It takes Latin American nations to state the obvious, the brutal truth behind reams of obfuscation. Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela have branded Israel a ‘rogue nation.’ United Nations, after weeks of supine insinuation, has been compelled to hint that ‘war crimes’ might have been committed by Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza strip, after a UN-run school, a rehabilitation hospital and other sacrosanct places of refuge were blown to shreds by IDF shelling.
There are videos and images detailing the grave truths in gruesome slow motion – a rocket approaching, a rocket striking, a rocket ripping everything apart, destroying houses, shredding bodies, of men, women, children. IDF soldiers have been documented by journalists and civilians while they were shooting unarmed children, mere teenagers, even younger kids, who looked vacuously at the very face of ultimate destruction. The rape of Gaza is a terribly protracted crime committed in broad daylight before global eyes, to global blindness.
The violence is mere statistics in the eyes of the world, some telegenic footage of smoke billowing out and turning the skyline of Gaza strip into a massive ball of hellfire, images of severed heads and limbs of mutilated bodies, young people taking selfies with unexploded shells, Israeli settlers watching the fireworks from the safety of their houses, protected by the Iron Dome (Israel’s anti-missile firewall). The massacre, the genocide, the extermination of angels merely topics for fancy headlines in self-important broadsheets trying to fill in spaces in their opinion pages, while congratulating the United States and its ally on their next ‘humanitarian intervention.’
What kind of pragmatism shuts its eyes to the systematic razing of Gaza and all that it contains, contained (not much, a ghetto of obscenely dilapidated houses, bordering on disaster porn when taken out of the context)? As commentators and politicians ask for a ‘measured approach’ to the Israeli-Palestinian question, throw the gauntlet of hiked foreign direct investment to indigenise defence sector, the very nature of defence is called into question. It seems only a certain kind of privileged few are allowed the luxury of the ‘self-defence discourse’, among them chiefly the United States, its lackeys in West Asia and Western Europe.
Hence, when the US and its travelling salesman John Kerry declare that Washington would restock Israeli ammunition to protect Tel Aviv and the settlers in the occupied territories outside the strip in Gaza, no one bats an eyelid. In fact, Kerry scolds India for its ‘outrageous’ position on the issue of food security that ended up delaying the WTO deal on trade facilitation agreement conceived during the Bali ministerial meet. Only, American newspapers lament decoratively the ‘regrettable collateral damage.’
There are videos and images detailing the grave truths in gruesome slow motion – a rocket approaching, a rocket striking, a rocket ripping everything apart, destroying houses, shredding bodies, of men, women, children. IDF soldiers have been documented by journalists and civilians while they were shooting unarmed children, mere teenagers, even younger kids, who looked vacuously at the very face of ultimate destruction. The rape of Gaza is a terribly protracted crime committed in broad daylight before global eyes, to global blindness.
The violence is mere statistics in the eyes of the world, some telegenic footage of smoke billowing out and turning the skyline of Gaza strip into a massive ball of hellfire, images of severed heads and limbs of mutilated bodies, young people taking selfies with unexploded shells, Israeli settlers watching the fireworks from the safety of their houses, protected by the Iron Dome (Israel’s anti-missile firewall). The massacre, the genocide, the extermination of angels merely topics for fancy headlines in self-important broadsheets trying to fill in spaces in their opinion pages, while congratulating the United States and its ally on their next ‘humanitarian intervention.’
What kind of pragmatism shuts its eyes to the systematic razing of Gaza and all that it contains, contained (not much, a ghetto of obscenely dilapidated houses, bordering on disaster porn when taken out of the context)? As commentators and politicians ask for a ‘measured approach’ to the Israeli-Palestinian question, throw the gauntlet of hiked foreign direct investment to indigenise defence sector, the very nature of defence is called into question. It seems only a certain kind of privileged few are allowed the luxury of the ‘self-defence discourse’, among them chiefly the United States, its lackeys in West Asia and Western Europe.
Hence, when the US and its travelling salesman John Kerry declare that Washington would restock Israeli ammunition to protect Tel Aviv and the settlers in the occupied territories outside the strip in Gaza, no one bats an eyelid. In fact, Kerry scolds India for its ‘outrageous’ position on the issue of food security that ended up delaying the WTO deal on trade facilitation agreement conceived during the Bali ministerial meet. Only, American newspapers lament decoratively the ‘regrettable collateral damage.’