In plain sight, a crime so huge, so heinous, so horrific, yet so hidden, mitigated and normalised by our criminal political class and service media, it’s as though it has never happened.
It's remarkable to think that the most openly known about, documented and verified genocide in history is still being denied, its perpetrators still at large, their complicit patrons still treated as benign actors.
How has this regime managed to get away with so much killing and destruction based on the most blatantly deceitful claims? Largely, because its Western backers and our craven media have blatantly indulged that deceit.
If, as Israel insists, the people of Gaza are being controlled and manipulated against their will by Hamas, if it’s 'all the fault of Hamas', why kill all Palestinians? Why blow up their homes, hospitals, schools, universities, mosques and churches? Why bomb tented refugee centres? Why murder infants in the streets?
Of course, it’s all a complete pretext. There is no selective targeting of Hamas. No 'precision strikes'. This isn't even a 'war on Hamas', or even a war at all. It's a genocide against all Palestinians.
There has to be the nominal statement to the world: ‘we are targeting terrorists’. But behind that brazen fiction lies the real message: we want to, we can, and we will, kill every Palestinian we are able to. We will eliminate everyone and everything before us.
It’s a message the regime wants not just Palestinians to know, but it’s ‘international community’ of enablers, too. And with it comes the unstated subtext message: dare to stop us.
Lamentably, as it marauds across the region, few have, or will. It’s a game of bluff. No Western state has the real resolve to take on this depraved entity; certainly not the depraved US and UK, given the vast crimes these imperialist regimes have committed. And without any action to sanction and isolate their colonialist progeny, the horror show continues.
The instruction coming directly from the political and military top is now abundantly clear: kill everyone; destroy everything. Spare no one; all must be wiped out.
And that instruction has been duly understood by those below. We will slaughter the children so that they will never grow to oppose us. We will eliminate the women, so that they can never bring more troublesome lives into the world. We will kill the babies in the hospitals, clinging to life in their incubators. We will obliterate the limbs of the infants, smash their bones, emaciate their bodies, starve them to death. We will incinerate them in their makeshift tents. We will capture, humiliate, torture and murder the men. We will let all Palestinians know that their lives are worthless. We won't just kill them. We will make all the world know that it's in our gift to kill them. We will kill those who seek to protect and nurture the children, just like we removed the much-loved Mahmoud for daring to make soup for those starving kids; just as we eliminated gentle and revered 'soul of my soul' Khaled, sending him to join his beloved granddaughter and grandson, whom we also took pleasure in removing from this earth. We will snipe the children with bullets to the head and chest. We will extinguish the journalists, all of them, for daring to report our depravities. We will eliminate the UN and other aid workers who are trying to keep alive those we are seeking to kill. We will kill everything in sight. For our pleasure. We will violate what remains of their homes. We will smash their children's toys. We will parade in their women's underwear. We will bulldoze and desecrate their corpses. And as we do so, we will enjoin our own chosen people to stand on safe hilltops and sail the Gaza coast, gaping and laughing with the same bloodthirsty pleasure at the apocalypse we've laid out before them.
“The soldiers describe shooting dead anyone who moves inside undeclared so-called “kill zones”, even children, and then claiming them to be “terrorists”. The dead are left to be eaten by packs of dogs. The only words one Israeli reservist found to describe Israel’s repeated and intentional killing of children in Gaza was “pure evil”.”
What kind of 'moral army' would fire direct to the heads of children? It's an act beyond our comprehension. Yet it's a command handed down with calculating efficiency from army leaders: "these kids need to be killed from the day they are born".
The standard 'human shields' claim is no longer even debatable. There is no 'shielding'. There is no dispute: it’s a genocide, and all Palestinians are condemned to death.
The numbers of dead - from bombing, to lack of medical treatment, to rampant disease - now massively exceeds the registered death figure by multiple thousands. This is, indeed, a regime of "pure evil".
Those who still refuse to call it a genocide are collectively complicit in this historic horror. Their denial, as well as their complicity, is being hidden behind a political and media smokescreen. As Francesca Albanese reminds us:
“This genocide would not have been possible without the shocking cover-up by the media. The role of Western media in defending the acts of a genocidal state is unprecedented.”
And no more so than at the BBC. As the world's most visited online news site, the BBC holds enormous power to shape and control global opinion, with key editorial figures in place to cover up Israel's crimes and hide British culpability. There is no doubt that the BBC is deeply implicated in the genocide.
But even state-serving media cannot hide the actual truth; the regime cannot be forever shielded. In spite of manifest media compliance, the world has now witnessed so many atrocities, so many indescribable massacres and callous killings, a dystopian hell on earth, there can be no effective denial of the genocide and the guilty parties behind it.
And the indictment sheet extends well beyond Netanyahu, Gallant and their cohorts. From Biden and Harris to Starmer and Lammy and all their associates, a whole Western regime is now in the frame for genocidal crimes.
The British state has not just been complicit, but an active party to the genocide. It has flown secretive RAF missions over Gaza to facilitate it. It has licensed the weaponry used to conduct the slaughter. It has purged those seeking to stop it, attacking lines of peaceful protesters at arms company gates, enforcing management instructions to keep the factories of death running. And it has invoked terrorism legislation to hound, arrest, remand and issue draconian jail sentences to conscientious people. The UK truly is a genocidal regime in its own right.
Understandably, some of the liberal-minded among us bewail a ‘failure of humanity'. But this is a false sigh. There is plenty of deep, humanitarian concern and assertive support across the world for bombed and brutalised Palestinians. It’s those in power - in executive political offices, in corporate boardrooms, like Barclays, in media editorial rooms, like the BBC - that have truly failed Palestinians, revealing their own craven inhumanity. History and, we may hope, The Hague, will judge them all accordingly.
After every hospital has been bombed and attacked in Gaza, the barbaric asault on Kamal Adwan hospital these last days of 2024 has left staff and patients beaten, humiliated and forcibly left in the cold.
Babies have been left to die in bitterly plummeting temperatures. The regime has even weaponised the weather to merciless effect. Nor are we being told, specifically, by the BBC why they are dying from hypothermia.
Imagine the political and media outcry if this was happening in Ukraine rather than Palestine.
"Dr Hussam Abu Saffiya strides in his white lab coat through the wreckage of the Kamal Adwan hospital he ran – the last functioning one in northern Gaza – towards two tanks, their gun-barrels aimed at him. It tells the story of the final stages of Israel's genocide in Gaza better than any words. Is that why the corporate media has shown so little interest in publicising this image?"
One can only wonder at the bravery and resilience of such people, and the shameful silence of others in still failing to tell the full story of this unmitigated horror.
As we enter this next perilous year for Gaza and the wider people of Palestine, it's imperative that every continuing effort, every show of solidarity, every creative action, be deployed to help end the genocide and bring about the removal of this evil entity.
1 comment:
Well said John.
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