This article by Dianne Kirby first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
RENOWNED international law professor Philipe Sands (KC) notes that following the Holocaust the UN imposed the state of Israel on Palestine. He maintains what was accorded the Jews should now be accorded the Palestinians.
Numerous state leaders suddenly seem to agree, while the media is saturated with images of parachuted food packages and Israeli claims of massive amounts of aid.
On the ground nothing changes. The bombing continues, as does the rising death toll.
Aid emerged for photo-ops, not the starving.
As the Israeli narrative flounders, showmanship eclipses substance. Public relations exercises staged for global and domestic consumption amid rising anger, mounting protests and the threat of judicial accountability.
The planned performances are assured harsh words from Israel and America. Otherwise, it is business as usual. No change of heart, simply damage control.
However, Israel and the West appear hoist by their own petards.
The global proliferation of Holocaust museums and education programmes mean people clearly see parallels between what the Nazis inflicted on the Jews and the Zionists’ genocidal project.
The scramble for food by desperate Palestinians herded into enclosed confines evokes images of starved concentration camp inmates.
The skeletal images of dying babies recall the emaciated corpses that littered liberated extermination sites.
Nazis hoped to hide their crimes. With Germany laid waste, the crushed population appeared victims of Hitler’s insatiable lust for power.
In contrast, as they openly plan new settlements on stolen Palestinian land, Gaza included, and support the Zionist quest for a Greater Israel, significant sectors of Israeli citizens are fully partnered with their government.
The rhetorical charade highlights the West’s failure to adhere to its legally mandated obligations to stop genocide.
Dr Abdelfattah Abusrour hosted my delegation at the Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Centre in the Aida refugee camp. He was scathing in condemning the ‘conditional recognition’ of Palestine as a ‘demilitarised state’:
Really? Really?
What does this mean?
Are you boycotting Occupation first?
Are you making it accountable? Are you stopping all collaboration, trade, exchange with the War
Criminals and Genocidal psychopaths?
Are you going to defend this state that you will recognise?
Will you take responsibility for the monster you created?
The role you contributed to allowing this barbarism to continue. Your support that continues until today?
Because if it is just symbolic, then keep it for yourself.
We are fed up with symbolic ‘reactions’.
Starvation of civilians is a war crime…silence is complicity. You are part of it.
We are fed up with your words,
fed up with your promises…
fed up with your crocodile tears,
fed up with your false humanity,
fed up with your degraded values
and so-called humanitarian rights, laws, principles.
We are fed up with your elastic vocabulary and expressions.
Fed up with your distorted moralities, your sick bigotry, your double or quadruple standards, your shameless arrogance of giving lessons to the victims and fading in the face of the well-recognized oppressor, your selected vocabulary and void expressions, your emotionless or sarcastic feelings…
Words can’t liberate people under oppression, without actions to
exterminate the oppression
Words can’t feed those who starve, without actions to eradicate the cause of their starvation
Words can’t save lives, without actions to stop those who murder these lives
So, if it is just to throw words, keep your words for yourself, and if you need to throw them then look at yourself in the mirror and vomit your words in your face… because we have enough of your vomit, of drops of your spit on our humanity.
World, you have failed us for more than a century… you have failed your own people, your own constitutions, your own so-called values…. You have proven how fake you are.
Actions speak louder than words. Inaction screams volumes.