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Monday, January 6, 2025

PREACHING BEYOND THE CHOIR ABOUT THE GENOCIDE

                                          
                                            

                                                                                



As I have often written, one of the most effective ways to break through the corporate media blockade of information that would allow Americans to understand the depravity of the empire of which they are a part is to share what you know in letters and opinion columns in newspapers that still allow them.

I am privileged to live in a community with a newspaper that serves as a community forum. Here's my most recent guest column.

 

As I See It: U.S. has legal, moral responsibility to stop a genocide in process

A small item in a recent edition of this paper ("Israeli troops storm and burn hospital in Gaza," Dec. 18) was remarkable. While the incident might appear to be just another Israeli war crime, the piece was notable because it broke the near-total silence of the media regarding the program of extermination going on in northern Gaza.

The full story of Kamal Adwan Hospital provides a lens on the horror of a genocide largely concealed from those who only know what they see in mainstream media.

In October, Israel declared that any Palestinian unwilling or unable to leave northern Gaza immediately would be treated as a terrorist. According to whistleblowers interviewed by Israel’s Haaretz, the military zone that has sealed the north from southern Gaza since then has been treated as a free-fire zone. No one can leave even if they want.

All food, water, medicine and other essentials of life have been blocked from entering, in defiance of repeated orders from the International Court of Justice. The population has been under continuous bombardment. Nearly all are starving.

With the onset of winter, babies living without decent shelter are freezing to death.

Kamal Adwan was one of the last semi-functioning hospitals left in north Gaza. It had been rocked repeatedly by explosions for more than two months before being stormed.

Just days before the raid, an American-made bomb killed 50 people in an adjacent building used by staff. Hospital Director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya bravely stated, “We will leave when the last Palestinian leaves.”

Israel “justified” its violent assault on patients and staff with allegations, presented without evidence, that Hamas fighters were based there. Abu Safiya was among those forced to strip in the freezing cold, then was kidnapped and taken to the infamous Israeli torture site at Sde Teiman.

The raid was nothing new for the occupation forces, but in view of conditions in the north it is even more inhuman. It is part of a process of ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, as former defense minister and Israel Defense Forces Chief Moshe Ya’alon concluded.

The campaign of extermination in the north is an intensification of Israel’s genocidal policies throughout this war. This ethnic cleansing appears intended to clear the way for reestablishing settlements in the Strip, as called for by leaders of all three parties in Israel’s governing coalition.

 

It is a harbinger of what is intended for the rest of Gaza. Left unchallenged by the U.S. government, this is likely to be the fate of the West Bank, where a killing spree by settlers and the occupying forces continues largely unreported in the U.S.

The International Court of Justice declared a year ago there was a plausible case for genocide. More recently, detailed investigations by the two most respected human rights organizations in the world, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have concluded that genocide is occurring.

Anyone who still refuses to accept that, at a minimum, genocide may be occurring in Gaza, is akin to a Holocaust denier.

|The U.S. has a legal and moral responsibility to do everything it can to stop a genocide in process. Instead, it is abetting one by continuing to send offensive weapons to Israel, ignoring the will of most Americans. Those who believe in "government by the people" have a duty to protest.

A recent study found that in Gaza as a whole, 96% of children expect to die at any time. Half hope for it. If that does not stir the heart of anyone still clinging to the fiction that Israel is only “defending” itself, they have no heart to begin with.

Rick Staggenborg, MD, of Albany is president of the Linus Pauling Chapter of Veterans for Peace, founder of Soldiers For Peace International and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.