Coalition of War Criminals, Relentless War Crimes in Gaza and Changing Geopolitics in the Middle East

Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal

The green signal to Israel

The Gaza Strip now stands as a showcase of the Israeli war crimes. People can see that on the TV screen. Anybody with an iota of morality and humanity will condemn such barbaric acts of brutality. But the US leaders failed to do so. President Joe Biden proved totally blind to see those worst war crimes. The US Secretary of State Mr Antony Blinken left Tel Aviv  on 12/10/2023. On 13/10/2023, the US Secretary of Defence General ( rtd) Lloyd Austin arrived. Like Blinken, Mr Austin too, at his first moments of the arrival, paid deep condolences for the Israeli deaths, but no mention of the Palestinian deaths. As if Palestnians are not human and their deaths do not deserve any mention and sympathy. These US leaders also proved blind to see the Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Such blindness doesn’t owe to their physical blindness but to moral death. Only proven war criminals can support and become complicit in such war crimes. 

Like the Israeli Zionists, the USA and the European colonialists cum imperialists are well-known for their ugly war crimes like occupational wars, genocides, ethnic cleansings, forced displacement of people, enslavement of the weak and destruction of people’s homes in colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Red Indians in the USA, the Aborigines in Australia and the Maoris in New Zealand were almost cleansed by thes known war criminals. Israel is now committing all those heinous crimes in Palestine in its ugliest form -especially in Gaza. The US-led western leaders now stand united with their ideological cousins to give green signal to continue war crimes in Gaza. The USA and the UK are sending urgent military enforcement to Israel. They argue for Israel’s self-defence but stay silent on the survival rights and freedom of the Palestinians. They demand the release of Israeli captives held by Hamas, but look deaf and dumb on the release of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails. They also keep silent on relentless Israeli bombardment on Gaza’s defenceless people -let alone demanding the end of war crimes.     

Israel claims that their action against Hamas is defensive. But when the residential homes of innocent civilians are destroyed and unarmed men, women and children are killed, then the war doesn’t remain defensive. Bombing homess, hospitals and mosques is not a feature of defensive war either. Relentless bombardment on lame-duck like people of Gaza from the air, from the land and from the sea is pure evil and the worst war crime. But the key stakeholders of the UN like the USA, the UK, France fail to show any sense and morality to condemn it. They are concerned  only with Israel’s security. They condemn Hamas, but condone Israel’s war crimes. On 13/10/2023, the UN Secretary General Mr. Antonio Guterres in his press conference didn’t even ask Israel to stop the ongoing bombardment. It is very shameful that stopping the cleansing operation of Palestinians from Gaza didn’t appear in his speech either.

Israeli atrocities are not limited to Gaza. On 13/10/2023, 14 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank for protesting against the Israeli bombardment in Gaza. Human Rights organisations like Human Watch have reported that Israel is using toxic chemicals like white phosphorus against Palestinians. This is a gross violation of international law. But such a law has no place in the Israeli code of conduct. Since Israel doesn’t face any accountability anywhere in the world, it doesn’t face any prohibition in its horrendous war crimes. The UN plays its role only as a silent watcher. And the US proves its complicity by supporting Israel.       

The second nakba

The Palestinians now face another nakba (the great catastrophe). Nakba is the forceful extermination of Palestinians from their ancestral homes. The first nakba took place in 1948 to cleanse Palestinians from their land. In the first nakba, about 500 villages were destroyed and more than 600, 000 Palestinians were driven out of Palestine. Thus, empty spaces were created for the imported Jews from abroad. In this second phase of nakba, the Palestinians are now being driven out of Gaza. Most of the residents of Gaza are refugees from the main land of Palestine. Now they are going to be refugees again in the desert of Sinai to make an Egyptian problem.  

Israel plans to accomplish the cleansing operation in Gaza in two phases. In its first phase, Israel asked 1.2 million people of Gaza city and northern part of the Gaza Strip to vacate their homes in 24 hours. It is a gross violation of human rights. A foreign country can’t ask people from another country to leave their homes. It is grotesque terrorism. It is indeed the core ideology of Israel since the days of its creation. When Israel takes control of northern Gaza, the second phase of cleansing will start to drive out the rest of the population from Gaza. When the cleansing is complete, the full annexation of Gaza will start. The same methodology was applied to annex Golan heights and East Jerusalem.

Israel: a textbook case of state-terrorism

It is not difficult to understand the meaning of terrorism. As per a standard dictionary, terrorism is the use of force for a political end. Such terrorism has been used by Israel since the day one of its creation in 1948. In fact, Israel is the textbook case of state-terrorism. Israel deployed ugly tactics of terrorism like bulldozing the homes of Palestinians to build residential blocks in the captured lands for the imported Jews from Europe, Russia, the USA and the Middle East. The terrorist gangs of the Zionists like Hagana killed innocent Palestians to terrorise the whole indigenous population. The peaceful stay in Palestine was made deliberately impossible for them. Thus, Israel is built on terrorism. Now, it survives by it and pursues to expand by it. Since imperialism is itself a form of worst international terrorism, Israeli terrorism is supported by the classical modern imperialists like the US, the UK, France and other former colonial powers.  

