Gaza was 1 of the oldest continuously to our time inhabited cities on Earth. Her past is over 4,000 years old. She was born in the Bronze Age. Its walls and streets were cut by the sequences of cultures that left traces in the heritage of all mankind.
It was inhabited by Canaanites, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabs, Jews, Christians. There was the 3rd oldest church in the world. It was a crucial center of trade and an ancient center of material and intellectual culture: literature, rhetoric, theology. The name of the city and the delicate fabric from which we make dressings does not sound the same by accident.
However, the tissue that the Gazans have given to the planet to treat our wounds for so many centuries will not aid them to endure the harm they are now suffering from the industrial device of killing 1 of the 10 most powerful armies in the world, supported and sponsored by the owner of this largest.
Gaza was – past time due to the fact that it is no longer there. Today, after more than 3 months of Israeli Operation Iron Swords – of course not the first specified invasion, but unprecedented in terms of the scale of cruelty – the city of Gaza no longer exists. It was razed to the ground, and almost all its inhabitants were driven away, mainly to the south of the narrow “zone” surrounding the city.
The infrastructure capable of sustaining people's lives exists only in the confederate part of the enclave, but it shrinks there all day, due to the fact that Israel decided to carry out the full liquidation of Gaza this time – after respective years of making it "the largest concentration camp in history" (determination of Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling).
Right to kill
Israel exists as a state of racial apartheid. This is confirmed by the increasing body of legal analyses, and even by the opinions of his own political leaders, with erstwhile Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the head, who have said so about their country for decades. And it's apartheid without comparison more brutal than the "original" South African one. This is not my individual opinion either – this is the opinion of the people who knew that apartheid on their own, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the head.
Israel, and behind it the mainstream of Western medics, invokes its right of defence. In this regard, for example, Francesca Albanese. global lawyer, United Nations peculiar Envoy for the Palestinian Occupied Territories, She said it many times.: “Israel cannot claim the right to defend itself against a threat which originates from the territory which it [self] holds under armed occupation.” More simply, the occupier is not entitled to a defence against the opposition of the occupied.
Hosted by Australian Press Club 14 November 2023 Albanese explained: “The right of defence is simply a circumstantial legal word that is equivalent to the right to wage war. The State may wage war against another State which threatens its security." However, Gaza is not a separate country. This is not due to Israel and its military occupation, which has for decades prevented Palestinians from having their own sovereign state.
Albanese is neither eccentric nor radical, and there is simply a consensus on this issue – the erstwhile Albanese has said the same thing for years at the office (Richard Falk, John Dugard); the same is said by subsequent decisions of the jurisdiction of the United Nations.
Here is simply a brief explanation: within the meaning of global law, the Gaza Strip is part of the Palestinian Occupied Territories: it is so under the business of the State of Israel, which controls its territory. It besides controls access to this territory from land, sea and air – the full movement of people and goods.
The basic act of global law regulating the issue of civilian populations during the war and under military business is the 1949 Geneva Convention, along with its 1977 Additional Protocols. In these documents, the occupiers have no rights, only duties. And the convention requires first of all that business should be temporary, temporary and temporary, which is not yet permanent. de facto the business of Palestinian territories by Israel. Israel is simply a signatory to the IV Convention itself, but has never signed additional protocols. It was already well after the 1967 six-day war and the Israeli political class already knew perfectly well that they would never be respected.
So Israel repeats indefinitely the same lies, referring to the non-application of the "law" in his case, in order to make the world's public opinion convinced that these rights are irrefutable, due to the fact that Israel gives refuge to the survivors of the top historical demolition (in Europe, due to the fact that European colonialism founded an even greater planet outside Europe). So Israel uses the memory of the Nazi genocide of European Jews to gag with moral blackmail of all the critics of harm that Palestinians do today. And present he is conducting the first truly industrial, technological (using AI tools) the demolition of the 21st century.
The demolition of Gaza
What utilized to be a “genocide on installments” (term of historian Ilan Pappé), in early October last year passed into public genocide and accelerated.
Israel has surely killed 1 100 people in Gaza, possibly even 1 100 and seventy. It doesn't even make sense. indicate numbers, due to the fact that between the day I compose these words and the day the text appears, the number of dead will be higher. The Ministry of wellness in Gaza has lost its ability to keep up with the recognition of corpses and the number of deaths, so no 1 knows how many thousands of bodies are left unidentifiable, any of them torn to pieces, under the rubble.
