The cynicism and duplicity of Western governments in the face of an appalling, daily massacre of Palestinian civilians is monstrous.
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The cynicism and duplicity of Western governments in the face of an appalling, daily massacre of Palestinian civilians is monstrous.
Hundreds of men, women and children are being murdered every day by non-stop Israeli aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Hospitals, mosques, churches and family homes are being deliberately targeted with no warnings. This is premeditated state terrorism, all with full Western support.
Hospitals are so overwhelmed by casualties that bodies can’t even be identified nor afforded the final dignity of a shroud. Mangled, bloody corpses are left strewn on hospital grounds. Petrified children have their names written on their hands in case they are killed so as to allow them to be identified, as reported by Matt Kennard. The situation is heartrending and utterly profane.
The Gaza population of 2.3 million is at the mercy of bombs raining down. The Israeli authorities last week warned people to move to the southern end of the 40-kilometer coastal enclave purportedly out of harm’s way, only for the air strikes to hit supposedly designated safe zones.
Palestinians are also being hunted down and shot in the other enclave of the Occupied West Bank. As journalist Lubna Masarwa reports from East Jerusalem: “It feels as though the whole state is now baying for genocide… The situation is terrifying. We are entering a new era that feels even worse than military rule… The worst horror is the silence and complicity of the West in Israel’s unspeakable massacres.”
This is a genocide being conducted in real time which Western media are showing glimpses of on their screens, yet the Western governments refuse to call for a ceasefire by the Israeli regime. Tel Aviv knows it has a license for mass murder from the Western states and their morally repugnant leaders.
As the slaughter of Palestinian civilians intensifies, Western political leaders are wholly complicit in war crimes. But their complicity has the added contempt of trying to appear benign.
This week US President Joe Biden and five other Western leaders released a joint statement reiterating their support for Israel’s “right to defend itself against terrorism” with the added and completely bogus proviso for Israel’s “adherence to international law, including the protection of civilians.”
Adherence to international law? By a regime blatantly murdering children every day in full view of the world?
Along with Biden, the other signatories were Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
These political leaders have already declared their unwavering support for Israel’s “self-defence” in previous separate statements. But now they have felt the need to issue a joint statement with the added seeming concern about the mounting civilian death toll. That concern has no doubt been prompted by public protests around the world, including in Western capitals, against the barbaric Israeli military violence.
The seeming concern from Western leaders is an abject deception. If they were genuinely motivated to stop the killing, Washington and the others could unreservedly demand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immediately halt the murderous assault. Far from it. The United States has vetoed a resolution at the United Nations Security Council calling for a ceasefire while the US is airlifting emergency supplies of military weapons to Tel Aviv. The reason for the US veto? Because the wording did not mention Israel’s “right to self-defence”.
On top of the violence, Palestinians in Gaza are being starved of food and water under an Israeli blockade. Hospitals are running out of fuel for generators and life-saving equipment. A few trucks with humanitarian aid have been permitted to enter Gaza from the Egyptian border.
Yet Western leaders double down in their cynicism by stating in their joint statement: “The leaders welcomed the announcement of the first humanitarian convoys to reach Palestinians in need in Gaza and committed to continue coordinating with partners in the region to ensure sustained and safe access to food, water, medical care, and other assistance required to meet humanitarian needs.”
UN officials in Gaza say the paltry aid being allowed is far too little and too late to meet the needs of more than two million people. They describe it as “a drop in the ocean” of desperate needs. To put in perspective the latest convoy of 17 trucks permitted into Gaza, before the latest siege on the enclave that began more than two weeks ago the number of aid-supply trucks crossing into the territory from Egypt would normally be 500 per day.
The Hamas gun and rocket attacks on October 7 which killed at least 1,400 Israelis were a shocking atrocity. But those crimes are no justification for the subsequent mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This week the death toll in Gaza is rising towards 5,000 with more than half of those casualties being children and women. More than 12,000 have been injured. There is a bigger ulterior agenda here — the complete eradication of Palestinians and Palestine as a future state.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who previously called Palestinians “human animals”, this week said that the military assault on Gaza will likely go on for several more weeks. A ground invasion by Western-backed Israeli troops is imminent. The civilian death toll can be expected to escalate.
The incitement of a regional war by this Western-sponsored genocide is reaching a flashpoint. Arab nations, as well as Iran and Turkey, will inevitably be pushed by the anger of their populations to intervene.
Despite fueling the danger of a wider war from their complicity in the genocide against Palestinians, the gutless Western politicians added this contemptuous statement: “The leaders committed to continue close diplomatic coordination, including with key partners in the region, to prevent the conflict from spreading, preserve stability in the Middle East, and work toward a political solution and durable peace.”
The cynicism and duplicity of the Western powers is redolent of the infamous Balfour Declaration published by the British government more than a century ago.
In November 1917, the then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to Zionist supporter and wealthy banker Lord Walter Rothschild stating, “His Majesty’s Government view[s] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
That fateful policy by the British government led to the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 from London’s colonial holding of Palestine. For 75 years, the colonialist extermination of Palestinians has been facilitated relentlessly and remorselessly by Western governments, first by the British, and subsequently by the Americans. Of course, the genocide has been interspersed with platitudes about peace and human rights.
The Balfour document went on to state with faux magnanimity, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
The treachery of Britain was the carving out of a Zionist state in a land populated by a majority of Arabs. Yet, this flagrant violation was presented by London with a cynical and disingenuous concern for Palestinian rights.
From Britain’s betrayal over a century ago to the present complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, there is a heinous continuity in Western deception and culpability.
