West is treating the Gaza war like a victimless video game
IT’S as if the entire world thinks what’s happening in Gaza is some victimless, high-tech video game, a weird pretence of manufactured brutality, suffering and pain. What else could explain the effective acquiescence of western leaders, particularly those in the United States, Germany, France and Britain, as atrocity is heaped on atrocity, as inhumanity is ignored, as children are butchered, as evil and revenge are elevated above mercy?
We all know why Israel is behaving the way it is, the reasons of defence and anger only too apparent. But we don’t seem any longer to know the difference between reason and justification.
It was perfectly clear in the hours after Hamas cut-throats killed over 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped about 240 others on October 7 that devilish forces had been unleashed, sparking this latest episode of unspeakable violence, the like of which we’ve never seen before in the torturous Israeli/Palestinian conflict that has now lasted for 75 years.
TThe Irish Mail on Sunday
HIS ferocious attack on Gaza was inevitable after Israel’s hardman prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, which includes people who could reasonably be regarded as anti-Palestinian extremists, decided they could no longer live with Hamas as near neighbours. The terrorist organisation had to be dismantled, even if that meant the destruction of Gaza, brick by brick, even if that meant the slaughter on a mass scale of innocent Gazan civilians – men women and children. Asymmetric war in the 21st century. David and Goliath, and we know who’s who.
Israel’s determination to change the status quo to something that didn’t include Hamas explains the cruel logic of the current outrage. But it doesn’t come near justifying it. Because there can be no justification for this bloodbath, day after day, in front of our eyes on our ultra HD televisions.
The questions are many: How come this butchery continues in plain sight and not enough is being done to stop it? In the year 2023, are we a people possessed of harder, crueller hearts than, for example, a previous generation in the United States in the 1960s who were persuaded to bring a halt to the Vietnam War, with much less harrowing violence being rammed down their throats every evening in the television news bulletins?
This week, again, UN Secretary General António Guterres called for a sustained ceasefire, even invoking the rarely used Article 99 of the UN Charter to bring what he describes as a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ to the attention of the Security Council. Guterres is echoing the exact appeal made by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar just over a week after the latest disaster commenced. As early as October 18 the Taoiseach had already decided that the suffering of the Gazan people was immense and needed to end.
At that point about 3,000 Gazans had been killed in the Israeli onslaught; this week Reuters was reporting that well over 17,000 Palestinians have had their lives ripped from them, and in the most horrible ways imaginable. Survivors are surrounded by rubble, with almost half of all the homes in Gaza destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombardment.
OVER two months into this carnage there are signs that normal human revulsion at what’s taking place in Gaza is beginning to re-emerge even in the United States, Israel’s staunchest ally, with US secretary of state Antony Blinken telling Israel it must do more to protect civilians. Within 24 hours of his almost whispered warning, however, another 350 Palestinians were reported killed.
This week Israeli forces surrounded the home of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, with Netanyahu saying he might escape but ‘it’s only a matter of time before we get him’, a reminder of the Americans’ determination after invading Iraq to track down Saddam Hussein, which they eventually did. But the violence there continued.
Surrounding and destroying Sinwar’s house would be a ‘symbolic victory’ for Israel, according to one of Netanyahu’s senior advisers, offering the hope that Israel might take this opportunity to end the war.
The concern must be, however, that before it does, the apocalyptic conditions will have claimed thousands more lives.
This week also, Britain’s new foreign secretary David Cameron presented a succinct explanation for Israel continuing the war. He said a ceasefire would mean the survival of Hamas. And that decision has already been made.
It appears this video game horror is set to continue.