BENJAMIN Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is now facing an arrest warrant sought by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. These charges include causing extermination, using starvation as a method of war, denying humanitarian relief supplies, and deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.
Having served a total of 16 years, his tenure has been nothing short of genocide of the Palestinian people, the forceful occupation of their homes and razing of their land. His country’s military, the IDF, has bombarded the entire Gaza Strip turning homes into rubble. Without abiding to the Law of War, the IDF has ruthlessly targeted hospitals, refugee camps, schools, residential blocks, aid trucks, journalists, doctors, humanitarian relief workers, women, children, the disabled, the elderly and new-born babies.
With an insurmountable amount of evidence/footage to back up these charges and despite a total of 153 countries (UNGA) voting in favour of a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu continues to lead the total destruction and extermination of the people of Gaza through the IDF, seemingly unfazed.
Netanyahu’s response to the Hamas-led attack/kidnapping on the 7th of October was the implementation of the ‘total blockade’ of the Gaza Strip – blocking the entry of food, water, medicine, fuel and electricity – which would only be lifted by Israel if the hostages abducted by Hamas are returned. A collective punishment of this scale is a war crime of itself constituting a humanitarian crisis of the Gazan people and since then, the death toll in Gaza has passed 37,000 people in only 8 months – while there have been a reported 204 hostages held by Hamas. Amnesty International has described this measure as having been ‘taken to punish civilians in Gaza for the actions of Palestinian armed groups’ with Israel also having mass detention cells of Palestinian people akin to the holocaust of Nazi Germany.
There is an estimated 2.2 million people in Gaza currently experiencing food insecurity at emergency levels – the continued blockade has led to famine type conditions with catastrophic hunger/malnutrition. Airstrikes have destroyed food infrastructure such as bakeries, mills and food stores. Direct attacks on telecommunication infrastructure by Israel have rendered Gaza with a near-collapse cell network. Scarcity of essential supplies and blockade of aid has triggered lack of sanitation and deadly infectious diseases. Shortage of fuel has meant no electricity crippling its people. Horrifyingly enough, when Israel allowed partial humanitarian aid to pass through into Gaza, the IDF soldiers pretended to be humanitarian aid workers and doctors, killing the Palestinian people within hospitals and on the streets.
Ethnic cleansing, cultural genocide, forcible population displacement or the extermination of Palestinians – Benjamin Netanyahu is guilty of all. His legacy is being a war criminal. A man running on borrowed time with an eternity to pay for his crimes.
—The writer is Lawyer, Businessman.
(shahnoor101@hotmail.com)
