A tragedy unfolding at Masjid Al-Aqsa
THE world’s fourth-largest military power launches a full onslaught against civilians and worshippers during the holy month of Ramadaan.
Palestinian resistance is often criticised as futile, given the grotesque power imbalance between the two sides.
War continues in Palestine on scale that is truly shocking.
The global community looks on while the savagery continues the battle for the heart and soul of Palestine.
This is the story of a courageous people who face horrors beyond belief, a people whose story is seldom told in the West and a story about war and its consequences.
When blood is spilt on such a massive scale, there are no winners, only various kinds of pain.
The combination of revelations about the scale and intensity of the killings, the complicity of Western nations, the failure to intervene and the suppression of information about what is actually happening is a shocking indictment, not just of the UN Security Council but even more so of governments and individuals who could have prevented what is happening but chose not to do so.
This war is about blood and gore. It is shredding people into bloody little pieces.
It tears them from limb to limb, or it burns them alive. It is the ultimate horror that man inflicts upon man. Codified under Article 7 of The International Criminal Court Statute are crimes carried out by Israeli forces in conjunction with illegal settlers against unarmed civilians, including children. International human rights advocacy groups have been rallying for international intervention against the crimes being committed by Israel in the occupied territory. The carnage in Jerusalem is barbarity gone berserk, acts of savagery unprecedented in recorded history.
The term “crimes against humanity” has multiple sources of interpretations; however, it is generally recognised as acts such as murder, or extermination, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, as was the case at Al-Aqsa.
The faceless architects of war have left almighty God out of the equation. The tragedy of brutal warfare in the conflict zones has taken on a new dimension. Many have come to accept the conflict as a perpetual state, an enterprise to be managed rather than ended as soon as possible.
What will continue is a state of perpetual war or a “forever war”, a lasting state of war with no clear conditions that would lead to its conclusion. It was Charles Colton who once said: “For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence and consummated by devastation?
“The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandisement of the few.” If the quagmire is allowed to continue on its present trajectory, then within the next five years, we will, in all probability, witness a chilling nuclear exchange. The ultimate war to end all wars. Humanity will be the ultimate victim.
FAROUK ARAIE | Benoni