Estimates provided by independent Geneva Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor they are already ahead of the figures reported by the Ministry of wellness in Gaza by at least 8,000 fatalities. The Gazan Ministry of wellness would like to give only what it knows with absolute certainty than to let Israel to propagate possible errors as ‘proof’ that ‘Hamas lies’ and ‘exaggerate’ losses. So far, in Hamas' list of victims, Western verifiers have found 1 (!) error: the same individual was mentioned twice. erstwhile President Joe Biden publically challenged Hamas dataHe even amazed the staff of his own administration, due to the fact that they were never questioned in Washington.
When 40% of deaths are children; erstwhile most schools and hospitals have already been bombed, any of the second after sieges from the ground and air strikes, as if they were military targets; erstwhile in many sectors of the Gaza Strip there is no more complete building; erstwhile ambulances and convoys with humanitarian aid are shelled; erstwhile the mass executions of civilians have been documented; erstwhile mass captures of civilians and their public humiliation have been documented, it is essential to be highly blinded to not see that Israel is targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure intentionally.
The Israeli authorities say that Hamas is involved, but they clearly search to exterminate a crucial part of Gaza’s population and drive the remainder out into the Egyptian territory of Sinai. (There is evidence for specified a plan leaked documents dated on 13 October; „Financial Times” wrote about European diplomacy Screwed in urging Egypt to consent). As it were along the way, Israel is yet attempting to break the Palestinians as a coherent human group, destroying what sustained its biological existence in Gaza (from mills and bakeries to hospitals and pharmacies) and social (from schools and libraries, mosques and churches, to universities and media), as well as the equation of monuments of Palestinian culture with the ground.
In a motion of protest against the failure of the United Nations to halt the disaster from being the manager of the fresh York Office of the United Nations advanced Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber resigned in late October. erstwhile he left, he said that erstwhile it comes to genocide, it is always the hardest to show that the demolition of a peculiar ethnic, racial or spiritual group was of a nature Premeditated intent (this is part of the definition of genocide crime recorded in the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and punishment of Genocide Crimes). This request is the hardest to meet, due to the fact that political and military leaders most frequently avoid saying it straight and for cameras. However, this peculiar difficulty was removed from the equation by the present government of Israel.
On December 29, the authoritative charge of violating the Convention on Genocide brought against Israel to the global Court of Justice in the Hague, South Africa. Pages 59-67 of this 84-page document This is simply a compilation of statements by Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu, president Jicchak Hercog, Defence Minister Joawa Gallant and another ministers and military, which supply evidence of the clear intention to execution Gaza's population. “We will destruct everything” (Gallant); “All this nation is responsible, all this rhetoric about innocent civilians is lying” (Hercog) – etc.
What is allowed of Israel?
Israel and the network of global institutions soft power, which is available in the planet (from political beginning to various cultural associations or institutes), intimidate critics even the most shameless crimes of Tel Aviv cast to the right and left accusations of anti-Semitism. In doing so, they gradually embarrass the concept itself. The State of Israel is trying to push the thought that critics of its policy towards the Palestinians – for example, in the UN General Assembly, where the American veto (used systematically in the safety Council) is powerless, and resolutions condemning Israel support the vast majority of the planet each time, have no nonsubjective reason for it, but are just anti-Semites.
In fact, Israel is subject to specified harsh criticism, due to the fact that it does things that were not done so unceremoniously and does not even care about the appearance of any state in the planet order established after planet War II.
During the 3 months of the war in Gaza, Israel has already killed as many children as they have died in all the armed conflicts in the planet in the last fewer years. Already in the first weeks, he dropped more bombs on the Gaza Strip (365 square kilometres) than the United States dropped in 12 months in the worst year on Afghanistan (more than 650 1000 square kilometres). The full force of bombs dropped on Gaza exceeded at least twice the power of an atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima.
Israel has already murdered all ninth writer in Gaza since the beginning of October, and has killed at least 111 of them. As the Committee of Defence of Journalists points out, this is an unprecedented proportion in the wars of our times – greater than the proportion of soldiers dying in most modern wars. By killing journalists – peculiarly protected by global law – 10 times faster than “ordinary” civilians, Israel proves that it is doing so on a plan to cut Palestinians off from the world, gradually cutting off the planet from the fact about the crimes it commits in Gaza.
