[News] What the international community’s silence over Israel’s colonial violence has reaped in Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 What the international community’s silence over Israel’s colonial violence
has reaped in Gaza
By Ramona Wadi <https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250011>

Tuesday 2-January-2024 -
https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/what-the-international-communitys-silence-over-israels-colonial-violence-has-reaped-in-gaza/

“We cannot let the idea take root that an efficient fight against terrorism
implies to flatten Gaza or attack civilian populations indiscriminately,”
French President Emmanuel Macron stated a week ago. Israel, he said,
should: “Stop this response because it is not appropriate because all lives
are worth the same and we defend them.”

Macron should be stumbling over his words. Early on, he was one of the
first leaders to express complete support for Israel’s security narrative
and was completely cognizant of the fact that the Israeli prime minister
intended to flatten Gaza and attack civilian populations. This means that
for Israel, France and the international community, all lives are not the
same and not all lives are equally defended.

As Israel plans to forcibly transfer Palestinians to the Sinai and expects
the international community to collaborate by taking in Palestinian
refugees for resettlement in host countries, the lack of action over
Israel’s ethnic cleansing plans mirrors the path taken during the 1948
Nakba, when Israel was rewarded with recognition as a state after it
forcibly displaced 750,000 Palestinians to replace them with
settler-colonists. In real-time, and as more details of Israel’s atrocities
come to light, the United Nations (UN) is merely using Gaza as a talking
point from a distance, repetitively stating that the forced transfer of a
civilian population constitutes an international law violation. That much
is obvious – does the UN require a round of applause for stating basic
facts?

Euro-Med Monitor has published a report that calls for the investigation of
organ theft from killed Palestinians after medical professionals found
several corpses were missing vital organs. Israel has been suspected in the
past of organ theft due to its policy of holding the bodies of killed
Palestinians in the Cemetery of Numbers in subfreezing temperatures, thus
preserving the corpses. A CNN report dating back to 2009 states that organs
were: “Harvested from Palestinians and foreign workers.”
Among the more visible atrocities was the rounding up of Palestinian
civilians on a football field in Gaza, which even mainstream media picked
up. However, Sky News, for example, included a disclaimer beneath the
video: “The IDF has told Sky News the individuals detained are treated in
accordance with international law.” Where is it inscribed in international
law that stripping detainees naked, torturing them and summarily executing
them is permissible? At this point, who is still taking the IDF’s rhetoric
seriously? Either idiots or willing collaborators.

Take this video, where an Israeli soldier brags about killing a
twelve-year-old girl and jokingly laments that there are no babies left to
kill in Gaza. Are there any forthcoming excuses from entities and
individuals supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing? The IDF’s standard
statements can no longer pose as a veneer for Israeli colonial violence,
whether this is committed by the state’s institutions or individual acts.
And international silence has been so consistent that the parameters for
what constitutes a human rights violation or, indeed, a war crime have been
expanded beyond recognition.

What we are witnessing in Gaza must not be separated from the UN’s
deafening silence since 1948.

*-Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book
reviewer and blogger. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to
Palestine, Chile and Latin America. Her article appeared in MEMO.*
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