The western leaders’ moral death

In all societies, most people are innocent. They are not involved in punishable crimes. Hence, collective punishment is the worst form of war crimes. It is against morality, humanity and basic human rights. No state has the right to punish innocent men, women, children, patients and disabled people. Every war has its own rule; it does not allow indiscriminate bombing. Such acts are war crimes. To punish common people, Israel has cut off the supply of electricity, water, food and drinks and medicine to Gaza. Israel is taking every step to starve people to death.

The Israeli Defence Minister called the people of Gaza as human animals. So, killing them is the state policy of Israel. So, they bomb indiscriminately. This is why they stopped supplies of everything that is necessary for physical survival. No person with an iota of morality and humanity can support such an ugly act of brutality. But the leaders of the USA, the EU and the UK failed to show such morality and humanity.They have openly sided with the war-criminals. They are not interested in stopping such collective punishment. They don’t want to stop the Israeli war on Gaza. They are not interested in stopping the Israeli occupation of Palestine either. Their only concern is to punish the Palestinians -especially the resistance movement like Hamas. Whoever criticises Israel are labelled as anti-Semitic and terrorist. These western supporters of the Israeli war crimes are indeed the textbook cases of people with moral death.

The narratives that are used by the western powers to condemn Russia for its war in Ukraine are not used to condemn the Israeli atrocities in Palestine. Whereas Russia never bombed so relentlessly on Ukrainian cities. In its more than one year war in Ukraine, Russia didn’t cause as much destruction of residential homes as Israel did in a small piece of Gaza. Nor did Russia kill so many innocent people as Israel killed in Gaza in only 7 days. Israel has already killed more than 2,215 civilians and destroyed more than 70 percent homes in Gaza. Among the deaths, 700 are children.

The ugliest treachery and the beginning of a new era

Israel wants to eliminate Hamas -the most powerful resistance movement of the Palestinians. The USA too, wanted to eliminate the Taliban in Afghanistan. Such US hubris met huge humiliation. The US forces no longer exist on the soil of Afghanistan, but the Taliban gracefully prevails. The USA met the same fate in Vietnam and Iraq. Its thousands of nuclear warheads and huge army couldn’t protect its pride. And Israel is not stronger than the USA. It’s invincibility has gone with the wind. 

Israel and its allies argue that the action of Hamas on 7 October, 2023 was unprovoked. But they forget the simple historical fact that the Israeli occupying war criminals were provoking the Paletinians for the last 75 years by their worst criminal acts. They ignore the fact that wherever there are injustices, resistance movement is inevitable. Israel is the state of most terrible injustices. It is an awful apartheid state on the earth. So, resistance movements like Hamas are a natural product of such a context.

Israel and its western allies think that terrorizing others should be their sole monopoly. As if, all rights belong to them; and others have the rights only to surrender to them. So, no protest or resistence to their occupation is acceptable to them. In such a conceptual premise, any protest against Israeli occupation is labelled terrorism. The USA and its allies buy and preach such imperialist arguments. So they consider the Russian occupation of Ukraine as a war-crime. But the Israeli occupation of Palestine is labelled as the Divine right of the Jews. This is why the Oslo Agreement -signed by  both Israel and PLO stands dead.

The Oslo Agreement promised a state for the Palestinians. But Israel and its allies do not have any appetite for such a state for the Palestinians. The Oslo Agreement was signed only to get PLO’s recognition for Israel. At that time PLO was described as the sole representative of Palestine. Since Israel achieved the recognition, the treaty had to die. And Yasir Arafat had to die, too. The treaty was used only as a tool to deceive the PLO leaders. And it was indeed the ugliest act of treachery against the people of Palestine. Now neither Israel nor the USA talk about the Oslo Agreement.

 Because of the USA’s constant pressure, the autocratic Arab leaders also left Palestinians. They were busy making peace with Israel. Hamas bravely and cleverly stood on its own feet and showed its miraculous strength. This is why Hamas is identified as the arch enemy of Israel.

Hamas has successfully revived the Palestinian issue from the graveyard; it is indeed the greatest achievement of Hamas. Now it will be very difficult to bury the Palestinian issue in the near future. Even the secularist Arabs and the Palestinians admire Hamas. Even the worst Arab autocratic rulers can’t dare criticise Hamas. Muslims all over the world are showing their solidarity with Hamas and condemning Israel and its western allies through massive street protest. Huge protest rallies are also seen in the major cities of Europe and the USA.

It is now a new context. It is indeed the beginning of new geopolitics of the Middle East. Hamas may even influence the politics of the Muslim World significantly. The geopolitics of the Muslim Ummah is indeed on a distinctive move. The US and its allies with their ugly face will hardly be able to contain it. Israel and its allies can kill many Hamas fighters, but can’t kill its combative Islamic ideology. 14/10/2023