, devastating and deliberate genocidal war on Palestinians since 1948. In the face of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and a genocidal colonial war, Palestinians continue to fight for self determination and an end to the illegal occupation.
Palestinians want to live in their own country that is free, where people are equal and have full democratic rights and where they can live in safety and dignity at peace with their neighbors. Our Australia government should find the courage to stand on the side of humanity instead of saying, until we are all thoroughly sick of hearing it, “ Israel has a right to defend itself.”
A “right to defend itself”… but at what cost? To the very basis of the United Nations system that Israel has continue to scorn and trash, to people across the Middle East that they continue to slaughter, and to their own Israeli citizens that they have left to suffer and die in Gaza?
This article contains part of a speech given at Union Aid Abroad APHEDA’s 40th anniversary dinner held on September 27th 2024.