Controcorrente

what is left of our humanity ?

Photo courtesy of Hosny Salah

We have not yet come out of one war and gone straight into another, it is crazy to believe, but unfortunately it is the case. There are no just wars, there can never be a justification for something that always brings pain, destruction and death. And even this time it can only be confirmed. But perhaps never before has there been such a flattening of the national media, which, with ruthless cynicism, dwells on the causes of this conflict while ignoring the terrible consequences of what is now happening.

On the morning of 7 October 2023, air raid sirens announced that something terribly unusual was happening.

In fact, on that same morning, the terrorist group Hamas announced the operation Al-Aqsa Flood with the launch of more than 5,000 rockets towards Israel. Some of these rockets managed to reach the kibbutzim, killing around 1,200 inhabitants—most of them civilians—and taking another 251 hostages, including Israeli civilians and foreigners (although it is worth noting that these figures were later revised, reducing the number of victims by several hundred).

At the same time, international media reported that militias belonging to the same terrorist group had reached young people gathered for a music festival 5 km from the Gaza border. Here too, the death toll was dramatic: 364 people were killed.

Israel’s military security, with its ‘Smart Fence’, had until that day been considered the most secure in the world—a true masterpiece of technology, and one of which the Israelis themselves were the first to be proud. Despite this, the impending danger that morning was not intercepted, and the reason still remains a mystery.

Israel’s response was not long in coming, and it was as ruthless as could be expected. Through its air raids, Israel began to destroy all the nerve centres of Gaza, residential complexes, tunnels suspected of links to Hamas infiltrators, and the Al-Watan, a fourteen-storey commercial building housing hundreds of offices and shops. So far, more than 40,000 people have died, including 26,000 children, though the death toll continues to rise.

Every day, air raids have become a constant presence, never sparing any victims. In the town of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza last October, a bombing claimed the lives of 93 people and killed 25 more children. In November, Israel deliberately violated the previously agreed truce for the polio vaccination campaign and, in the meantime, out of impatience, threw a grenade—injuring at least four children in Gaza City.

On Friday, news broke that an air attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp killed 33 people. Unfortunately, bulletins like these are now the order of the day.
Also in November, it was UNICEF who confirmed that, in just forty-eight hours, 50 children had been killed in the Jabalia refugee camp.

Gaza now looks like a ghost town, where all major structures essential to a community have by now been almost entirely razed to the ground. Ninety per cent of school buildings have been destroyed, and 70 per cent of civilian dwellings have been severely damaged or destroyed. The north of the Gaza Strip is already at risk of famine, with children in a state of malnutrition, as even aid has been repeatedly boycotted by Israel.

So far, the only state to indignantly oppose the genocide has been South Africa, which, on 23 December 2023, filed an application at the Registry of the International Court of Justice to initiate proceedings against the State of Israel, holding it responsible for violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on 9 December 1948. Article 3 of the Convention lists five points that the State of Israel has failed to comply with in any way and has therefore violated. As things stand, the request made by South Africa is more than legitimate, considering that both states are currently parties to the Convention.

Western newspapers and media deny being able to see the continuous massacre of innocent adults and children. Videos and photographs published by Eye on Palestine—an account followed by more than three million people, report daily on the human rights violations consistently carried out by the State of Israel against the Palestinian population.

It is from this same channel that harrowing images emerge: murdered bodies lying in the streets, becoming food for starving stray dogs. I believe no human being should have to witness such scenes involving their fellow human beings.

Day after day, heartbreaking stories surface of parents forced to send their children to sleep without being able to give them anything to eat. The children of Gaza are disappearing, and a state without children denies the hope of a new renaissance for Palestine.

Meanwhile, on 21 November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the current Israeli president, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. The charge for both is “war crimes against humanity.”

Is there still any hope of possible repentance? That is difficult to answer. What we are witnessing is the slow decline of Europe, victim of an increasingly self-destructive torpor, that is becoming complicit, if it is not already, by failing to take a courageous and authoritative stance aimed at halting all forms of funding and support that empower Israel to continue this slaughter. Every day we remain silent, we risk being remembered by future generations as those who allowed this to happen. And if so, I hope that by that day the good Lord will still have mercy on us.

Miriam Millaci