“We have no food,.. I am traumatised and trapped. I need your help”. The words of a 13 year old Palestinian girl begging the international community for help. “I am a child like any other…I am not trash, I am human”.
This week, a hospital in Gaza was bombed, killing hundreds of people, including children. Perhaps it's a coincidence that, four days ago, Israel openly admitted intent to bomb hospitals in Gaza The
WHO condemned that as “a death sentence for the sick and injured” Channel 4 correspondent Alex
Thomson’s analysis of the evidence so far shows the Israeli account to be
contradictory, producing an alleged Hamas recording that experts say is fake. He reminds viewers of the Israeli government’s history of
denying culpability only to be found culpable. He invoked the killing of
Palestinian journalist, Shireen
Abu Akleh as an example, which I wrote about at the time.
Israel has also said it is planning a “ground invasion". Yet yesterday, the United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have condemned Hamas' attack on Israel while calling for a pause in the fighting to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza. The UK abstained. Decades of exceptionalism and impunity has emboldened Israel’s rogue despotic acts.
Livestream footage from Gaza shows children's bodies
laid out - mangled - on white sheets, stored in
ice cream vans because the morgues are full. Israeli forces have reportedly killed 1,030 children in Gaza in recent days and images of mass graves are emerging.
We are bearing witness, in
real time, to war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated
by Israel against innocent Palestinian civilians, half of whom are children. Israel has cut off
food, water, fuel, humanitarian aid and medical supplies, issued evacuation
orders then bombed civilians fleeing through the "safe
route". When this
happened in Ukraine, European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen denounced it as constituting war crimes. Not
only did she not condemn Israeli actions, she unilaterally condoned them.
President Michael D
Higgins criticised Von der Leyen’s intervention as “thoughtless and
reckless”, stating that she did not speak for Ireland. On Israel, he said: “It’s one thing, when we look at historic breaches of
international law, that is incredibly bad, but to actually announce in advance
that you’re going to break international law…It reduces it to tatters”.
Violence and murder of any civilians anywhere is abhorrent. My heart goes out to the traumatised and grieving families in Palestine and Israel. To break the cycle of violence, we must
acknowledge the root cause.
For the past 75 years, Israel has forced thousands of Palestinians off their land, occupying
and illegally creating settlements for Israeli settlers. Entire Palestinian communities have
been displaced, their homes and livelihoods destroyed, their movements
restricted, as is access to water and natural resources. They are relentlessly
persecuted, oppressed and attacked by occupying Israeli forces.
In 2021, Human Rights Watch described Israel’s policies against Palestinians as crimes against humanity, persecution and apartheid. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Amnesty International also describe Israel as an apartheid state perpetrating human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Amnesty International has
provided evidence that Israel has deployed white phosphorous in Gaza. These acts and the collective punishment of
civilians are in contravention of international law, cheered on by Joe Biden and other Western leaders,
as millions worldwide protest their government’s’ complicity in war crimes. Leo
Varadkar is one of few exceptions, showing principled leadership by condemning
Israel’s actions.
UN
human rights expert, Francesca Albanese warns, “Israel has
already carried out mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the fog of war...Again,
in the name of self-defence, Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to
ethnic cleansing”.
Israel’s propaganda machine is going all out, manufacturing
consent for ethnic cleansing. Actively using dehumanising
language describing Palestinians as “animals”. Propagating un-substantiated
reports of Hamas beheading babies, which were repeated by international media
outlets. The CNN journalist who reported this as fact, fuelling hatred and
revenge, later admitted that the Israeli
government could not confirm the claim and that she was “misled”.
Inciting racial hatred fuels atrocities in Gaza and
beyond. On Monday, a 6 year old Palestinian-American
boy was fatally stabbed, and his mother seriously injured by a man, in what
has been reported as an anti-Muslim hate crime, prompted by Gaza coverage.
Claiming that civilian targets are legitimate because
Palestinians voted for Hamas is codswallop. Palestinians
haven’t had elections for 17 years meaning half the
population weren’t eligible to vote. Noteworthy: The same justification was
invoked by Osama bin Laden for targeting American civilians.
Israeli attempts to draw comparisons
with Bloody Sunday backfired when the Bloody Sunday committee said it was “Outrageous
to have the memory of our innocent dead sullied by the apartheid forces of the
Israeli State”.
Four days after Hamas brutally attacked Kibbutz
Be’eri, a 19 year old Israeli survivor, made a video plea to the world. She did not want revenge. She showed empathy with civilians in Gaza saying: “ For people to go through what I went through and not have anyone
to extract them. It cannot be. It cannot be”. Adding, “I blame Bibi [Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu] 100% for
this”, by failing to find a political solution. She asked the world to reflect
on our values and to demand a just peace.
The World Health Organisation warns there’s less than 24 hours’ worth of supplies left in Gaza, hospitals have
only hours of fuel and a UN agency says people are forced to drink sea water. We
need to demand an immediate ceasefire, humanitarian aid access and a just peace
respecting international law.
If a traumatised Israeli teenager is capable of recognising
that a 13 year Palestinian girl begging for her life is human and deserves
protection, why can’t Western leaders? We must never accept that some human
lives are deemed more worthy of saving than others. Under the Geneva
Convention, silence is complicity. The children of Gaza are relying on us to be
their voice. Speak up. Time is running out.
People Before Profit TD, Paul Murphy, expressing the views of Irish citizens👇
