Mirza Waheed: In the near total absence of real pressure on Israel by Western powers and indeed by the so-called Muslim world, it seems many—the kin of the victims, human rights activists, us the outraged spectators or those giddy with ringside-seat amusement—are reduced to seeing mass murder live on TV or live-tweeting a genocide. It certainly helps to spread word of the carnage on the internet, so that we can all see for ourselves the high-tech wrath of the Israeli military machine or the hundreds of match-stick rockets in the Hamas arsenal, but to what end really? Perhaps to keep a sliver of hope alive that Israel may stop killing children in retaliation against homemade rockets. Or perhaps in the vain hope that highly-paid Middle East peace envoys may at last be shamed into actually working to stem the tidal flow of innocent blood in Gaza as opposed to advising Arab dictators on how to fake a democracy.
If the willful extermination of four little boys, whose parents had the temerity to remain on the beach that is their only source of livelihood, or the killing of an entire family as they slept, the bombing of a four-month old baby, or the forcing of a father to collect the remains of his child in a plastic bag aren’t war crimes, it’s perhaps time to rewrite the procedural gamut of international law so that Israel is officially exempt from all rules. The dust- coated, mangled body of one of the Bakr boys, his face partly hidden in the Mediterranean sand, next to his deformed leg, toes pointing skyward, may haunt the conscience of the international political leadership for a long, long time. It should. Photographer Tyler Hicks who took the photograph of the mangled corpse by the beach had this to say: “A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defense Forces’ intended targets. Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, don’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.”
As powerful states choose to allow Israel to commit atrocity after atrocity on top of the daily indignities and humiliations that are integral to Israel’s apartheidist stranglehold over Gaza, it is the people of the world who will continue to ask Israel to stop piling up baby corpses in Palestine. More here.