Today, Nov. 7, is exactly one month after that tragic and quite adventurous attack that Hamas staged in key areas in Israel, causing endless retaliatory and inordinately violent reactions from the state of Israel. After that infamous Hamas offensive, Israel’s armed forces reacted with relentless bombing and other acts violative of International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions on the rules of war.
For the last four weeks into this crazy war in Gaza, we watched mayhem right from our living rooms, our hearts crushed with a powerful wrench seeing all the children and other hapless individuals like patients in hospitals and in ambulances being killed by Israel’s bombing orgy. And we feel helpless, too.
Questions explode in my mind on seeing these acts of sheer madness of one country using its massive force to crush what they thought was the representative of a people who have been, for more than seven decades, longing for their freedom to be living in a country of their own. Clearly, if the Israeli state wanted to punish Hamas for the dastardly act they did on Oct. 7, ordinary Palestinians who may even hate Hamas should not be the ones to be punished. This is collective punishment, punishable as a war crime according to the Geneva Convention.
In less than a month, the death toll for Palestinians has hit more than 9,000 (about a third of them children), and still counting, as of this writing. On the other hand, there are less than 2,000 Israelis considered as fatalities in the Gaza siege. The toll on the Palestinian side could be more than three times the recorded deaths on the Israeli side.
Miko Peled, an Israeli-American author, and peace and anti-Zionist activist, said in “The Bottom Line” on Al Jazeera last Friday that there are over 2,000 Palestinian children in Gaza missing in the rubble. Peled has written two books that succinctly describe his strong stance against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and what he calls the “apartheid regime of the Israeli state” that has subjected the Palestinians in Gaza to acts of “savagery” for more than seven decades. These books are “The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine” and “Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.” He is a widely known international speaker who has consistently espoused that “supporting Israel (the state) is a support for injustice and savagery, and against freedom.” He stressed that many Palestinians have become beggars and impoverished, but this is largely no fault of their own. The Israeli state has been responsible for what they have become, especially now.
When the host of the show queried why there is still overwhelming support for Israel’s punitive acts against Palestinians among countries like the United States as well as several European states, Peled claimed that the support and rage of some global audiences against Palestinians and Hamas are quite “unjustified.” He said that Hamas took the cudgels of fighting on behalf of the greater numbers of Palestinians who have been treated like savages by the Israeli state, and for him, this is actually more justified than what Israel is doing now. He noted that even international conventions protect the rights of people to struggle for their right to self-determination. For Peled, it is quite “ludicrous” if Hamas did not engage in an armed struggle against Israel; it is just a reaction to Israel’s crimes against humanity, and its genocidal policies against Palestine. He also denounced the complicity of the United States in its equally unrelenting support to the Israeli state.
Palestinian civilians—elderly women and men, children, and those who have thought that hospitals and schools provide safe refuge for their safety—have become immensely insecure about their future, if ever there is.
A Palestinian child interviewed by an Al Jazeera reporter was asked what he wants to be when he grows up. His answer revealed wisdom at a tender age: “I think I will not experience growing up; I might die young.”
Children are supposed to have dreams of a bright future, even when confronted with huge challenges like poverty. But in Palestine, in that blood-stained dry, and almost barren land where the remaining Palestinians are still given some strokes of luck to be able to breathe—that statement from a child is quite heart-rending.
As this crazy war in Gaza goes on, we are witnesses to a state acting like a mad dog biting its enemies now close to being lifeless. And if the international community of nations (including the Philippines) will stand idly by, and let this mad dog continue its rampage among the Palestinians of Gaza, then we will be seeing more acts of sheer madness expand in other parts of the world.