A immense part of what we know about the current events in Gaza is due to the heroism of Palestinian crews of the Qatari tv Al-Jazira. Her journalists repeatedly received warnings on the telephone from Israel's armed forces that their home or flat would be bombed shortly – so these are not accidental strikes. Many journalists working in Gaza have already lost their families.
Israel has besides murdered at least 142 UN officials working in Gaza. That's more than they've been killed in the service from the beginning of the UN until 2023. This is mainly about UNRWA's staff, the only “temporary” United Nations agency that has been in existence almost from the beginning of the UN, specifically set up to aid victims of the crimes of only 1 state - Israel. It's just another unprecedented thing.
Above all, we are faced with an overriding scandal, without which there would be no rest: the declaration of war on the population under military business of the state that declared this war. No country has that right.
And all of this is just the latest chapter in the long past of the mockery of global law that Israel has been allowing since the beginning of its existence. Let us remind you of just 2 things – for a meaningful example.
One: Israel was admitted to the UN global community on condition that it would enable the right to return to Palestinians driven out in cultural cleansings 1947–1948 (these events Palestinians call Nakba, disaster). This took place in 1949 – a reception to the UN. To this day, Israel, 7 and a half decades later, failed to meet the conditions for its acceptance into the community of national states and global law.
Second: in global law, it is part of the definition of a state that it has limits which it recognises and agrees with its neighbours. Israel is the only state in the modern global law strategy that has not yet declared its authoritative borders – even unilaterally. After the annexation of Gaza, the West Bank of Jordan and the Syrian hills of Golan, the railway can come (again) to Egyptian Sinai, the confederate part of Lebanon and who knows what else.
In short, Israel is under the legal and moral fire of global public opinion not because, as it itself claims, we, its critics, are anti-Semites, and due to the fact that it has been done, not since yesterday, but for decades, many things that no another country in the planet has done since the end of planet War II. Things that go beyond anything that can be purportedly accused of regimes that we like to call "homicidal states" behind American whispers (the corners of the states).
Gaza’s Nearest Future
What will happen in the close future? To compose fear, due to the fact that it is hard to deny the cognition that Binjamin Netanyahu will no longer leave stone on stone in Gaza. But it's besides a duty, due to the fact that we can't just accept it, put up a weapon and watch it passively.
Netanjahu would no longer have a appropriate way to halt it, even if he wanted (but he does not want to). He wouldn't be able to, due to the fact that he's already committed besides many bloody crimes to now announce the end of the operation, without fulfilling the declared, though false, intent of this genocide campaign: "the demolition of Hamas."
So far, the Israeli army has reported that it has “destroyed” 2,000 Hamas militants. This is just 1 twentieth of their numbers before October 7, and thousands of people of age have surely joined their ranks since. In addition, 2 000 "disposed" Hamas fighters are a number not supported by any evidence, almost surely exaggerated for propaganda purposes.
Everything Israel has said since 7 October turns out sooner or later to be at least a bending of facts – like the number of civilian Hamas victims of the 7 October attack, yet halved from the first 1400 (but possibly the majority, as we know from the Haaretz Journal), did not die at the hands of Hamas, from Israeli chopper fire and tanks that almost shot blind). Sometimes we are faced with a complete confabulation – as in the case of the alleged massacre of forty children, invented in the "information channel" and24.
Meanwhile, the business army has already murdered more than 1% of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip (and possibly the number of victims is approaching 1.5%). In order to “destroy Hamas” in this way and at specified a rate, most of the enclave population would should be exterminated. And there's no indication that Netanyahu should go back before that.
Netanjahu refuses to halt it, due to the fact that only the continuation of the war helps him to stay in power and at a safe distance from the prosecutor's office. He so announced on 8 January that Operation Iron Swords would proceed throughout the year 2024. That is why it is so eager to hazard spreading the war to the full region, shooting targets in Lebanon, Syria for 3 months, and possibly – there is no evidence yet, but the pattern of conduct agrees – in Iran (the attacks at Tehran Cemetery on January 7, 2024). The declaration of will to carry out this war throughout 2024 besides indirectly confirms the intention to escalate it into a greater regional conflict, as there are no more buildings left in Gaza to be bombed for the next 12 months.
Netanjahu could halt this now, only if he was forced to do so – e.g. by the United States, which could simply cut out the transfers and supply of weapons. Without this support, Israel would shortly have nothing to throw on Gaza. The Biden and Harris administration, however, supports Israel uncritically – materially, militarily and diplomaticly. It may besides be that he commits political suicide in this way before the upcoming elections, due to the fact that further sectors of the Democratic organization electorate will turn around without seeing the justification for specified a "his" presidential act.
