When is one body too many?
People all over the world are losing their jobs because they cry out for a ceasefire, they ask for the genocide in Palestine to end.
Yesterday an Australian journalist from the ABC – our independent public broadcaster – was fired for stating this. Clearly, the ABC is no longer independent or in service to the public.
When have we humans said it is OK to stand by as terror and murder are reigned upon millions of people? Oh, that’s right. We did it during WW11. We did it during Vietnam. We did it during the war on Iraq. Our ancestors did it as colonisers. We seem to do it all the time. We do it when we turn away from the starving, from the climate and economic refugees, drowning in their thousands as they seek a better life—needing to seek a better life because the global North has gotten fat and rich off their exploitation.
When is one body too many? And how does one war of violence and terror become justified to the West as acceptable?
The Israeli military claim that they have killed two Palestinian civilians for every Hamas fighter – about 5000 fighters so far, based on the latest Israeli statements earlier this month. Were the ratio to continue, 60,000 Palestinians would be killed and countless more maimed to ‘eliminate’ Hamas, one of Israel’s stated goals in Gaza.
Are we good with that? Does 60,000 dead Palestinians make the horror of October 7th better?
And will Hamas be gone as a result?
Quoted in a letter to The President of the United States today by members of Congress, “You can’t destroy a terror ideology with military force alone. And it can, in fact, make it worse.”
History, oh, history has demonstrated this lesson again and again and again. Violence begets youth who resort to violence, It is an endless cycle. The young people, whose lives have been shredded by violence, become vengeful.
But the capture of politics by powerful forces, energy companies and states, the needed strategic military bases and by law encoded to keep violence in some forms sanctioned, while in others it is criminal, is complete.
The grotesque nature of the law of genocide, written after WW11, for example, is that victim numbers are irrelevant. All that counts is intent.
This excellent article on genocide, shared with me by Jewish Australian, Louise Adler exposes the shame of the law of genocide. https://dawnmena.org/why-the-international-community-made-it-so-difficult-to-prosecute-the-crime-of-genocide/
The hand that cried for help after an abhorrent atrocity becomes an architect in paving the way for acts of genocide to become sanctioned.
I am truly perplexed. Have we lost all capacity to even ask the question – what if this was me, or you, or my family, or my community?
Where is compassion? Can we not see that in sanctioning this for others, there will come a time when it will be sanctioned to be done on us?
And then, who will hear our cries?
Photo Taken December 21st 2023
