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The safety, well-being, and lives of millions of Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories are endangered by US/Western support for Israeli state terror.
On day nine of preemptive Netanyahu regime war on Gaza, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Jens Laerke said conditions in the Strip are dire.
Tens of thousands of Gazans fled homes for safety not gotten anywhere in the world’s largest open-air prison where they’re trapped by Israel’s blockade.
Much of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed or badly damaged.
Scores of residential and commercial buildings were demolished or rendered unusable.
Thousands of families are homeless.
Many of their loved ones were killed or wounded from Israeli terror-bombing and shelling — countless numbers of children traumatized.
According to the Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA), displaced Palestinians sought shelter in its schools despite no provisions to care for their needs.
They’re “in classrooms without mattresses or blankets and without the provision of essential services, such as sufficient drinking water, food and adequate toilets,” according to the Al Mezan human rights group, adding:
They’re “most(ly) liv(ing) on what little food they brought with them, or on food given them by neighboring residents or provided by charitable associations and popular committees for refugees.”
They’re “threatened by a health and humanitarian disaster” from Israeli aggression without mercy — multiple daily crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against Palestinians throughout the Territories.
They include willfully and maliciously blasting a crater into the main artery leading to Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility.
According to the Al-Haq human rights group, inflicting significant damage to the road adversely impacts the facility’s ability to provide vitally needed medical services to the sick and wounded.
Israel’s action is “a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”
The IDF also terror-bombed Gaza’s health ministry, damaging it and wounding medical staff inside, some critically.
According to the WHO, Israel terror-bombed or shelled 19 medical facilities in the Strip — limiting to what extent they’re able to treat wounded Gazans.
Strip power and water facilities were heavily damaged.
The Biden regime and its Western co-conspirators support Israeli crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians in harm’s way.
A joint statement by Columbia University Palestine Studies Centers members said the following:
“We are as committed as ever to to help the Palestinian people…in their just struggle for freedom and liberation.”
“We strongly condemn the Israeli ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem and the brutal Israeli violation of the sacred Haram al-Sharif and al-Aqsa mosque, which are not just religious but also national symbols of the Palestinian struggle.”
“We ask the world to immediately intervene to stop the callous Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which costs the lives of many civilians – among them children – and end the blockade immediately.”
“We ask the world to protect the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and inside Israel from the brutal force of the police and the violence of Israeli settlers and their supporters.”
“Only when Israel treats Palestinians inside Israel as equal citizens, recognizes the right of the Palestinian refugees to return and the right of the Palestinians to live free of colonization and occupation, will there be hope for peace and reconciliation in historic Palestine.”
As long as US/Western countries support the worst of Israeli crimes — rejecting accountability for Nuremberg-level ones — Palestinians will continue being oppressed, including by extremist armed settlers, free to commit violence in cahoots with security forces.
South African Reverend Allan Boesak earlier said the following about Israeli apartheid:
“It is worse (than what existed in his country), not in the sense that apartheid was not an absolutely terrifying system in South Africa, but in the ways in which the Israelis have taken the apartheid system and perfected it…sharpened it.”
“(W)e had Bantustans, and we had the Group Areas Act. and we had the separate schools…but I don’t think it ever even entered the mind of any apartheid planner to design a town in such a way that there is a physical wall that separates people and that that wall denotes your freedom of movement, your freedom of economic gain, of employment, and at the same time is a tool of intimidation and dehumanization.”
“We carried passes as the Palestinians have their ID documents, but that did not mean that we could not go from one place in the city to another place in the city.”
“The judicial system was absolutely skewed of course.”
“All the judges in their judgements sought to protect white privilege and power and so forth, and we had a series of what they called ‘hanging judges’ in those days, but they did not go far as to openly, blatantly have two separate justice systems as they do for Palestinians — tried in Israeli military courts.”
“So in many ways the Israeli system is worse.”
“Another thing that makes it even worse is that when we fought our battles, even if it took us a long time, we could in the end muster and mobilize international solidarity on a scale that enabled us to be more successful in our struggle.”
“The Palestinians cannot do that. The whole international community almost conspires against them” because of US/Western pressure.
“The UN, which played a fairly positive role in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, takes the disastrous position of not wanting to offend its strong members like the US that protect Israel.”
“So even in the UN, where international law ought to be the framework wherein all these things are judged, where international solidarity is not an assumption but is supposed to be the very foundation upon which the UN builds its views on things and its judgements as to which way it goes, the Palestinians don’t even have that.”
“Palestinians are mocked in a way that South Africans were not.”
“In a sense, the UN tried in our case to follow up on its resolutions to isolate the apartheid regime.”
“Here, now, they make resolutions against Israel one after the other, and I don’t detect even a sense of shame that they know there is not going to be any follow up.”
What’s going on in Occupied Palestine is “scandalous.”
Israeli “apartheid is more (ruthless and terrifying than the worst of how South Africa’s version) ever was.”
Along with one-sided US-led Western support, Israeli barbarity remains the cross borne by one Palestinian generation after another with no relief in prospect — no end to the misery they endure.
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].
My two Wall Street books are timely reading:
“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”
https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/
“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”
https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/
Featured image is an old photo of Gaza
