AMIT SENGUPTA :
The global fault lines, which have been ripped open after the ongoing genocide in Gaza, has been unparalleled in world history, especially in the recent past. For instance, Western opinion and active participation consequent to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the order of the International Court of Justice in Hague on Russia, has had no impact on Vladimir Putin.
The mindless war continues with thousands dead across both sides, many of them with shared families, cultures and memories, who fought the Nazis together during and after the Holocaust, and made massive sacrifices. More than 20 million people of Soviet Russia died fighting the fascists. Also, after the Russian invasion, if the heart of America, Britain, France and Germany beats so hard for Ukraine, whatever happened in Gaza?
Remember the ethnic-cleansing and repeated massacres of one community during the civil war in Serbia-Bosnia-Herzegovnia — this too was happening right inside the heart of Europe. It took the entire West months of deadpan detachment to act, before NATO unleashed its aircraft and bombs. Slobodan Milosevic, the Butcher of Serbia — was he punished in his lifetime? Many of these butchers were, ironically, former communists in Yugoslavia.
Come to think of it, till the time Adolf Hitler attacked Poland in 1939, America and Europe acted totally blind to the long convoys of trains taking millions of Jews to the gas chambers, zigzagging through Europe. They simply chose to look the other way, even while France and Britain pretended to be helpless after the extermination of most of their young men in the First World War, another mindless war where the League of Nations was as impotent, as has been the role of the United Nations during the NATO wars unleashed in Iraq and Syria, the American invasion of tiny Vietnam earlier, while backing dictators of sundry banana republics in Latin America.
Did anyone ever say that George Bush was a war criminal for the tens of thousands of Iraqis dead whereby they did not find one weapon of mass destruction in this insatiable American quest for ‘blood for oil’? And that Bush too should have been hauled up in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Hague like Ratko Miladic, for the mass murders he unleashed in what was former Yugoslavia? Or President Obama, for unleashing a relentless wave of destruction in Syria and the bestiality unleashed in the murder of Gaddafi in Libya?
Imagine the mass suffering, as a civil war erupted in Iraq, with the war splitting over to Syria unleashed by Clinton and Obama, with entire communities of Yazidi women taken as sex slaves by the ISIS. Who were the patrons of ISIS and where did they get their arms? American regimes and their allies have their best interests in keeping the pot boiling in the Middle East till the time oil exists in its vast deserts, and till the time Israel can be used as a strategic military force by the U.S.
The ICJ did not order Israel to stop its armed assaults – it has asked it to stop its genocidal actions, thereby recognizing that it is a genocide and that the situation in Gaza is catastrophic. While it may take years to render a final judgement, it has largely followed the nine “provisional measures” demanded by South Africa. It is significant that South Africa which suffered an apartheid regime backed by the U.S. and Britain, is now fighting another apartheid regime, backed by the U.S. and Britain!
The 17 judges in Hague ordered that Israel should do everything in its power to avoid killing Palestinians, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, creating unlivable living conditions in, or intentionally preventing Palestinian births, which is a pointer to scores of children being killed due to the bombing of hospitals, the murder of doctors and nurses, and stark absence of medical facilities.
Pointing at the crass declarations by politicians, including Israel’s president and defense minister, calling for the elimination of all Palestinians, including children and women, branding the people of Gaza as animals, etc, the court said that Israel should do more to “prevent and punish” public incitement to genocide. The court ordered “immediate and effective measures” to look into the humanitarian catastrophe.
Indeed, the Hague ruling is unprecedented because it has created a huge public opinion against Israel across the globe, and serious moral dilemma for the U.S., Britain, Germany and France, that are openly backing the mass murder of children in Gaza, with ‘Genocide Joe’ actually funding the bombings.
There have been massive protests in America (300,000 in Washington, D.C.) and in Europe (half-a-million in London) – as well as in other nations. Even the Democratic caucus rally in South Carolina by a thoroughly discredited Kamala Harris had Palestinian flags in the audience.
Indeed, Jewish Groups for Peace in America have been the most vociferous in their opposition to Netanyahu’s brand of Zionism that uses mythical narratives to unleash savagery. The role of notorious Jewish lobbies, including among big business and multinationals, have been exposed publicly by activists, academics and journalists, especially that of the sinister America Israel Pubic Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Not only does this outfit have tremendous power over various American regimes, both Republicans and Democrats, with its huge money resources and powerful connections, it can influence presidential polls in America. There are allegations that AIPAC is pumping in huge resources to defeat candidates who have opposed the regime in Tel Aviv.
It is indeed a bad faith choice for Americans who now have to choose between two very old and unprincipled men that are untouched by 15,000 dead children, the daily violation of international laws, the bombing of churches, mosques, schools, university campuses, refugee camps, hospitals, the killings of more than 100 journalists. They stand totally committed to the ultra-orthodox, rightwing, extremist Israeli regime, and its barbarism in Palestine.
For a capitalist empire with vast inequalities and thousands of homeless on big city streets, the collective guilt for its relentless mass murders across the globe – from Vietnam to Gaza – is a psychological epidemic. That thousands have consistently protested across its cities, especially women and the young, only shows that a regime which feeds on barbarism has no democratic credibility, and is as inhuman as any other totalitarian or fascist regime.
With all credit to the West and Europe for its resurrection of arts, architecture, classical music, cinema, academics and culture in the post-war scenario, its governments are most often followers of the Hobbesian state where life is short, nasty and brutish. And that they don’t give a damn for democracy, higher civilizational values, and basic human conduct.
Hence, this high moral ground with which the white empire looks down at the ‘Orient,’ has been yet again exposed with its total endorsement of the genocide in Gaza. Yet again, it has taken 25,000 human beings to die by Hiroshima-Nagasaki type of bombing, including 10,000 plus children, and infinite suffering and injustice, to show the cracked, blood-stained mirror to these western empires.
Indeed, it is the people of these countries, now on the streets in mourning and in protest for Gaza – they must show the way. It’s time the West and America discover a radical paradigm shift in its politics, and creates a new counter-culture of humane civilizational evolution, defying the medieval cruelties of the present and the past. Or else, it would continue to be blind to Gaza and other endless stories of stark silence and barbarism.
source : americankahani