There will not be any peace in the Gaza Strip after the humanitarian pause for four days in the coming days. Many compelling factors, including the Israeli people’s protest and anger against the government, the Defense Forces (IDF)’s realisation to protect Israeli citizens in the custody of Hamas, international condemnation from the people of the world and pressure from some independent media and social media, have forced the Israeli Prime Minister and his belligerent cabinet to accept this humanitarian pause for four days.
It is reported that Israeli political leaders accepted this truce after they were made sure that Israel would not convert the pause into a ceasefire. Thus, there is every chance that, after the four days’ pause, the war will be fought with more ferocity as both sides will have reorganised themselves. Moreover, Benjamin Netanyahu would use every Machiavellian method to protect and prolong his rule.
Benjamin Netanyahu has already blankly refused to resign or accept his faulty previous policies to deal with Hamas and incite hatred against Palestinians among the Israeli people. Instead of expressing sorriness, he has declared, while talking to the UK PM Sunak, that Israel is fighting the “worst monsters on the planet. This is our darkest hour. It is the world’s darkest hour.”
Many other extremist leaders and members of the Israeli government are also calling Palestinians animals. This distinction was created to fan hatred, prejudice and justification for killing other innocent and helpless people.
Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, Associate Professor at the University of California, asserts that “Human” is a derogatory term that was created to support a racist global system in which accusations of inferiority have long been used to justify the wholesale annihilation of humankind.
“Casting non-Europeans as animals makes violence as such invisible. Europeans defended African enslavement on the basis of zoological taxonomy. The species divide is entangled with the civilization versus barbarism trope undergirding Europeans’ colonization of the Americas, including the genocide of indigenous Americans. Nazis portrayed Jews as vermin to justify the Holocaust. Predictably, Israel is legitimizing its extermination campaign against Palestinians on the grounds of precisely this dichotomy. Israeli Major General Ghassan Alian declared Israel‘s intention to render Gaza uninhabitable: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell”. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant drove it home: “we are fighting animals,” writes Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond in Counterpunch.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sarah, went above and beyond. “I don’t call them human animals,” she wrote on X, “because that would be insulting to animals.” A parliamentarian named Galit Distel Atbaryan tweeted that Israel ought to “erase all of Gaza from the face of the earth.”
These statements show that Israeli leaders consider Palestinians lower than animals, which, in their views, should be killed or removed from their own land.
Israel has already killed more than 14,000 people, including around 5,600 children, in the war. There is a complete siege with no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, no medicine and no protection of human rights. The Israeli army has destroyed the Indonesian Hospital, al-Ahli Hospital, the International Eye Care Centre, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the al-Quds Hospital, al-Shifa Hospital, UN health facilities and ambulances, killing thousands of patients, pregnant women, infants, old people, journalists, health workers, and social workers. Without any fear of punishment from international law, Israel is attacking and demolishing hospitals and schools on the false pretext that Hamas is using these buildings. Israel has not given any evidence to support its claim after destroying the hospitals.
In a new barbaric attack on the UN’s Al-Fakhoora school in Jabalia refugee camp on November 18, the Israeli army killed at least 50 people, including children. The most tragic thing is that Israel is ruthlessly killing the children. Half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million consists of children, and the number of youths who were killed in the first three weeks has exceeded the global average of children killed in the past three years.
According to the Anadolu Agency, the conflict between Israel and Palestine that has been ongoing since Oct 7 continues with five children being killed every hour in the Gaza Strip. Save the Children stated that “the number of children killed in Palestine in the last three weeks exceeded the number of children killed in conflicts worldwide from 2020 to 2022”.
Attacking hospitals, schools, civilians, and innocent children is a sheer violation of international law. The UN, OIC, and the superpowers have not only failed to stop this genocide, but they are also complicit in the crime.
Craig Mokhiber, the director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights resigned in protest against Israel’s atrocities and wrote: “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organisation we serve appears powerless to stop it.” “The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs … leaves no room for doubt.”
Israel uses force to drive out or oppress the indigenous population, following Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s advice. Ze’ev Jabotinsky is considered the founder of right-wing Zionism. He wrote in 1923, before the establishment of Israel, “Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force… behind an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down.”
Israel is also using religion, racism and hatred to justify the massacre of innocent Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that “This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” In another statement, citing the Old Testament, he said: “Remember what Amalek did to you. We remember and we fight,”. The rest of the text he cited goes on to say: “You must destroy the Amalekites and erase their memory from under heaven. Never forget this.” In response, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that “Shooting hospitals or killing children does not exist in the Torah, you can’t do it.”
It is a proven fact that every religion teaches love for humanity, condemns killings of innocent people, exploitation, and falsehood, and promotes tolerance, brotherhood, and peace. Religion should not be misused and exploited to achieve partisan interests.
Almost all the world, excluding Western and Islamic countries’ governments, is protesting against Israel and putting pressure on their respective governments, the UN, OIC, etc., to play their role in halting this ongoing massacre. Some independent media houses and social media are exposing Israeli brutalities and war crimes. Many Jewish peace activists, including Jewish Voice for Peace, The Anti-Defamation League, IfNotNow etc., are raising their voices against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Only the power of people and media can convince Israel to stop killing innocent people, including children, as Palestinians are human beings, not animals.
The writer is a former staff member who lives in the UK and is a member of Lincoln’s Inn. He can be reached at [email protected].