The recent resolution that was passed at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), gave the green light for Israel to escalate its genocidal attack on the people of Gaza. In light of this, it’s time to accept what the US Biden administration has done through its participation in the war on Gaza; it has declared that international law doesn’t exist, human rights are not rights, and that the UN, ICC, and ICJ are useless. Washington has de-facto declared that the only law is that of the jungle.
Gaza today looks like a post apocalyptic horror movie. In the north, stray cats and dogs feed on the corpses of Palestinian civilians who lay dead in the streets. Almost every man, woman, and child in Gaza is homeless. Many Gazans are forced to eat leaves for food, while water is scarce and the journey to retrieve it comes at the risk of being shot dead. Sexual assaults, torture, abductions of civilians for the purpose of humiliation, arbitrary executions of civilians, and indiscriminate bombing attacks are just a normal feature of daily life.
The death toll in Gaza is estimated to be above 23,000, 10,000 of whom are said to be children and babies. The injured are estimated to be around 56,000, yet many cases are unreported and communications are cut in various areas. UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, notes that all reported death tolls are likely underestimates and that “we have yet to see what is under the rubble. These estimates of dead — once you start digging under the rubble, the statistics change radically.” Griffiths has also notably said that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is “the worst ever“.
Although I write this piece as a journalist, as a human being with extended family and friends in Gaza, I also cannot put my humanity and outrage to the side when writing descriptions of the disaster that has befallen the innocent people therein. From my own extended family alone, we have lost over 120 beautiful souls. Everyone I know in Gaza is homeless, most living in UN shelters or in tents, all are struggling to find enough food and I hear everyday of how they are starving. Never in my life, having reported on Palestine for over a decade, having lived in Palestine, and having witnessed war crimes against civilians with my own eyes — such as the shooting of children — have I ever been exposed to such horrors. Every day I watch loved ones and friends break down into tears mourning the fallen, I experience the rage at the inaction of the world and ask myself whether its even worth continuing to report when the reality is so clear for humanity to see.
We can use statistics all day to describe what is happening, but it will never capture the devastation, it will never capture the mourning, it will never capture the pain, and what one can conjure up in their imagination will never scratch the surface of what Gazans are living through. This is the context that is crucial to understanding what will be written below.
The US Must Accept That Killing Children Won’t Make Their Opposition Bow
US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, recently announced the launch of a multinational naval intervention in the Red Sea. This move came without a UNSC resolution, meaning that if this naval force attacks Yemen and starts a war, it will be in clear violation of international law. The naval coalition failed to include the participation of any Arab nation, other than Bahrain. Attempts to convince the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt all failed, proving that the US is launching another Western intervention in West Asia, without even the ability to bring along its traditional regional allies. This is likely down to Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Cairo all understanding that the US cannot protect them sufficiently in the event that Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government, based in Sanaa, decides to retaliate against their territories directly.
For 7 years, the US government has provided weapons, along with diplomatic and logistical support, to the Saudi-led coalition’s regime change war against Yemen. They have looted the wealth of Yemen, starved its population through blockading them, and this has resulted in at least 377,000 deaths inside the country. The movement that has been resisting this US-backed aggression, Ansarallah (also known as the Houthi Movement), is now enacting its own blockade on ships destined to dock at the Israeli owned port of Eilat. The people of Yemen understand what its like to starve, they know what it is like to be targeted by airstrikes, and they have refused to bow down to the demands set by Washington.
Instead of weakening the resolve of Ansarallah and the people of Yemen, 7 years of war have only strengthened their determination to fight. They have developed greater weapons capabilities and now use those weapons and expertise, that was acquired fighting the war in their own country, in order to go on the offensive and aid the Palestinian armed groups in their fight against Israel. Ansarallah’s demands are simple, end the war and allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, yet the US government is ignoring this very rational demand and are instead opting for the strategy of killing people into submission.
Whether it be the 20-year-long disaster in Afghanistan, the failure to dismantle the government of Syria, or the illegal invasion of Iraq, there is no catastrophic failure that seems to be able to get the message through to US policy makers: You cannot force a nation/ethnicity into submission through starving them and slaughtering their children. When you commit such heinous atrocities against people, they choose the only options that are available to avenge their fallen and to restore their sense of pride. Unfortunately, despite its ridiculous posturing that utilizes identity politics in the most patronizing ways possible, the elitists in Washington view the people of the Global South as, to quote Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, “human animals“. Their philosophy is clear for all to see, they view the world as a “jungle”, while they operate “gardens” in pockets of that “jungle”, to take from the analogy of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrel.
