Barbarism isn't dead. It is very much alive in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.
On Friday, barbarism was on full display when the Zionist regime bombarded Gaza without any provocation. On Saturday, The Guardian quoted health authorities in Gaza as saying that 24 Palestinians, adults and children, were killed in the unprovoked attack, including a 5-year-old girl. What is troubling is that Israel is proudly announcing to the world that it has set aside a week to turn the Gaza Strip into a killing field. Today is only day four.
The last time the Zionist regime went on a genocidal rampage there was in May last year when it killed 256 Palestinians, 66 of them children. The blitz lasted 11 days. The reason for Friday's bombardment? A Palestinian rebel group was planning an attack on Israel. How convenient.
Like in the past, Israel is dividing the international community into two. On one side is the hypocritical West and its allies, and on the other is the rest. Leading the hypocritical pack is the United States, which seems to be ready with a holding statement whenever Israel bombards the defenceless Palestinians: "Israel has the right to defend itself." This is American nonsense on stilts. The US knows that no Palestinian attacked Israel before it went on a killing spree.
Mind you, the Palestinians have good reasons to rise up against the barbaric regime's 74 years of genocide. One, genocide and crimes against humanity are against international law. Two, so is occupation, blockade and persecution. As Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein correctly says, the Palestinians have a right to self-determination and resistance.
Britain, in the shape of soon-to-be prime minister Liz Truss, is shamelessly on the side of the barbaric state. We are not surprised. Where you find her pride, you are bound to discover her prejudice. To Truss, the Ukrainians have the right to rise up against the Russians. And even the right to be supplied with weapons by the West. But not the Palestinians, not even when they are attacked by the fully weaponised Israel.
Truss isn't just bad for the Palestinians; she is bad for Britain and the rest of the world, too. A leader who is not on the side of justice is not a leader.
Leading the rest is Pakistan's former prime minister, Imran Khan. His tweet says it all: "Israel is trying to use its massive military power to subjugate the Palestinian people and eliminate those who stand up for their rights and for the end of the Israeli occupation."
Equally scathing was Kuwait's condemnation. According to the Middle East Eye, a regional news portal, Kuwait "expressed in the strongest terms" the country's "condemnation and denunciation of the aggression launched by the Israeli occupation forces on Gaza". With the exception of Qatar, which condemned Israel's attack on Gaza as "aggression", other Arab nations, especially those with close diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv, have chosen to remain silent. They will do well to make their condemnation loud and clear.
Like Egypt's Al-Azhar University, a respected authority in the Muslim world, they must speak truth to power. So long as the global community remains silent, or worse, like the West, urges the Zionist regime on with its atrocities, Israel's impunity will never end. Perhaps it is in the West's interest to keep Israel in the Middle Ages.
