Have We Learned To Accept Israeli Genocide? Not now, not ever.
On the 17th of October last year (2023), Israel bombed the Baptist Hospital in Gaza. At the time, the world gasped in utter disbelief that a hospital, a place for the injured, incurable and incapacitated could be targeted and destroyed by the occupying, expansionist Israeli state. Since then, hospitals have been directly bombed, attacked and ambushed hundreds of times over. If that fact that a hospital being attacked is a war crime wasn’t enough, the idea that the world allowed, let me correct myself, allows (present tense) for the deliberate, targeted attack and destruction of hospitals is completely in line with the outright support of Israel, as a State, that is totally unchallenged in its fanatical Genocide of Palestine and Palestinians.
What the past 13 months has done to us beggars belief. What Israel has done to the world in the past 13 months beggars belief.

Its not just about the language that Israel and its cronies in the Western Media world use. It’s not enough that the death of Israelis is memorialised and described as crimes against humanity or that the death of Palestinians is disregarded in numbers and afterthought or the complete tsunami of Western Political analysts telling us, hell demanding of us to understand, appreciate and accept that Israel has a right to defend itself. What Israel, and vis a vis the world has done to all of us wretched people is far worse. It has not only convinced us that this supposed ‘Rules Based’ system of law, international law, humanitarian law and human rights law is the only way that people can remain civilised in this world. Worse, Israel and the rest of the International Community has taught us, the brown, the black, the colonised, the people on the margin, the people who seek justice that this Rules Based world was created by an elite that can bend, break and destroy the rules at their whim and there is nothing that any one of us can say, think or do about it.

Since the attack on the Baptist Hospital this time last year, we have learned and accepted that an attack on hospitals is no longer shocking. It hurts us don’t get me wrong. But what can we do about it? Since that hospital attack, what can we do when civilians are rounded up and taken to Israeli hostage camps? Or when men are raped in those camps by Israeli soldiers? What can we do about the fact that last month, Israel attacked a sovereign nation in Lebanon? What can we do about the fact that 1.3 million people are now displaced, grieving, hungry and terrorised? What can we do about the fact that as of this weekend 400,000 Gazans in Jabalia refugee camp have been completely encircled by the Israeli Death squad? What can we do about the fact that those 400,000 people are now being systematically starved, cut off from water and that they WILL face a certain death at the hands of a state that claims it’s protecting itself? What can WE do about the fact that hundreds of families camped in tents in the grounds of the Al Aqsa hospital in Deir Al Balah were burned alive just last night?

In the last year we learned to accept that attacking UN officials, UN peacekeepers was just what Israel does. In the past week we learned that Israel attacking and killing UN workers in Lebanon was to be accepted (UNIFIL). We learned over the weekend that Israel destroying the UN workers building in Occupied East Jerusalem so that it can be used for Israeli settlers was to be accepted (UNRWA). In the last year, we learned how to post on social media and how to become somewhat social activists. We learned how to look at language that dehumanises. We learned how to sign petitions and join protests and donate to the desperate. We learned how to boycott. We learned how to openly talk about our disdain of Occupation and Apartheid in our workplaces, universities, schools and even at friends and family gathering. And still nothing seems to stop it. Nothing seems to stop the killing. Nothing seems to stop the injustice. Nothing seems to stop the world from continuously allowing space for this regime to exist and persist in its killing and destruction. Nothing seems to stop the Genocide.

History teaches us that the only way this ends is when the oppressed people become free. That means that the Gazans, the Palestinians and all Palestine will be free one day. When that day comes depends on us. In the past, when Apartheids and Genocides have ended, there were always people in distant lands that went above and beyond to get their communities together, their towns and cities together, their people together, their countries together to say no more and not it our name. For us, those times are outside of our lifespans in a time when morality and the obsession for money, self and acceptance were not the driver of the society that we live in. We have to be the people that come together and pull the needle in the opposite direction. We have to gather our communities, we have to go above and beyond, we have to take a stand. A stand that may not fall in line with our social drivers of money, self and acceptance. The elites who designed this rules-based world designed it so they can rule over us not because rules help societies stay safe but because rules help them rule our societies. We are the many and they are the few. History teaches us this ends when oppressed people become free. Last December, it was clear that Israel had begun its policy of driving all of Gaza’s population into a small strip of land beside Rafah called Al-Mawasi. Until then, bombs and attacks will continue unabated on schools, hospitals and refugee camps. And as the German foreign ministry announced, it supports Israels attacks on civilian infrastructure so there will be no accountability on a global scale. And yet, history teaches us that this ends when the oppressed become free. The 400,000 in Jabalia waiting for death, the 118,000+ Palestinians who have been erased out of living, the 1.9 million displaced in Gaza, the 1.3 million displaced in Lebanon – they’re all just numbers right? No? Then stop sleepwalking and learning to accept that this is what Israel does. All the things we learned in the last year, we need to do all of it, all at the same time, continuously. We need to make tough choices like who do we keep in power and how do we use our full democratic rights to ensure that Government’s implement a full arms embargo against Israel.
Its not normal. None of it is. Stop learning to accept it. Not in our name. Not now. Not ever.