A year of genocide and impunity. Cartoon of 12/10/2024 in CTXT
It is one year since the genocide in Palestine began (yet another chapter), but it is just another date because Netanhayu and his army of murderers have long since given a damn about everything and have even extended their death franchise to other countries.
Listening to the daily news from Palestine, the West Bank and now Lebanon is an activity that is already several notches above unbearable. Soldiers continue to spread the celebrations of their slaughter and destruction with the macabre pride of knowing they are unpunished. The IDF is just as likely to execute children by shooting them in the head as it is to force young Gazans to search for bombs by using them as human shields.
Yesterday, the Lebanese government lodged a new complaint with the UN Security Council over Israel's attacks on Lebanon between 3 and 14 October, during which the Jewish state intensified its bombardment and ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
Shoot at everything, whether it moves or not.
UN peacekeepers at a position near Kafer Kela (Lebanon) observed an IDF Merkava tank firing on their watchtower. Two cameras were destroyed and the tower was damaged.
This is already the second time in less than seven days that a UNIFIL position has come under direct and apparently deliberate fire. In the previous attack on 11 October, two peacekeepers were injured after an IDF Merkava tank fired its gun at an observation tower at UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura, hitting it directly and causing it to fall.
On 12 October, a joint statement by 34 UNIFIL funding countries, initiated by Poland, called for the protection of peacekeepers, condemning the incidents and calling for respect for UNIFIL's mission and the safety of its personnel.
On 16 October, UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) again reminded the IDF and all actors in a brief communiqué of their obligation to ensure the safety of UN personnel and property and to respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times.
And how does the civilised world respond to such attacks? Nothing, just fine. Those who don't pretend to be crazy or react "slackly" with some gesture to the gallery, continue to quietly defend the systematic extermination of civilians wherever Israel pleases to carry it out.
For Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel is using military assassinations in Lebanon to legitimise massacres of civilians. Since the beginning of its large-scale attack on Lebanon, the Israeli army has committed more than 20 massacres of civilians, and has attempted to legitimise and justify them under the pretext of attacking military targets or carrying out military or political assassinations. Here is a list of some of them.
Euro-Med is very clear that the international community has a legal obligation to prevent Israel from committing serious crimes against civilians in Lebanon and on Lebanese territory. This obligation includes using all legal means to prevent Israel from obtaining weapons, completely banning the sale or export of weapons to Israel, immediately ceasing to provide any military or intelligence support that Israel can use to wage illegal wars, and holding Israel accountable for all these crimes.
One of the many proofs that they don't give a damn is an Israeli attack on the Maronite Christian village of Aitou, located about 100 kilometres northeast of Beirut in northern Lebanon, which left 22 people dead and a yet to be determined number wounded. The target of the attack was a residential building housing internally displaced persons from southern Lebanon.
Not a single voice was heard here against "Christian" representatives or that cohort of sociopaths who go about planting medals on the Jewish community for their "integrationist zeal".
There are many petty stances and silences in Europe, but one can be even more disgusting. Germany's stance certainly competes to be among the most despicable to be remembered with shame, I hope.
This is what Annalena Baerbock (Green party), the German foreign minister in the Scholz government, said in parliament on 14 October:
"Self-defence, of course, means not only attacking the terrorists, but destroying them. That's why I made it so clear that when Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools, then we get into very difficult issues, but we don't cower. I made it clear to the UN that civilian sites can also lose their protected status because terrorists abuse it. That is what Germany supports and that is what Israel's security means to us".
However, this is not true, according to human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber. The former senior UN human rights official told MEMO that claims that Israel has the right to "self-defence" by killing civilians in Gaza have no basis in international law.
In the wake of Berlin's bullshit statements openly supporting Israeli bombing and condoning Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza "to protect itself", Berlin police brutally repress and assault demonstrators against Israeli genocide.
However, honourable exceptions are also beginning to emerge, such as Ireland. There, Prime Minister Simon Harris said that Ireland"will not wait for everyone in Europe to move on the issue of trade in the occupied Palestinian territories" and is prepared to act on its own and restrict trade ties with Israel.
Some protests by Jewish demonstrators are also beginning to be seen in countries that support and supply weapons for genocide, such as the United States, where a large group demonstrated outside the New York Stock Exchange to call for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza and the war profiteering of companies such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
Although this is something that has been repeated many times and in different ways, it is worth asking again.
What will we say when future generations ask us what we were doing while the Palestinian people were being exterminated?
