The present Israel-Hamas conflict is completely detached from humanism. The root cause of these is the sheer 'weaponisation' of hatred. It feels as if everything has vanished. Morality, Decency, Compassion, Hope, Future - everything has disappeared.
Israel’s assault has killed at least 2,670 people in Gaza, and injured more than 9,600 others. Nearly 1 million Palestinians in Gaza have been forced from their homes, the UN has said.
There is no doubt about the Israeli army’s fighting capabilities. But Israel must choose between perpetual war or living in peace. This can only happen if the country recognises Palestinian self-determination – a prospect that, at present, seems remote.
The Jewish opposition disappeared as well. Politicians who had built whole careers on opposing Benjamin Netanyahu closed ranks behind him when it came to the eradication of Palestinians in Gaza, and to every dangerous and senseless Israeli strike on a series of states across the Middle East.
This madness reached its apex in the opposition’s enthusiastic support for bombing a Hamas delegation in Doha – a delegation meant to negotiate the fate of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Since 7 October, 2023, the media, too, has disappeared, in the sense of what media ought to be, diagnoses 'The Guardian' newspaper of London.
Apart from a few pockets at the margins, the Israeli press purposefully hid the horrors in Gaza so that throughout the war, a random citizen almost anywhere else in the world has known more about what has been happening in the strip than the average Israeli, it said.
In fact, the Oct 7 infamous Hamas attack has only led to a war of revenge that has now lasted for close to two years, killing more than 65,000 Palestinians and causing the widespread devastation of Gaza, including destroying 92% of its residential buildings. Lot of peculiar and unprecedented things also happened.
In August this year, the head of the Israeli army’s central command, Avi Bluth, ordered the felling of around 3,000 olive trees in the village of Al-Mughayyir, in Ramallah, which would have soon been ripe for the autumn harvest. For decades the Israeli military has uprooted olive trees – an important cultural symbol and source of income for Palestinians.
"The justification for this felling was the claim that the trees posed a “security threat” to a main Israeli settlement road that runs through the village lands," says Raja Shehadeh.
He is a Palestinian lawyer and writer, and founder of the human rights organisation Al-Haq. He is also the author of 'What Does Israel Fear From Palestine?'
At the culmination of this war, some analysts are already asking whether Israel might end up destroying Gaza and also destroy itself !!
In response to the attack, Israel has declared war and launched “Operation Swords of Iron,” striking what it says are Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza. It has also blocked supply lines of basic necessities to the Gaza population, including fuel and water.
Between October 7 and 12 (2023), Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on the densely inhabited territory – that’s equivalent to the total number of airstrikes on Gaza during the entire 2014 Gaza-Israel conflict, which lasted 50 days.
Children make up “between 30% and 40% of the wounded” in Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza, British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. (Oct 2023)
Looking back in 2023; Hamas called the operation “Al-Aqsa Storm” and said that it was a response to what it described as Israeli attacks on women, the desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the siege of Gaza.
They also claimed that the bodies of some 1,500 Hamas fighters had been recovered inside Israel (Oct 2023).
International condemnation has soared since Israel announced a ground assault on Gaza City and conducted an unprecedented strike against Hamas leadership on Qatari soil. It also comes as an independent UN inquiry concluded for the first time last week that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding that echoes those of other genocide experts and human rights groups, but which the Israeli government has rejected.
Last week, the European Union – Israel’s biggest trading partner – proposed sanctions that would partially suspend its free trade agreement with Israel, if approved by EU member states. Several Western nations have already implemented targeted sanctions against certain Israeli individuals, settler outposts and organizations supporting violence in the occupied West Bank.
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