The hypocrisy of the West’s leaders over the Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu & Gallant - Unfortunately Biden & Blinken's names aren't on them
Below is a second instalment from Tarneem, a young Palestinian woman I
met when she was in England. A gifted writer she describes life under Israel’s genocidal
occupation and I hope you read her moving story. I carried the first instalment
A Day
in the Life of Tarneem at the end of April.
I welcome the proposed prosecution of Netanyahu and Gallant and hope
that the rest of Israel's war cabinet and genocidaires,
such as Smotrich and Ben Gvir, will follow.
The
reaction
of the Chief War Criminal, Netanyahu, would be amusing if this were not so tragic.
"ICC
prosecutor, with what audacity do you dare compare the monsters of Hamas to the
soldiers of the IDF, the most moral army in the world?," Netanyahu said in
his response to the request. He added that he "reject[ed] with disgust the
prosecutor's comparison between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of
Hamas.
The ‘monsters of Hamas’ treated their captives impeccably compared to
the treatment of Palestinians in Israel’s torture camp, Sde
Teiman.
The murder of 40,000 plus Palestinians, including 15,000 children, to
say nothing of attacks on hospitals, murder of hundreds of doctors and health
staff, bombing of schools etc. don’t count in Netanyahu’s eyes because Palestinians
are ‘human
animals’ and outside the law.
Netanyahu is fond of weaponising the Holocaust but one comparison he and
his fellow war criminals have missed is the fact that Himmler justified the extermination
of Jews, in a speech on October 4, 1943, by referring to Jews as ‘human animals’.
As the WW2 National Museum article
on Himmler’s
October 1943 Speeches says
Russians,
Czechs, and other Slavs, Himmler resumed, possessed no inherent value as human
beings. For the SS, these “human animals” were only valuable insofar as they
labored under the lordship of the superior Aryan Germans
So it is with Israel’s ‘human animals’
I've seen countless pictures and videos of IDF soldiers posing with women's lingerie and going through women's underwear drawers in Gaza. Very obsessive about the sexual lives of Palestinian women and men. https://t.co/xGsr4TuvuP
— Naheed Mustafa (@NaheedMustafa) February 12, 2024
When Netanyahu describes Israel’s army as ‘the
most moral army in the world’ I don’t know whether
to laugh or cry. Just today they have killed 3 children in Jenin, which Hamas
doesn’t even rule. Their monsters, and here the term is apt, paraded
with the underwear of the women they had killed fantasising no doubt about
their victims.
But
if Israel’s ‘Crime Minister’ is a figure of fun then what of the senile enabler
of genocide, Joe Biden who declares
that
“The
ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is
outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is
no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with
Israel against threats to its security.”
Biden is right. There is no equivalence between Hamas and Israel. Hamas
killed a few hundred Israelis in the course of their resistance to a 57 year
occupation and 17 year siege. Israel has destroyed the whole civilian
infrastructure of Gaza plus killing probably 50,000 by now. Only the sick,
diseased minds of our imperial rulers, who turn the truth on its head could
claim that Israel is the innocent party.
Biden claimed that ‘“I will always
ensure that Israel has everything it needs to defend itself against Hamas and
all its enemies”. You might imagine that Hamas had been occupying Israeli territory.
What Biden and the imperialists are doing of course is supporting Israel’s
right to occupy and terrorise Palestinians indefinitely. Of course Palestinians
have no such right of self-defence despite the fact that it is they, not Israel
which has been under occupation for over half a century.
October 7th was certainly a shock to Israelis but the
casualties were just half of those in Operation
Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. It is the idea of fighting back against one’s
oppressors that so disturb Biden and Washington’s war criminals, who are no
slouches when it comes to committing their own war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq
etc.
Germany has also condemned
what it calls the “false equivalence”.
Of course the German State is an expert when it comes to genocides so it is no
surprise that they approve of the genocide in Gaza. Indeed given the expertise
of Germany, having carried out the 20th
century’s first genocide in South-West Africa and then the holocaust what is
surprising is that they didn’t offer their expertise to the Israelis. After all
in 8 months Israel has only killed about 50,000 whereas Germany managed untold millions
in the course of 6 years of war.