Netanjahu could possibly also, possibly to any extent, be stopped by Iran, a regional power with a network of associated forces throughout the region. but that his allies (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Huti in Yemen) are tired of the nightmares of the last 4th century. Since the muslim Revolution of Chomeini, Iran has always supported the Palestinian origin (not only Hamas, but at 1 time even Marxists from the People's Front of the Liberation of Palestine, erstwhile they mattered).
Always a well-informed author and political essayist Tariq Ali (londian and Pakistani) suggests that Iran could nevertheless number on the support of Pakistan, the atomic power. As early as October, Iran declared with the mouth of Ayatollah Chamenei that it would not stand by and watch the massacre. The president of the muslim Republic, Ebrahim Raisi, besides spoke very harshly. Until now, however, Tehran has not intervened straight (it only quietly supports Hezbollah in Lebanon, the government in Damascus and the astonishingly brazen Hutich). any credible threats from Washington may have been affected by Iran’s abstinence — threats supported by U.S. warships and air carriers in the mediate East. But who knows what else will happen if the attacks, like late in Beirut and Tehran, happen again.
Over the last 75 years, Palestinians have proved to be among the bravest, most persistent peoples and peoples in the world. But it's winter. Almost 2 million of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip have already been driven out of their homes – rather virtually homeless now – and driven from 1 angle of the Gaza Strip to another. And even along the way, even on the “safe paths” on which their army of Israel is directing them, they are inactive being murdered by this army.
Israel blocks food and water supply, utilizing civilian population starvation as 1 of the methods of conducting war (which is simply a war crime). The Palestinians are able to withstand much, but erstwhile their children and the aged begin to die of cold, hunger and disease, further families will effort to cross the border with Egypt (blocked by Egypt at the request of the US and Israel). So far the Palestinians are not even trying to do this due to the fact that they don't want to make Netanjah easier. final cultural cleansing Gaza Strip. They know that Israel, since 1948, has not allowed almost anyone to return who he erstwhile pushed out of Palestine. Palestinians realize that if they leave their land – even Gaza, which for hundreds of thousands of them is already a place of escape from their first land – they will leave it forever.
But if no 1 and nothing stops Netanyahu, the Palestinians of Gaza will yet begin to decision towards the border with Egypt. If this migration escalates, Egyptian soldiers will face the fact that the only way to keep border crossings blocked would be to shoot refugees. Even if the corrupt as-Sisi regime, corrupted by the Americans, lost its senses adequate to issue specified orders (this would mean a repeat of Tahrir Square for him), Egyptian soldiers, like all Egyptians who consider Palestinians to be their arabian brothers and sisters, will refuse to execute them. They will open the border to save the lives of those Palestinians they can save – but at the same time aid Netanjah clean the ethnically Gaza Strip.
Paradoxical Configuration
The paradox, however, is that specified a "success" of Israel will not mean that it will win the war. Or even that he's winning it for now. How writes for British “Guardian” Paul Rogers, prof. emeritus of survey on the peace of the University of Bradford, although Gaza (city and full zone) is already nearly leveled to the ground and despite what Israeli propaganda says, Israel inactive cannot even begin to win this war. Hamas remains an astonishingly effective and efficient resistance, capable not only of hiding even in conditions of unprecedented demolition in his territory, but continues to inflict Israeli conscripts and reservists despite its overpowering technological advantage, losses so crucial that Tel Aviv continues to falsify data about these losses. It may be that effective ambushes blow up an full army of Israeli soldiers in 1 building; even the defence of the leveled city of Gaza has not stopped.
The Israeli army inactive has no thought where Hamas is holding the remainder of the hostages. Israel’s soldiers have most likely arrived among them, who are incapable to cope with their fighting in their territory and fall into traps. There is simply a widening gap between the numbers of killed and wounded soldiers, which is reported by the Netanyahu government and what data from Israeli hospitals indicate.
The same is actual of material losses. Sheikh Nasrallah, leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, said in the first week of January that his group had published evidence of demolition by their own forces of more Israeli equipment than the sum of losses Israel admits. And Hamas, his al-Kassam Brigade and Palestinian muslim The jihad surely destroyed something, too.
