Northern Gaza in ‘full-blown famine’, UN food agency chief says

Complicity in Genocide: Western Silence Enables Israeli Atrocities in Gaza

As the International Criminal Court investigates alleged war crimes by Israel in Gaza, Western governments continue rendering unconscionable support to the apartheid state’s militarised suppression of Palestinians.

The grotesque loss of civilian life stemming from Israel’s disproportionate retaliation against Hamas has plunged the territory into a humanitarian nightmare – and our leaders’ refusal to forcefully condemn this brutality is cravenly enabling the perpetuation of genocide.

Let us be clear: the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attacks that killed over 1,200 Israelis were utterly abhorrent acts of terrorism that warranted a response. However, Israel’s subsequent killing of over 34,500 Palestinians – the vast majority women and children – is an appalling overreaction far exceeding any reasonable claim of self-defence. With the Israeli Defence Forces’ draconian siege of Gaza triggering a full-blown famine, the wilful starvation of an occupied population undeniably qualifies as a crime against humanity.

And yet, in the face of such unconscionable state violence, a deafening silence emanates from the architects of the American empire and their European subservients. The grim fact that northern Gaza is already experiencing “horror” levels of mass starvation according to the UN has not stirred the vapid voices of Western rhetoric into assertive condemnation, let alone substantive action to cease the bloodletting.

Instead, we are treated to the familiar duckspeak rationales regurgitated by Israeli military apologists – disingenuous bleatings about “self-defence” and “Hamas provocation” transparently designed to dehumanize Palestinian victims of excessive state force. Those leaders parroting these same hasbara talking points while overseeing a policy that knowingly perpetuates mass civilian deprivation are not mere bystanders to genocide – they are actively abetting war crimes through their silence and perpetual “both-sides” prevarications.

UN’s Sigrid Kaag: Is starvation an Israeli weapon in Gaza?

It is a moral abdication so shameful that it has catalysed a furious grassroots backlash across university campuses worldwide. From the U.S. to the UK, social justice advocates have rightly condemned their governments’ complicity, launching campus occupations and encampments demanding universities sever all financial ties with companies profiting from Israel’s militarized occupation.

These courageous pro-Palestinian activists understand they are heirs to a noble tradition of resistance against imperialist aggression. Like the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns that prefigured them, their tactics represent the frontline of a burgeoning global movement uniting the voiceless under a unifying call for human emancipation from neocolonialist subjugation.

While politicians grovel before the Israeli lobby and corporate war machine, our youth have arisen as the clarion consciences crying out in repudiation of genocide. Thank the heavens their righteous dissent can still penetrate the miasma of disinformation and state propaganda.

If Western governments lack the backbone to uphold the most basic humanitarian principles, let these youthful firebrands embody the moral outrage of a watching world condemned to bear witness against the murderous silences.

The famine Gaza, personally observed by UN humanitarian officials, is an atrocity propelled by our own taxpayer funds and diplomatic cover for Israel’s unrestrained militarism. Unless more voices join this vibrant activist uprising, we shall bear the eternal shame of having aided and abetted one of the primary genocides of our age.

Our common human dignity and that of our children demands this grotesque violence be unreservedly condemned and urgently halted – before what’s left of Gaza becomes a graveyard of our own self-professed democratic ideals.

Paul Knaggs