THE world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), unanimously ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza, where two million people are starving. Not even the judges from Israel and Uganda dissented on this one. The world can see that after slaughtering 33,000 Palestinians, Israel is deploying starvation as its chief tool of genocide against defenceless men, women and children. And they can only get away with it with the support of the world’s hegemon, the United States of America.
Israel will ignore this latest order just as it ignored the ICJ’s order in January demanding it take all steps necessary to prevent genocide.
READ MORE: Joe Biden sends bombs while Gaza faces famine
On March 28 in New York City, a large group of anti-Zionist protesters stood outside Radio City Music Hall where President Joe Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were appearing for a “discussion” on the White House’s handling of the Gaza crisis. The event raised more than $25 million for Biden’s re-election campaign.
Inside, protesters interrupted the proceedings several times. Biden’s more compos mentis predecessors, who are together responsible for the deaths of millions during their presidencies, defended him. Obama said: “People understandably want to feel a certain purity in terms of how those decisions are made, but a president doesn’t have that luxury.”
READ MORE: Only two-thirds of hospitals in Gaza are even partially functioning
These men lack the courage to acknowledge that the US is sponsoring a genocide. It’s not about purity but valuing human life. What they value are the billionaires who fund America’s main political parties and helped to propel them to the presidency.
Once this genocide ends, Israel and the US will have permanent black stains on their already soiled international reputations. If there’s a silver lining to this horror, it is that it will hasten the end of American hegemony, something the world should welcome.
Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh
INTERVIEWED by the BBC last Wednesday, Israel’s economy minister Nir Barkat responded to questioning about his country’s treatment of Gaza’s civilians. Pressed on whether he considered them “innocent”, he refused to estimate how many he would put in this category. He did say as part of his answer however that 70% of Gazans supported the Hamas attack on October 7.
This may explain to some degree the Israeli government’s apparent lack of concern for the fate they are imposing on the civilian population, the vast majority of whom Mr Barkat would seem to consider guilty by association.
READ MORE: 'Please stop the suffering': Poor Things actor makes plea for Palestine on SNL
A parallel perhaps with Putin’s attitude that all Ukrainians are Nazis and consequently civilian infrastructure and population centres are legitimate targets. The more people he kills or displaces westward during his war, the fewer he will need to deal with thereafter.
In the case of Gaza, the resurgence of Hamas in the north recently should be a sign to Israel that its declared aim of eliminating Hamas completely is a practical impossibility. Even if they are prepared to occupy the territory permanently, there will be continuing support amongst the remaining population for an underground resistance movement they will never eliminate.
Cameron Crawford
Rothesay
SINCE October 7 I keep being haunted by a memory from the 1980s. At that time I was a development education teacher visiting schools in my part of eastern Scotland. In one lesson I remember displaying a graph of aid sent to countries needing help: this concerned worldwide aid to several continents, and covered total amounts, be that funding for NGOs, humanitarian provisions and skills, governments, and military support – wherever such might have come from or go to. This block chart revealed the amount of aid received by each country, be that small or middling.
At the far end of this chart was one tall bar that clearly outreached all the other countries. Bear in mind that this was shortly after Ethiopia’s tragedy had led to Band Aid and focused public interest on poor countries, in a way that felt unprecedented. When I asked the pupils to hazard a guess as to which country this large bar denoted, they eagerly called out “Ethiopia!” To their puzzlement, Ethiopia was one of the lower bars.
No: my naming the country puzzled them as much as it had me, for it was Israel – as a result of all its different military-aid donors.
I doubt that situation has altered much in the 40 years since. No wonder Gaza’s situation is so abominable today! I may have been a war baby who grew up in a time of ideals, but today I am in deep despair for this world for which I once held out such hope.
Catriona de Voil
Arbroath
READ MORE: UK Government lawyers say Israel is breaking international law, Tory MP claims
SO, the UK Government has been told that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law but won’t do anything about that. As the UK Government wants to ditch the European Convention of Human Rights, we shouldn’t be surprised.
Ian Waugh
via thenational.scot
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