- The Guardian
- Issue #2151
There have been a lot of protests in Israel recently, including demonstrations against Prime Minister Netanyahu for his perceived corruption, and because he seems more interested in prosecuting a war than in getting Israeli hostages back. Lately there’s a new kind of demonstration, a silent one. People are marching carrying photographs of children. These are a few of the many children Israel has killed in its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli media apparently don’t cover these demonstrations much, but word is getting out. Israel has killed more than 17,000 children. All most Israelis see in their media is Israeli hostages and pictures of injured soldiers, but the demonstrations continue. 17,000 and counting, is a lot of deaths to overlook. One Israeli at one such demonstration put things very clearly: “We are now avenging. It’s a revenge.”
The apartheid state of Israel has been very good at hiding what it’s doing. For decades there has been a strategic use of the Nazi holocaust as a catch-all excuse, justifying anything Israel did in the name of survival. That horrendous crime, and centuries of anti-semitism have been used as ammunition to justify any crimes the Israelis themselves carried out.
Israel has also had a lot of cover from compliant governments. It suits the USA and the interests of the capitalists who run it to have a client state in the Middle East that depends on the US the way Israel does. Other US client states fall into line like well-trained dogs. That’s why we get the repetitive cries of “Israel has the right to defend itself” – true inasmuch as any state has a right to defend itself, but nauseating when used to defend a state which is practicing apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing the way Israel is. The UK and Australia have been particularly submissive here, with Penny Wong meekly parroting Israel’s line that Iran could have nuclear weapons in weeks.
In 2003, Wong said “I say suspicion is not enough. To justify going to war we need more than suspicion. What sort of world would we live in if suspicion alone was justification for participation in unilateral military action outside the auspices of the UN?”
That was 22 years ago. Wong wasn’t Foreign Minister then. Now we live in the sort of world where Wong repeats Netanyahu’s falsehoods about Iranian nuclear weapons being “weeks away.” Even Trump’s advisors know this to be untrue. Wong and Albanese know it, but they toe the line.
Other states like Cuba and South Africa are more independent. Cuba knows US imperialism from the receiving end, while South Africa’s people have experience of apartheid. So it is that Cuba’s President marches in demonstrations in support of Palestine, while South Africa has brought a case against the Israeli genocide to the International Criminal Court.
Israel can’t hide forever. The rest of the world is waking up to what it’s doing.
People who excuse what Israel is doing like to say the situation is “complicated.” The people carrying the pictures know it isn’t. They’re surrounded by Israel’s propaganda, and they still know the truth.
Israel is killing children. In Gaza. On the West Bank. Right now.