Perhaps Olaf Scholtz will dispatch the commanders of Germany’s army to
teach the Zionists how to go about a really big genocide. Israeli Ambassador
Tzipi Hotoveli spoke
in October about killing 600,000 so clearly she and the German state must be disappointed.
Rule based order a la Americaine: for them, not for us... https://t.co/VDk7OxTIyo
— Ewald Engelen (@ewaldeng) May 21, 2024
Sunak, Biden’s little puppet, also condemned the
issuing of warrants saying that it was "not
helpful to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or
humanitarian aid in." I can’t remember him making similar comments
when the ICC rushed out warrants against Putin for the Ukraine war. Perhaps I’m
just being forgetful.
Biden said
that ‘"What's happening in Gaza is not genocide. We
reject that," Perhaps Genocide Joe would enlighten us as to how many Israel
has to kill bearing in mind the Genocide
Convention and Article II which defines genocide as
‘any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing
members of the group;
(b) Causing
serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c)
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring
about its
physical
destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing
measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly
transferring children of the group to another group.
The
fact is that there is nothing that Israel can do which won’t meet with Biden’s
approval because the United States is not in the habit of kicking its favourite
watchdog too hard.
However I don't welcome the proposed prosecution of Hamas leaders.
Clearly Karim Khan felt the need to be 'even handed'.
I don't support Hamas politically, after all I'm a Jewish atheist but
Hamas is a resistance not a terrorist organisation. It was entitled to break-out
on October 7 from the ghetto concentration camp that was Gaza. There is no
equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli state, the fourth most powerful in
the world, than there was between the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance and the Nazis.
Let us bear in mind that the last Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance,
Marek Edelman, made just such a comparison to the fury of Israeli leaders.
As John Rose wrote
in his Obituary for Marek Edelman on 7 October 2009
In the summer of 2002,
Edelman, still going strong, intervened in Israel's show trial of the now
jailed Palestinian resistance leader, Marwan Barghouti. He wrote a letter of
solidarity to the Palestinian movement, and though he criticised the suicide
bombers, its tone infuriated the Israeli government and its press. Edelman had
always resented Israel's claim on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a symbol of
Jewish liberation. Now he said this belonged to the Palestinians.
He addressed
his letter to the Palestinian ZOB, "commanders of the Palestinian
military, paramilitary and partisan operations – to all the soldiers of the
Palestinian fighting organisations". The old Jewish anti-Nazi Ghetto
fighter had placed his immense moral authority at the disposable of the only
side he deemed worthy of it.
It was because Edelman criticised Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians
that, despite it trying to co-opt the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance to the Zionist chariot,
not even the lowliest clerk at the Israeli Embassy in Poland attended his
funeral. A state funeral in which the Poland
President gave the address and at which there was a 15 gun salute.
Would the ICC have prosecuted the Polish Home Army for the Warsaw
Uprising against the Nazis or the French Resistance? Of course not yet they
undoubtedly committed atrocities. So too with Hamas. Even accepting that they
committed some atrocities on October 7, they pale in comparison when compared
to Israel’s crimes.
Hamas did not attack an Israeli hospital. They did not murder doctors
and nurses. They did not bomb ambulances or schools. They did not raze
universities to the ground nor did they attack synagogues. Israel has razed dozens of mosques and
churches to the ground, bombing
St. Porphyrius Church in Gaza City, the world’s third oldest church.
Hamas did not torture its captives. On the contrary they praised their ‘humane’ treatment much to the fury of Israel’s practiced propagandists. Some even spoke of being treated like ‘queens’. When one Zionist told me on Twitter that they were suffering from Stockholm Syndrome I asked him why Palestinian captives didn’t suffer from the same syndrome!