In Joe Biden’s first foreign policy address he pledged to end the war in Yemen, then, instead of pursuing a deal between Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah, he attempted to force a Saudi-Israeli deal instead. This fatal mistake, which was born of a special kind of supremacist arrogance, was one of the key causes of the current war between Gaza and Israel. This is a significant example of how the US government, lying to its own people, not only represents a betrayal of those that voted them into power, but also of the entire international community at large.
Gaza’s armed struggle and the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum. This was born of a reality that necessitated dramatic escalation, in order to force there to be a change in the horrifying unlivable conditions faced by the Palestinian civilians enduring the deteriorating of their concentration camp. (And it is always important to note that the military act itself was protected under international law, per the Geneva Conventions, as an act of armed rebellion by an occupied territory against it’s illegal occupier, whch of course does not include any crimes committed.) If we look to Lebanon, the exact same reaction occurred when the people of the South were placed under a brutal military occupation, following an Israeli invasion in 1982, in which 15,000-20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were murdered. Hezbollah emerged out of that war and formed to confront that occupation and they succeeded. Today, the US and its allies complain about Hezbollah’s role in the ongoing war. Hezbollah and Ansarallah, are movements that know exactly what its like to face the US policy that is pursued against the people of the region and see the Palestinian armed groups as akin to them.
Any sane person, who retains an ounce of humanity, can come to understand why there are such armed movements throughout the Arab world and why they enjoy massive support from their own people. The only way you can possibly fail to understand is if you see them as subhumans, as savages, as barbarians, due to brainwashing that robs you of your ability to assess all humans using the same criteria. If your family was suffering in Gaza today and you could pick up a weapon to defend/avenge them, you likely would, or, if that is not your preferred method of struggle, you would understand why others have committed themselves to this method. If someone murders your mother, father, sister, brother, children, or starves them and destroys your home, you would want to fight back, and you would see this as justified.
How can you blame a defenseless people for trying to fight back? Would you not do the same yourself? Now, sitting in the comfort of your own home, with food in your belly and the knowledge that your family is safe, you may come to the conclusion that the actions taken by these defenseless people cross a certain red line, but you must acknowledge that they come from a place that is inherently human. We don’t have to condone every action taken by the oppressed against their oppressors. In every case of genocide, slavery, colonial domination, and racial subjugation, there are acts of rage-filled violence that take the lives of those who are not legitimate targets. Yet we can look back at these cases and understand why, because we are able to comprehend what human beings are capable of when everything is taken from them.
We are told that there is a “United Nations”, that there is an “International Criminal Court” and that all people are afforded “human rights”. We were fed the rhetoric that all men and women are created equal, that everyone should be entitled to democracy, to liberty, to freedom. What the US regime is demonstrating to us all, is that none of this exists and that when they use these words they are meaningless. The message from the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza is clear:
There are the powerful and the powerless. The powerful can do whatever they like, because the powerless cannot prevent it.
So, in order to combat the tyranny of the powerful, the powerless must stand together and unite in order to tip the scales and reach a position where challenging their oppressors becomes possible. Every single movement that has resisted imperialism has come to this conclusion and has acted accordingly. It would be truly wonderful, in fact it would be a utopia in comparison to what we currently have, if the lies we have been fed about “international law”, an “international community”, and “human rights” were true — but they are not.
As normal people, we may still cling to these ideals, but in order to make them a reality we have to take action. Today it is the people of Gaza, but tomorrow it could be anyone that becomes the target of these psychopathic gangsters who run the US empire. One thing that is guaranteed, is that Gaza will never bow, nor will Yemen or Lebanon, they will continue to fight and the US government’s mass murder of civilians will only strengthen their resolve. There is only one solution to the “cycle of violence” in the Middle East, a diplomatic settlement of all standing issues and the abandonment of this pursuit for domination. If there is no push to create peace and the US government — whether it be run by Democrats or Republicans — continues to pursue an agenda of trying to keep everyone under their thumb, tensions are doomed to escalate in a regional affair. If the war in Gaza becomes a regional war, the US cannot win conventionally and the only option they will have is to use nuclear weapons. In the event that this occurs, the results are obvious.
