The current crisis in Palestine, painful as it is, has been eye-opening. Pro-Palestine protests were banned in Europe. Students and pro-Palestine groups were suspended. Journalists were fired over pro-Palestine posts or even simple remarks. Social media posts are censored and accounts are shut down. Even the Palestinian flag has become a matter of attention for governments, believe it or not!
This is happening in the “free world”. Brought to you by the same hypocrites who would lecture the world about free speech, democracy, human rights, justice, and other slogans that don’t mean a thing if you are not rich or armed to the teeth.
It is absolutely obscene what we are witnessing and watching every day. The superpowers of this day and age are supporting an apartheid, terrorist state, that’s deliberately targeting civilians, journalists, doctors, hospitals, and has committed over a thousand massacres in a few weeks. Nobody in his or her right mind would think this will help create a safer Middle East. The whole world has also witnessed the sickening level of hypocrisy and double standards in adopting the toughest response possible over Russia’s war in Ukraine while maintaining a deafening silence over the destruction and slaughter inflicted on an entire population.
The law of no consequences
Why is this even possible? Two words: impunity and shamelessness. This is not new, it has been going on for decades. Right at the start of this crisis, Amnesty International stated that “Israel has a horrific track record of committing war crimes with impunity in previous wars on Gaza”. They have been true to their nature in this one too.
While I’m writing this, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is reporting that the Israeli army has carried out (in only six weeks) more than a thousand strikes in Gaza with internationally banned white phosphorus. All of this and the US has not yet established if the Israelis have committed war crimes! They did it in a heartbeat when it came to Russia.
This outlaw state has been constructed on the law of no consequences. The innocent victims are the ones responsible for their misery. People are not only questioning the legitimacy of the international order now, but they have lost any faith they might have had in it. In this ever-worsening disaster, we all are victims one way or the other. The taxpayers, in the US and throughout Europe, funding this, and the rest of the world, utterly helpless, watching without being able to do anything.
