Author: leahlarkin

The tragic, depressing news is everywhere:  Ukraine, Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, Myanmar, the Congo, Trump’s tariffs, Trump’s persecution and deportation of immigrants, Trump’s crack down on universities and free speech. The list seems endless.  But it’s the war in Gaza that tears at my heart.
 

Some 52,000 slaughtered in the past 18 months.  At least another 14,222 trapped under the rubble and presumed dead, according to the Gaza Information Office. All are primarily innocent civilians, including women, children, 173 journalists and media workers, and at least 412 aid workers including 291 UN staff.  Injured: 115,729, including many, many children who will be disabled for life. Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita, and is incapable of taking care of them.

Since the first stage of the cease fire collapsed on March 18, nearly 1,600 Palestinians have been killed.

“Gaza is a killing field, and civilians are in an endless death loop,” said António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations.

October 7 was horrific. 1,200 innocent Israelis were murdered. Hamas, which governs Gaza, is responsible. The remaining hostages captured by Hamas on October 7 must be released. Yet this war has dragged on for 18 months, and the crisis only intensifies. Hamas survives. IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) continues to kill with US supplied weapons. The US, both under the Biden administration and now even more so under Trump, has given Israel carte blanche to continue the massacre. More and more Palestinians perish.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition seem intent on making Gaza unlivable.

M“Israel has succeeded in its goal to make Gaza inhabitable,” said Gavin Kelleher, an aide worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council.  The humanitarian needs are extreme, he said.  People are continually displaced, living in constant fear of military violence. “The goal is to force Palestinians to leave Gaza as soon as they are able.”  

This is the goal and hope, not just of Netanyahu, but also of Donald Trump who wants to turn the “prime real estate” into the Riviera of the Middle East.

This infuriates me. What about the people?  It’s their land. 
Arabs have occupied the territory for centuries. 

The history and background of Palestine are complicated. In the late 19^th century Zionists sought to establish a home for the Jewish people in Ottoman-controlled Palestine.  In 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, endorsing the idea.   Jewish immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe, began moving to the area.  

After World War II and the Holocaust, in 1948 the State of Israel was officially declared. The Arab-Israel war broke out, forcibly displacing the majority of the local Arab population.    And, they’re still being displaced.

Since the creation of the State of Israel, human rights experts note that violations of international law and lack of accountability have been the norm, rather than the exception.

More than two-thirds of Gaza is now either under active displacement orders or designated as “no-go” zones, states the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  

The West Bank with Gaza makes up the State of Palestine.  It is now divided between Israeli settlements and Palestinian enclaves.  Although Hamas is not in charge in the West Bank, reportedly tens of thousands of Palestinians have been expelled from their homes there.  The international community considers the West Bank settlements illegal under international law.

Both the West Bank and Gaza have been under Israeli military occupation.  The Israeli army determines what Palestinians can and cannot do.  They have been deprived of freedom, of their human rights. 

The continued occupation has led to hopelessness and despair which has fostered violence. Palestinians want to establish their own independent state.  Israel wants to defend its borders and control the West Bank.

The atrocities continue. 

• March 2.  Israel closed the borders into Gaza.  No more food, medical supplies, fuel and water can enter.  They remain closed.

 • March 23.  Fifteen aid workers in a clearly marked ambulance were mowed down when Israeli troops opened fire on them.  They, and their ambulance, were buried in mass graves. Autopsies show that several were shot in the head.                           

• April 13.  An Israeli air strike destroyed the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City.  Hospitals are supposed to be protected by international law, yet Israel has targeted them, some multiple times.  Hamas is accused of using the hospitals as command-and-control centers and/or cover.  In the case of the Gaza City hospital, no evidence of such has been provided.

• April 13.  Six brothers and a friend, all soup kitchen volunteers, were killed when their car was hit.

• As I write, Israel is bombing tents where the displaced now live 
They were given a warning to evacuate, but where to?  There are no safe zones.  They live amongst filth, rubble, garbage. There is no sanitation.  People are sick, on the verge of starvation, especially children.

A UN organization states that Israel’s actions show “an utter disregard for human life.”

It’s heartbreaking to see the destruction, the rubble in Gaza where its citizens once lived, the schools where kids once learned now leveled, hungry children lining up for food, body bags carried through the streets, wounded lying on the floors of hospitals which have no more beds, the West Bank farmer pointing to land where his olive groves which had been in his family for ages once flourished — but are no more.

When will it stop?  Is there no humanity in the world? 

It appears Israel, at least the right wing government, has taken a page from the Nazi playbook. The Nazis termed the Jews “untermenschen,” subhuman, vermin, thus justifying the need to eliminate them. One can assume Netanyahau and his cronies feel much the same about Palestinians whom they do not consider as human beings — best to eliminate them. How else can this continue?

And, much of the rest of the world turns a blind eye to the slaughter. Martin Griffiths, executive director of Mediation Group International, cites a lack of international condemnation 

“Whatever outrage there is, and there is appallingly little, has not led to action.” He calls this “a terrible stain on our conscience.”

Griffiths pointed out that it is not only Israel doing “these deplorable and illegal things but also states responsible for international humanitarian law and the Geneva conventions.”  They should speak out, he said, because they are legally obligated to do so.  Instead, they are silent.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Edmund Burke.

(Information above is from numerous sources, including The New York Times, Le Monde, France 24, The Guardian and Aljazeera.  Sadly, since this writing, the numbers have no doubt climbed.)

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