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Hamas killed
some 1139 people on October 7, 400 of whom were military. 38 children including
2 babies died. No one was beheaded, there was no organised rape, these are all discredited
Zionist narratives. There are no victims, no forensic evidence and the witnesses
to the allegations have confessed
that they lied.
There is no evidence that Hamas deliberately killed children, still less
babies. Indeed Israel killed probably a majority of Israeli civilians who died
because of its Hannibal Directive.
Israel by contrast has killed at least 15,000 children. Slave revolts
were far more bloody than Hamas's Uprising yet would we have condemned them and
demanded the ‘right of self defence’ for the slave masters?
The United States is now threatening the court because it was only
designed for African dictators and Putin. Not for them! This is the
arrogance of imperialism. Their ‘rules based order’ is only for other people,
never themselves.
And I learnt today that the so-called pier that Biden claimed was there
to funnel aid into Gaza has been found to be channelling weapons to the Israeli
state. Their lies are never ending.
Please do read Tarneem's heart rending description of what it is like to be fleeing from their genocidal army and having to keep moving whilst Biden & Sunak do their best to protect Israel's Nazi-like war criminals.
All the photos of people fleeing have been taken by Tarneem in Rafah.
Tony Greenstein
Israeli forces
have begun their ground offensive on Rafah and have seized control of the
border, effectively cutting off lifesaving aid deliveries into Gaza, Palestine.
The closure of Rafah crossing is simply a death sentence to everyone in Gaza.
It’s a death sentence for thousands of injured and patients listed for medical
treatment outside Gaza. It’s a death sentence for Gazans who want to evacuate
and escape death. It’s a death sentence for patients waiting life-saving and
critical surgeries by international medical teams, who won’t be allowed into
Gaza. It’s a slow death sentence for many because soon there will be no food,
essentials, or humanitarian aid. Food, fuel, medicine, and basic supplies are
running dangerously low in Gaza.
Literally,
hundreds of people are dying every single day. It’s
a mental death sentence, I already feel further isolated from the rest of the
world and literally trapped by military tanks from the southernmost point
(Rafah crossing) to the northernmost point (Erez crossing) in Gaza. It’s a
political death sentence to a so close agreement between Hamas and Israel. It
will be used as a political tool and will impact the negotiations. Meanwhile,
more Gazans & probably hostages will lose their lives. Of course, Israel,
the US and Egypt lie as much as they breathe and say the crossing is open. It’s
open in the sense that trucks can drop stuff in the long line of trucks, but
the supply route is not open at all, it’s not safe to get trucks into Gaza from
a zone full of military tanks!
I was speaking
to Lama, my friend in Rafah, and that’s their story of multiple evacuation.
Lost Count
I don't even remember how many times we've had to pack up our
lives and flee. It's become a cruel routine, a twisted dance of survival in a
land that knows nothing but war and chaos. Each time feels like tearing open
old wounds, reliving the trauma of displacement repeatedly. I’m from northern
Gaza, I initially evacuated to a friend’s house in Jabalia, then to Gaza city.
Then, both of our families evacuated to the middle area, then to Khan Younis
and by the beginning of December 2023, we were in a tent in Rafah.
I wonder what
people think when they read the word evacuation. Do people consider the
psychological trauma inherent in the act itself?I left pieces of myself behind
at every stop, memories, belongings – it's all scattered along the way. I left
my photo album in the north, my camera in Gaza city, my laptop in the middle
area and I have no memories of so many dear friends I have lost. But it’s
alright because I still have my life.
Or do people think
about the endless debates, the
weighing of risks, and the collective anxiety over whether to stay or go,
and if so, where to? Do they reflect on the logistical challenges, like the
scarcity of available vehicles, which often leave us with no choice but to walk
for miles on foot, carrying our mattresses and blankets on our backs. Are people
aware of the financial strain imposed by the scarcity and high cost of fuel,
making transportation prohibitively expensive? Or do they simply gloss over it
as just another word in the endless stream of news about Gaza.
