The World Is Watching Silently As Israel Violates All International Norms Including Using White Phosphorus
By
New Age Islam Staff Writer
16 October
2023
Israel Has
Thrown All War Norms To The Wind, Says Delhi University Academic And Human
Rights Defender Apoorvanand
Main
Points:
1. Israel has
cut off water, food and medicine supply to Gaza.
2. It has
reportedly used prohibited white phosphorous bombs against Palestinians.
3. Hamas has
also left Palestinians at the mercy of Israel.
4. The
international community has not condemned Israel for war crimes.
1. 5.Biden has
justified Israel's crackdown on Gaza.
------
This
article by Mr Apoorvanand is a reaction to the human catastrophe unfolding out
of Hamas-Israel armed conflict. Mr Apoorvanand is a Professor at the Hindi
Department, Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi. He is also a regular
columnist and political commentator.
He is known
for his frequent interventions in day-to-day politics. He holds both Israel and
Hamas responsible for the tragedy because in India speaking in favour of a
victimised Muslim community is seen as minority appeasement and is seen as favouring
and supporting terrorists. So while speaking on the issue one has to maintain
balance.
The US does
not care for such balance. It knows well that what Israel has done comes under
war crimes. Israel has laid siege to the civilians of Gaza, is bombing civilians,
hospitals, shelters and has even cut off water supply to UN shelter camps in
Gaza.
No country
should support Hamas because it has been designated a terrorist organisation
while the US openly supports Israel and even sends rockets and other war equipment
to a war criminal.
Hamas is
responsible for provoking this confrontation but it is no match for a nuclear
power Israel with US as its godfather.
When Egypt
did not allow the American citizens to cross its border from Gaza, Biden became
restive to save its own citizens trapped in Gaza. Egypt has put the condition
that it will allow the American citizens to cross over to Egypt only when Egypt
is allowed to send relief material to Gaza through the same border route. The
US has not agreed to the condition as of now. The US may leave American
citizens to die but will not allow relief material reach Gaza. This is the same
United States which cries hoarse over human rights violations in Islamic
countries. There can not be a greater human rights violations than this being
committed under the nose of the UN, the US and neighbouring Islamic countries.
This war
should also be seen as another plan to destroy Syria and topple Bashar al Asad
as Israel attacked its airport in Damascus to drag it into the conflict. During
2014 the main thrust of the ISIS was on toppling Bashar al Asad and at one
point of time, Saudi Arabia and the US had even decided to attack Syria but
Putin's threat to attack Saudi Arabia in case of an attack on Syria averted the
catastrophe.
The US representative
has visited Gulf countries perhaps to convince them to help open the Egypt
border only to allow the Americans out of Gaza and secondly, convince them that
it is a war of the Shias only, so if Syria is attacked during the
conflagration, the Arabs should not be involved. He may also try to convince
them that a strong Hamas, Syria and Hezbollah may only cause a threat to the
Sunni countries in the long run and so cutting them to size is only in their
own interests. That the ISIS has not given any call for jihad against Israel
has again proved that the ISIS was another lapdog of Israel after Hamas went
out of its control.
It may be
noted that Hamas was created by Israel to counter Yasir Arafat's Fateh but it
has now turned the tables on Israel. During 2014, injured ISIS fighters were
treated in hospitals in Israel.
Islamic
ulema who issued fatwa of jihad against Bashar al Asad have not issued fatwas
of jihad against Israel because they apparently believe that it is a war of the
Shias.
The Sunni
world has disgracefully remained silent spectators. Azerbaijan has even
supported Israel though paper tiger, the Sick Man of Europe, Tayyip Erdogan had
rushed to its military help and ISIS mercenaries during Azerbaijan's war with
Christian majority Armenia two years ago. Today Erdogan is so helpless, he
cannot even convince his NATO masters to allow him to send humanitarian aid to
Gaza.
However,
Apoorvananda's article tries to look into the crisis from a realistic and
objective point of view.
-----
By
Apoorvanand
14/OCT/2023
Children
are being bombed out of life. Women and old are being killed. Residential
buildings, mosques, churches, and hospitals are being reduced to rubble.
Ambulances carrying the dead and injured have been targeted. Electricity and
water supply have been cut off. Gaza is living and dying in darkness. Israel
has laid a total seize on Gaza and using all its firepower to turn it into
dust.
More than
1,500 Palestinians have been killed, many of them are children. There is a fear
that those surviving the Israeli murderous campaign will die of hunger. The
World Food Program (WFP) has called the situation in Gaza devastating: “We’re
seeing shortages of fuel, of water [and] electricity. We are seeing our
shelters that are overcrowded. We don’t have capacity.”
