Gaza: Crime Without Punishment

Darko Lazar

Just imagine if the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had killed 62 unarmed protesters and injured thousands of others.

Surely, the American response would be fierce. At the very least, the US would unleash a thousand cruise missiles - the number currently within range of Syria.

Better yet, imagine if Lebanon's Hezbollah killed 62 Jewish settlers living on occupied Palestinian territory.

Within days, another US-led coalition would be on hand to provide unconditional support for "Israel", as it indiscriminately obliterates civilian targets.

Of course, it wasn't Bashar al-Assad that killed 62 unarmed protesters and it wasn't Hezbollah that killed Jewish settlers this week. It was the "Israeli" military that fired into thousands of Palestinian demonstrators as they marked the 70th anniversary of the Nakba (Arabic for 'catastrophe'/'disaster'), signifying the Palestinian exodus from their own land in 1948.

For such an appalling crime, "Israel" is not only spared condemnation from Washington - it is applauded.

Support, justifications, and even praise for "Israel's" actions, were key components of the US strategy when it came to dealing with the latest carnage in the besieged Gaza Strip.

US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley shamelessly commended the "Israelis" for acting with "restraint" in handling the protests. A few hours later, Haley walked out of a UN Security Council meeting when the Palestinian envoy began to speak.

But even though officials in Washington love to boast about how Russia, Iran, and Syria are isolated, no country on earth is as lonely as the US in its defense of "Israel".

During Tuesday's Security Council meeting, even Washington's closest allies criticized Tel Aviv's response to the protests, which happened to coincide with the opening of the new US embassy in occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem).

Although most of Haley's statements about the "Israeli"-Palestinian conflict can be described as hypocritical, few are as outrageous as the one claiming that this week's protests in Gaza had nothing to do with the relocation of the American foreign mission from Tel Aviv to al-Quds.

Richard Becker with the ANSWER Coalition described Haley's claim as a "bad joke".

"It had everything to do with it," Becker said. "I think that [Nazi Minister of Propaganda] Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of Niki Haley's performance. He would have said 'that's the way to go; turn everything upside down and just keep repeating the lie. Make it a big lie.'"

But even the big lies failed to hide the lack of international support for the embassy move. Testifying to just how isolated Tel Aviv and Washington had become is the fact that less than half of the 86 foreign dignitaries invited to attend the celebration in Jerusalem actually bothered showing up.

The joint US/"Israeli" effort to put lipstick on a pig also failed to disguise the fact that last December's decision by the Trump administration to recognize al-Quds as the "Israeli" capital sparked the latest chapter in the "Israeli"-Palestinian conflict.

The bloodiest day of that chapter - and indeed since the 2014 "Israeli" onslaught on Gaza - overlapped with the inauguration of the new embassy.

"Israel" defined by one massacre after another

While some 750,000 people were originally forcibly expelled from historical Palestine, many became internal refugees.
About 70% of the Gaza Strip's population of two million are descendants of Palestinians who became refugees in 1948.

They live under a decade-long land, sea and air blockade and cannot leave the Gaza Strip without hard-to-obtain permits from the Israeli military.

Over the course of the last seven weeks, Gaza's residents staged rallies dubbed the Great March of Return.

The "Israeli" military responded by killing 111 Palestinians, including an eight-month-old baby girl, who succumbed to tear gas suffocation. More than 12,000 have been wounded.

Richard Becker believes that "it's very appropriate that a massacre was carried out" on the 70th anniversary of the Nakba.

"‘Israel' only came into being because of massacre after massacre that drove out the Palestinian population," Becker adds.

Although international humanitarian law prohibits soldiers to use live ammunition in situations that do not constitute an imminent threat to life, "Israeli" snipers, safely ensconced hundreds of feet away, picked off one Palestinian at a time.

Perhaps the heavily armed "Israelis" felt it was a proportional response to the slingshots used by some of the protesters.

If so, "Israel's" benefactors in the west seem to agree.

After all, Tel Aviv can be told politely that the slaughter of unarmed women and children in full view of the global media is not a 'nice' thing to do. So don't expect any real pressure from western capitals, let alone another Anglo-Saxon ‘humanitarian intervention'.

Source: al-Ahed News