Eurasia Press & News
The ongoing genocide in Gaza is nearing 600 days. According to official records, the death toll has crossed 54,000. Studies done by Lancet and others put the death toll several times the official numbers. An estimate by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is that Israel kills a Palestinian woman every hour in the Gaza Strip, including 7,920 mothers so far.Israel kills a child in Gaza every 45 minutes. That is an average of 30 children killed every day. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 18,000 children, including 15,700 who have been identified. Many more remain buried under the rubble, most presumed dead. Israel’s war on Gaza has killed 232 journalists – an average of 13 per month – making it the deadliest conflict for media workers ever recorded, according to a report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs’ Costs of War project. More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia and the United States war in Afghanistan combined.
Despite all these horrors, the world just stands by and watches the genocide. This is perhaps the first live-streamed genocide. Even though the world gets real-time updates on this genocide the world powers don’t raise a finger to stop Israel; rather, this genocide is aided by Western powers, especially the United States. Israel has dropped approximately 90, 000 tons of bombs on Gaza, every one of them provided or assisted by the United States. It is almost 4.5 times the tonnage of nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
To kill the spirit of the hapless Palestinians in Gaza, Israel is using starvation as a weapon. For the last 11 weeks, Israel enforced a complete blockade of aid to Gaza. From May 22 onwards, Israel has allowed a limited number of trucks with aid to enter Gaza. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Israel has only allowed a ‘teaspoon’ of aid to enter Gaza. To further weaponise aid and enforce starvation in Gaza, Israel has barred all UN agencies from the distribution of aid. Instead, Israel, along with USA, founded an NGO called “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” to oversee the aid distribution. The Washington Post reported that the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” was created by a “group of former US intelligence and defence officials and business executives, working in close consultation with Israel.” American mercenaries are overseeing the distribution, and their limited operation is chaotic and not reaching the starving population of Gaza. The UN and international aid agencies have stated they will not cooperate with the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”, which is distributing aid under the protection of armed security contractors, amid concerns that the scheme could be used to “weaponise” aid, causing further displacement of Palestinians.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has recently warned that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die soon if aid does not reach communities in Gaza. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health,
60,000 pregnant women are currently enduring severe conditions due to malnutrition, hunger, and inadequate healthcare. There are as many breastfeeding mothers in Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza are a target of daily bombardment and weaponisation of aid through starvation.
Israel has launched “concluding” Gaza offensive, “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”, purportedly the final push to defeat Hamas. The aim of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” was spelled out on May 6 by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who declared: “Within a year, Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to the south to a humanitarian zone, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.” Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself explained it in a press conference, for the first time admitting Israel’s ethnic cleansing plan, “We will carry out the Trump plan. A plan that is so correct and so revolutionary.”
Palestine is not an Arab/Muslim Vs Jews issue. It is the last great anti-colonial struggle against Western colonialism. It is important to remember what Mahatma Gandhi wrote about Palestine in 1938. He wrote, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French.” India, from its inception, supported the just cause of the Palestinians. However, the present regime is assisting the genocide by exporting rockets, explosives and killer drones to Israel.
This is a moment of great moral fortitude. We, as citizens of the world, must stand against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and must say with great moral conviction that enough is enough. The genocide must stop. Palestine must be free.