WFP’s
Palestine country director, Samer Abdeljaber, has warned of an impending mass
starvation, “The bakeries are not going to be able to provide food for
tomorrow. So tomorrow is going to be a very difficult situation for the people
in the shelters and the people outside the shelters.”
The world
is watching silently as Israel violates all international norms. No horror has
been expressed after the news emerged that Israel is using white phosphorus,
which is outlawed by the UN convention. The US has rushed its secretary of
state Anthony Blinken to Tel Aviv to express solidarity with Israel. He sought
to legitimise the murder of the civilians of Gaza by Israel by claiming that
Hamas was using people as human shields and suggesting that Israel had no
option but to break this shield, which would require the mass killing of the
people of Gaza.
As I write
this piece, bombs are raining on Gaza. The number of the killed and maimed must
have increased manyfold by the time you read this article. But the world
governments have not expressed any horror. They have not asked Israel to follow
the international norms. They have not asked for a ceasefire. They have not
even asked Israel to restore the supply of water and electricity to Gaza.
A building in Gaza after Israel launch airstrikes following Hamas
surprise attack. Photo: X/@UNRWA
------
When Gaza
is being flattened out of existence, the US President seems to provide an
excuse for it by talking about the horror he felt after being told about the
beheading of children by the Hamas militants. His own office later denied that
he had personally seen those pictures. It was like creating a ground for the
assault that Israel has mounted on Gaza.
Will The
Civilised World Ever Condemn Israel?
What Hamas
did last Saturday was inexcusable. One could understand as even many Israeli
writers and ex-army people from Israel have said that decades of the total
seize and daily humiliation of nearly 2 million people would have led to a
violent eruption of this kind. They said that the hubris of the Israeli
establishment was responsible for the death and destruction that Hamas had
caused. By its surprise attack, Hamas has stunned the world and Israel which
boasted of an impregnable iron dome and an unbeatable intelligence system. All
claims of the invincibility of Israel were belied.
Is this
what Hamas wanted to achieve? One tangible gain according to it would be
forcing Israel to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli
people it has captured in its attack on Israel. But did it not know how Israel
would respond to it? That it had no capacity to defend the people it claimed to
be acting for? If Hamas is a leader of its people, what precautions had been
taken before enacting that audacious multi-pronged attack on the people of Israel?
Did it not
know that the images of defenceless civilians being killed and taken hostage
would turn public opinion against it? Not that it has done anything substantial
for the Palestinian people but even strategically it was idiotic to push
oneself in a corner and lose all sympathy.
Trial of destruction in Gaza after Israel’s offensive following Hamas
rocket attacks. Photo: X/@UNRWA
------
The act of
Hamas is indefensible. It was a callous and irresponsible act of violence that
would in the long run achieve little and which was bound to cause misery to the
people of Gaza.
But those
who have longer memories question the sincerity of the expression of revulsion
by the international community after the Hams attack. The world has been
watching the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) personnel arresting and killing the
Gaza people on a daily basis. Without any provocation. The world knows well
that the government of Israel is aiding and supporting the settlers who are
evicting Palestinians from their homes and stealing their land. It knows that
Gaza has been turned into an open-air jail and Palestinian people have been
forced to live in sub-human conditions for nearly five decades. We know that
the Palestinians are being turned into second-class people in Israel. We are
aware of the attempts to capture the mosque Al Aqsa. We know that in Jerusalem
itself Palestinians are being evicted from their houses. How can one expect the
civilised world to tolerate all this?
We know
however that this very civilised world literally expelled the Jews from Europe
and hosted the Nazis after the holocaust for their national and strategic
interests, to use them to fulfil its geo-political objective. So, to expect a
moral response to the seven-decade-long oppression of the Palestinian people at
the hands of Israel will only disappoint us.
We, the
people, should not, however, join hands with our governments. Nor should we
succumb to the logic of violence. All of us need to understand that in the name
of collective punishment, we destroy individuals. Hamas killed individuals,
destroyed relationships, and their dreams. What Israel has been doing, and now
with the excuse of revenge, doing it much more lethally in destroying
individuals even if they can be called Palestinian. No one, in the name of
whichever cause, national or religious should be allowed to do that. God or
nature created us as individuals. So, this individuality cannot be allowed to
be sacrificed in the name of a collective cause, however great it might sound.
Nothing is more sacred than the life of an individual.
In the
context of the last seven days, we can say that Hamas violated this basic
principle. But the larger and much longer context of the last decades of
continuous violation of it by Israel cannot be put aside. Without the Israeli
terror, the terror of Hamas would not have existed. If the world wants Hamas to
be irrelevant, it’ll have to first discipline its pampered Israel which has
been acting like a bully for the last seven decades.
Source: Without
Israel's Oppression of Palestinians, Hamas Terrorism Would Have Never Existed
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/world-israel-violates-white-phosphorus/d/130907