For me,
“evacuation” isn't merely a word – it's a call to action, a stark reminder of
my vulnerability and indignity we endure every day.And now, as Israel issues
evacuation orders for eastern Rafah, we find ourselves once again thrust into
uncertainty. "We must endure," I tell myself.
Inhumane
Conditions
When we got to
Rafah, we had no relatives there and couldn’t stay at someone’s house, so we
ended up in a tent. We were late to receive help from aid organizations, so we
had to make do with whatever we could find – wood beams, old clothes, bits of
fabric, anything to give us some shelter. And the swelling demand for shelters
and the lack of supply has sent prices for materials skyrocketing, we have
spent all our savings by now. Before the war, we had a small tent in Gaza,
mainly for our family gatherings at the beach. I wish I had brought it with me
but who knew we’ll end up in a tent.
Our days now revolve
around the ceaseless quest for survival, even the most basic necessities –
water, food, sanitation – are luxuries beyond reach.
Water is like
gold for us now. We wash ourselves and drink from a single bucket. I have been
washing my clothes by hands for seven months now. Privacy is a luxury we can't
afford. We're crammed together in tight spaces, and the communal bathroom is a
daily queue. I’ve told I’ll get used to it but it's not easy when everyone
knows your business. I literally want to disappear when I’m standing in line
for the bathroom, but if I do, I’ll miss my turn.
Cooking is a
hassle too. We must scrounge for firewood just to make a meal, and everything
smells like smoke afterwards. I miss wearing or smelling perfumes. Our meals
are meager and uninspiring, I haven’t had any fruit for months now, not eggs,
not meat yet I’m thankful that we still have some food.
Hygiene is a
distant memory, a luxury reserved for those who dwell in more fortunate place
but not Gaza. There is sand everywhere, clinging to our skin and clothes like a
relentless oppressor, even in our food.
We have endured
rainy days; and as you can imagine our makeshift tent is not winterproof or
waterproof. Our limited belongings have been soaked by rain multiple times.I
remember nights of January when we’d be awake because there is rain leakage
into the tent. We would have nowhere to go to except to stand up, stay awake
until the rain stops, and then start cleaning. Now,we’re enduring scorching
heatwaves, it’s like living in an oven. There are pests, including ants,
lizards, and snakes. There are flies, and insects all over the place, while our
fragile makeshift tent offering little protection from the forces of nature.
We fall ill
with alarming frequency, our bodies weakened by malnutrition and exposure to all
these circumstances. Yet, there is no respite from our suffering, no sanctuary!
I once couldn’t even find a simple painkiller like Panadol in the pharmacies of
Gaza.
Living in
makeshift tents is a daily battle for survival, a relentless onslaught of
deprivation and despair. We are the forgotten ones, the voiceless masses who
cling to life with every ounce of strength we possess. There is no other option
if you are a survivor so far. Ijust hope
our resilience knows no bounds and our strength never runs out.
We are now at
Al Mawasi area in Khan Younis, and it is just another place without adequate
shelter, food, water, and medical care. Just another city of tents and surely
not safe at all. There is constant fear of airstrikes and shelling, never
knowing when the next bomb will fall or if we'll be the ones caught in its
path. We’ll have some bread and sleep on the street because it is too late, and
everyone is already tired. Tomorrow, we’ll wake up to build another makeshift tent
and start the suffering all over again.
Will It Ever
Stop?
I often find
myself wondering if this cycle of displacement will ever come to an end. Will I
ever sleep on a bed again, instead of a mattress? Will I ever take a hot
shower? Will I ever eat my favourite meal of Pizza and enjoy a cup of soda. Will
my house in the north of Gaza be standing? Will there ever be a day when we can
finally lay down our roots and build a future for ourselves without fear of it
being ripped away?
Hope is a fragile thing in Gaza, a flickering flame in the darkness that threatens to be extinguished at any moment. We cling to it desperately, praying for a glimmer of light to guide us through the darkness. But perhaps the most unbearable part is the constant uncertainty, never knowing when the next evacuation will come or where we'll end up next. It's a cruel game of chance, played with our lives as the stakes.