The West's hypocrisy towards Gaza's breakout is stomach-turning
Jonathan Cook (Middle East Eye)
There will be little sympathy in the West as, yet again, besieged Palestinians are bombed by Israel, their immense suffering justified by the term 'Israeli retaliation'.
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Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinian twin babies Ossayd and Mohammad Abu Hmaid, their mother and their three sisters killed in Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on 8 October 2023 (Reuters).
The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.
Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by western politicians or publics.
The West's hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.
This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage more than 15 years ago, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea and air in 2007.(…)
Watch how little sympathy and concern there will be from the West for the many Palestinian men, women and children who are killed once again by Israel. Their immense suffering will be obscured, and justified, by the term "Israeli retaliation". (…)
No one really cared while Gaza's Palestinans were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. (…)
No one really cared when it emerged that Gaza's Palestinians had been put on a "starvation diet" by Israel. (…)
No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. (…)
No one really cared when Israeli snipers targeted nurses, youngsters and people in wheelchairs who came out to protest against their imprisonment by Israel. (…)
Western concern at the deaths of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian fighters is hard to stomach. Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel's repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not? (…)
How does Israel have an "unquestionable right" to "defend itself" from the Palestinians whose territory it occupies and controls? (…)
Western governments so horrified by the Palestinian attack on Israel are also the governments that are remaining silent as Israel turns off the electricity [and water] to the prison that is Gaza - again in supposed "retaliation".
The collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza, dependent on Israel for power because Israel surrounds and controls every aspect of their lives in the enclave, is a war crime.
Strangely, western officials understand it is a war crime when Russia bombs power stations in Ukraine, turning off the lights. They scream for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be dragged to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. So why is it so difficult for them to understand the parallels of what Israel is doing to Gaza?
There are two immediate, and contrasting, lessons to be learnt from what has happened this weekend.
The first is that the human spirit cannot be caged indefinitely. Palestinians in Gaza have been constantly devising new ways to break free from their chains. (…)
Israel will batter the enclave back into submission with massive bombardments, but only "in retaliation", of course. The Palestinians' craving for freedom and dignity will not be diminished. Another form of resistance, doubtless more brutal still, will emerge.
And the parties most responsible for that brutality will be Israel and the West that supports it so slavishly, because Israel refuses to stop brutalising the Palestinians it forces to live under its rule.
The second lesson is that Israel, endlessly indulged by its western patrons, still has no incentive to internalise the fundamental truth above. (…)
Already, the "good Israelis" - opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz - are in discussions with Neyanyahu to join him in an "emergency unity government".
What "emergency"? The emergency of Palestinians demanding the right not to live as prisoners in their own homeland.(…)
Tags: #israel #palestine #palestinians #occupied_territories #gaza #human_rights #settlements #illegal_settlements #terrorism #hamas #hezbollah #hypocrisy
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