IF holding on to hope is impossible for any nation in today’s world, it is for the people of Gaza. Every upcoming day is expected to bring in its wake nothing but more annihilation for them, with their houses being razed to rubble and kith and kin butchered in front of their eyes. As I write these words, more than 8000 Palestinians, including nearly 4000 innocent children, have been inhumanely killed as a result of Israel’s relentless missile attacks on Gaza.
Hamas’s act of firing a barrage of rockets towards Israel on 7th October had its roots in the suppressed anger that had been accumulating among the Palestinians for the past 65 years. However, the Palestinians have been very resilient in the face of the world’s worst ethnic cleansing campaign initiated by the fascist Israeli state. Prior to the latest uprising between Israel and Hamas, hardly any week would pass without the news of Israeli settlers illegally occupying the properties of Palestinians, rendering the latter homeless.
The most heart-wrenching aspect of Israel- Hamas conflict, however, has been the killing of the innocent Palestinian civilians. Israel is continuously raining missiles on all areas of Gaza, including densely populated regions, without any restraint. Places that are not meant to be attacked even during a war, such as mosques, churches and hospitals, have also been targeted by Israel. By far, the brutal Israeli army has destroyed 31 mosques, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Al-Ahli Arab hospital, flouting all the international laws that guarantee protection for such places.
Since the barbaric Al-Ahli Arab hospital attack had resulted in the deaths of more than 500 hundred Palestinians, Joe Biden, who had arrived in Israel just a day later, made a shoddy attempt to convince the world that the hospital was hit by an ‘errant rocket’ from Hamas. Similarly, the US National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby, held a press conference and shamelessly denied the involvement of Israel in targeting and killing the entire family, including the spouse, son and daughter, of Al-Jazeera’s veteran journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh. It has simply become a norm within the Biden administration to disown every barbaric attack by the Israeli military which is supposed to evoke widespread empathy for the people of Gaza.
Remorseless Biden and the Eurpean states’ unconditional support for Israel in carrying out the genocide of innocent Palestinian civilians will be remembered for ages to come. All the hypocritical western media is playing second fiddle to Uncle Sam by misreporting the facts and downplaying the casualties resulting from Israel’s airstrikes. However, it is important to note here that the Biden administration’s decision to abet Israel’s slaughter of unarmed Palestinians does not represent the aspirations of the conscientious Americans.
Reportedly, discontent is brewing among the American diplomats. In protest over America’s transfer of weapons to Israel, Josh Paul, a senior diplomat, resigned from the State Department’s bureau that manages the transfer of weapons and security assistance to other countries. Following his resignation, Paul posted an open letter to LinkedIn, in which he wrote, “ I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be short-sighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse and which I wholeheartedly endorse: a world built around a rules-based order, a world that advances both equality and equity and a world whose arc of history bends towards the promise of liberty and of justice, for all.”
Furthermore, huge protests in solidarity with the Gazans are being held across the globe. In European states where pro-Palestinian protests have been banned, people are defying the laws and taking to the streets to show their overwhelming support for the Palestinians. These demonstrations should serve as a signal to the stone-hearted leaders that their unflinching support for the Zionist state is not going down well with their citizenry.
Succinctly, witnessing one’s children being killed in front of their eyes is one of the most excruciating experiences that people can endure in their lives .Even the people with the hardest of hearts lose their senses and find themselves in a world of hurt when confronted with the pain of losing a child. Tens of thousands of Palestinian parents have gone through the unimaginable agony of watching their innocent children die before their eyes. The blood of all the innocent children, women and men, who have died in Israeli attacks, is on the hands of the Biden administration and the biased western countries. They can easily stop this carnage, but they are choosing otherwise, sending us a clear message that we will always be considered as “others” and hence treated accordingly.
—The writer is an MPhil English Scholar and contributes occasionally to the national press.
Email: usama.malick183@gmail.com
views expressed are writer’s own.
