There Is A Lesson Here

But we won't learn it.

Photo by Jean on Unsplash

I go on holiday for one week, try to unplug, and somehow, in that blink of an eye, the world descends to a new depth. An oppressive militarised cloud settled over Washington, DC. London buzzed with police as they carted off hundreds of people for saying they would like this genocide to stop, please and thank you. Yet they made sure to leave those who enabled and profited from this wave of death well alone. All while the final phase of this barbaric ethnic cleansing was being openly put into action. This is Hell. Not just because of how quickly things seem to have descended, but because we knew how to stop this, and we still did nothing. Will we ever learn our lesson?

The signs were obvious from the beginning.

Netanyahu has wanted to destroy the Palestinian people for decades. He has shown maps of what he envisions as “Greater Israel” at the UN, where Israel’s borders cover not just all of Palestine but parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and has called it his spiritual mission to bring this to fruition. His dehumanising rhetoric and apartheid policies towards the Palestinian people have been evident since the start of his political career in the ‘90s.

So, are we really surprised that he has supported and initiated a plan to push the entire population of Gaza into concentration camps and occupy the territory? Just to remind you, the IDF has routinely bombed safe zones and refugee camps and now frequently kills civilians at aid sites. What do you think will happen to those people once they are forced into these camps?

After all, members of Netanyahu’s government are already stoking the fire. Smotrich has stated the plan doesn’t go far enough, despite even Israeli human rights groups calling it an open and shut case of ethnic cleansing. Another member of the government baselessly claimed that the recent aid drops by the West, used to ease the deadly and wildly illegal enforced starvation of Gaza by the IDF, were supplying weapons to Hamas. With rhetoric like this floating around, it won’t stop at a concentration camp. We have been here before.

However, the massive smoking gun is Netanyahu’s justification for this crime against humanity. Bibi has said multiple times that “We intend to [take over] in order to ensure our security [and] remove Hamas.” But that argument contains some pretty significant holes! Firstly, Israel and the IDF have a long track record of not being able to define who is and isn’t a part of Hamas. In fact, several members of Netanyahu’s government have said that even babies born in Gaza should be considered Hamas. Also, Netanyahu supported Hamas for years by enabling funds to bypass PA sanctions on Hamas, funnelling tens of millions of dollars to them. In fact, before October 7th, Netanyahu openly propped up Hamas in a divide-and-conquer approach to Palestine. Hamas’s power was only possible because of him.

And it gets worse. Hamas has said repeatedly that they would cede governance and hand back all of the hostages for a permanent ceasefire — that goes for both sides, and this is a far weaker position for Hamas, as the IDF is substantially better equipped and has been accused of breaking ceasefire agreements. If Netanyahu wanted Israeli security and the disarmament of Hamas, he would have signed this deal months ago. In other words, his justification is a blatant lie. He can’t take this deal, as it would stop his heinous imperialist goals.

If you were paying even the slightest bit of attention when this all started, you would have seen this coming from a mile away.

So, while it is wonderful that many US-aligned countries are moving to recognise a Palestinian state, the Council of Europe is urging its member states to halt deliveries of weapons to Israel, and the international political community is beginning to recognise this as the genocide it is, it’s all too fucking late.

The same is true in America.