As of 7 October, Hamas’s ranks have surely supported more volunteers than members have been killed. Hamas must be more many present than he was 3 months ago. The support for this organization in the West Bank of Jordan has besides skyrocketed, depriving the remnants of legitimacy that the authoritarian, discredited and corrupt Palestinian Authority Mahmuda Abbas, who has long been nothing more than a "subcontractor of the Israeli occupation" (as Israeli political scientist Neve Gordon concluded many years ago in the book Israel’s Occupation).
Paradoxically, Israel will almost surely burn Gaza to the ground until human life is no longer possible there, and with large probability will drive at least any of its inhabitants away, leaving them as problem to Egypt, Jordan, and another countries, possibly not only nearby. But even that won't mean defeating Hamas. Hamas may even come out of this war stronger and surrounded by an aura of heroism akin to Lebanese Hezbollah – so far the only arabian formation that defeated the Israeli army in combat, in 2006.
But that's not all Israel will lose. The demolition and cultural cleansing of Gaza will be declared triumph by Netanjah, but this may besides be the beginning of the end of Israel. interior order for a while will persist in bare military and police force (the Netanyahu government is already pushing laws to let police to shoot at their own citizens erstwhile they protest), but lies and force alone will not replace interior social cohesion.
I'm certain they won't last long. As historian Ilan Pappé says, Israel's society internally no longer has anything but common hatred of Palestinians and Arabs at all. The racist colonial project, Israel, sustains the material support of the United States, but, as quoted in Pappé, “this is simply a condition that may change.”
Welcome to the wilderness of extermination
In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians! – this has been a slogan for years and worldwide chanted on demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinians. He originally appealed to the imperative of simple solidarity with people subjected to the force of "one of the worst modern tyranny" (journalist Gideon Levy), "the longest and most brutal military business in fresh history" (the communicative of Avi Shlaim). However, another has grown over this first level of importance.
Peter Frose in a brilliant, besides published in Polish book essay about four possible futures, which may come after the already coming end of capitalism, he called the worst of possible specified systems in his speculation exterminism. This would be a strategy in which the problem of scarcity resulting from shrinking resources, the climate crisis and the end of the "dark nature" (Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore), on which so much capitalism depends, will be "solved" by the increasingly violent powers and plutacracy of subsequent unnecessary populations to complete or partial demolition – act or omission.
When we say that "we are all Palestinians", we besides mean that in the force that strikes Palestinians before our eyes, the potential, at the same time the perplexing future of humanity in general is being viewed. This is the future that any of the rulers of this planet plan for us, trying to preserve their power and advantage at all costs, defending their interests and privileges. besides for the price of large extermination.
The unprecedented force of the State of Israel has thus far escaped him so unpunished, possibly due to the fact that it is being forged out of it and brought out of it a gloomy, distant future desired by the plutocrats for all mankind. If the Biden and Harris administration is willing to lose the upcoming U.S. elections, just to shield the ever-crazy Netanyahu regime, it may be due to the fact that the experimentation that this government is carrying out on the Gaza population is more crucial to the American domination than to anyone who will actually settle down for these or another 4 years in the Oval Office.
By occupying Palestine, Israel has developed many tools of power and control that may prove essential in the cruel future of extermination to control the masses far more many than the people of the Gaza Strip. Israel has been exporting military and IT technologies of force for years (Pegasus software is just 1 of many examples) whose effectiveness has been tested on Palestinians and based on this effectiveness on their reputation and marketing (proposed literature subject: Anthony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of business Around the WorldJeff Halper, War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification).
It's a future we have a work to resist.
If Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity again escape Netanyahu's crew as amphibians; if we let our governments, after all we have been looking at for the past 3 months, Israel is inactive treated as any average state, as if it simply enjoyed the sacred "right to defend"—then what Israel does in Gaza will be normalized. In fact, it will become a "normal", acceptable technology of power, with time utilized against subsequent populations on a scale, which until late we thought would never happen again after the fall of the 3rd Reich. Historians of the future of Israel's demolition of Gaza 2023–2024 will then be regarded as an historical caesura, specified as those that mark the transition to the next era. Like Columbus coming to America or Constantinople falling.
If, as a human being, this – possibly indeed the last – alarm is to be slept, then the demolition of Gaza will inaugurate a fresh era, an era of extermination. The age of doom as everyday. The age of 1 doom after another.
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Jarosław Pietrzak – culturalist, essayist, author of the book The sorrows of the tropics. Modern Latin American Cinema as a Political Cinema.
