OVER three-quarters of a century after the human and political obscenity of the Nakba, the issue of Palestine remains as much an insult to the very concept of peace as it did when the first Arabs were expelled from their homes in a murderous rout.
We make no apology for focusing our New Year message on the Middle East, for there has been no other issue in the year just gone that has so energised and convulsed the planet than the genocide being perpetrated on the Palestinians with the active collusion of the United States and Europe’s biggest nations. The Irish people have found themselves at the very heart of that global battle for justice, and while the overwhelmingly pro-Israel media in Ireland and Britain may sometimes make it appear as if Ireland is in a lonely place, the fact is that Ireland finds itself at the head of an overwhelming international consensus that what Israel and its accomplices are doing in Gaza is a crime of historic proportions that will one day have its proper response.
Israel’s assault on Gaza is, we’re told by its backers, a “complex” matter, when it is anything but. We’re further told by apologists that what is happening is not a genocide and that a preponderance of the world’s most eminent human rights organisations has got it wrong.
It is no more complex than this: The number of active Hamas fighters, we’re told by Western political and military sources, is around 20,000. That represents approximately 0.75 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million. If we strip that number down to military-age males, that percentage becomes infinitesimal. But in pursuit of a relatively tiny number of Gazans – clad in sandals and bearing small arms and IEDs – Israel’s 14-month air bombardment and mechanised ground assault has all but levelled Gaza. The cost in innocent civilian life has been astounding. Homes, food and water production facilities, hospitals, schools, businesses – everything required to sustain a society is gone.
If we take the conflict in Ukraine, for instance, nowhere are scenes of similar infrastructure obliteration or civilian carnage to be found in that war between titans: A global superpower and a country armed to the teeth by the West. We witness in Ukraine not even a tiny fraction of the sickening scenes of civilian suffering and death that emerge daily from the charnel house that is Gaza.
Israel is no closer to releasing the hostages or defeating Hamas than it was when its Defence Minister revealed the war crimes to come by vowing to cut off water, food and fuel. But what has been achieved – and achieved in spades – is the bit that’s only occasionally said out loud now in Israel: Gaza is uninhabitable for generations to come; it no longer exists as a place where human beings can live.
It is likely that some time in 2025 international journalists will be allowed into Gaza and the reality of what Israel and the West have done will move beyond snatched smartphone images. And then the reckoning will begin.
