Genocide Blog 50 -- The Situation Goes on Worsening beyond the Worst

03.08.2024

The other day our editorial team's member, Rada, asked me what had happened to Bambous. I realized he meant the village of Bambous has become a wild hub of digging up and rebuilding. A bee-hive. A Bruguel painting. Full of activity, almost for the sake of it, and signifying nothing. There is dust everywhere, he said. I don’t notice it anymore. Road works in Allee Tamarin, from where our Ragoo Lane branches off, continue ceaselessly. One sector gets dug right up, until men can hardly see out of it when standing in the furrow they have dug. Then it gets filled up and another sector gets dug up. Cleaning the Aegian stables. And now new works open up at Cite La Ferme. Pot-holes galore. Works are in action at the entrance to the Stad, a new layby. Everyone who got used to coming through Bambous at any point for any reason, now comes to Bambous on purpose for the good dalpuri, the excellent dipin-bef-sote, the gato piman so-so, the roti and the farata (the latter two are different prices and mean different things – in Bambous anyway), and for the roti kari urit – that they got introduced to once long ago, and now return to. There are two colleges and three primary schools, as well as other institutions like pre-primary and charitable schools. So, I thought, now it is holidays, I won’t get caught in a traffic jam inside Bambous for a couple of weeks. No luck. And then, once the SAJ Bridge opened, people from up and down the West Coast now go take short cuts through Ronpwin Baobab near Gro Kayu instead of going via Pailles or Bo Sonz to reach the Simenef. More traffic through Bambous. All the hardware stores – some positively huge, dwarfing the social centre and village hall – are busy with buyers of construction materials. Traffic is like loto-tanponez. Little clothes shops and tiny vegetable stores are everywhere. And the young men who collect huge bits of metal, carrying assorted scuptures of metal on their heads and on every kind of trolley imaginable – supermarket carts, baby prams, odd shapes thrown together on wheels – and carting it to the buyers, who then re-sell it the iron foundries. What capitalism has been reduced to. Other youngsters dart around in the distribution of drugs, in complicated networks. Clients wait, wasting their lives away on the edge of roads, often no doubt in pain. Buses ply their way to Port Louis, Rose-Hill, Curepipe, Flic-en-Flac, Black River, Baie du Cap, Quatre Bornes. More dust. And motorbikes, bicycles, Raptor, vye Katchak Charli, loto gro kara. And pedestrians all over, going to Winners, to the news agent, the Post Office, the District Court, to do a demars at the District Council, to the excellent Dispensary – where there are even dentists and nutritionists – and where a culture of the ordinary is so rich, you could marvel. Everyone at the Dispensary helps everyone else. And in addition to this, there are even two or three of those private laboratories that collect blood and urine for testing. The bakery makes special big dipin mul that you have to order. Very popular. And the mango trees have burst into too-early bloom. And general elections get nearer. So, the activity will only increase. Bambous is a cultural cauldron in all this. It may seem a mess. But, it is alive.

And it is in sharp contrast to what I see every time I watch the television and feel with the people trapped there, being hounded out by the destruction in Gaza, and I wonder at the bravery of the resistance of the fighters and the ordinary people – even as the Israeli occupying forces intentionally bomb their houses and hospitals, slaughter their babes in arms, even as Israeli snipers attack medical teams, and Israeli officers torture the young men and older men, too, in their jails, and Israeli leaders even justify the rape of men and women prisoners – something I have never heard before in my life – and then I see the driving, literally the corralling of people, by the hundreds of thousand, by the million, from pillar to post, with nothing but a motri of clothes under the cynical pretext of “getting them out of harm’s way”, the ruination of museums and public records, the destruction of schools and libraries, coffee shops, and green groceries and butcher shops, the intentional starvation of the people – limiting their calories to keep them alive, and only just, the dogged persistence in worsening the waste and sewerage disposal forcibly imposing epidemics and illness. Israel, as it destroys Palestine, it destroys itself. The Israeli project is heading for its auto-destruction by this slaughter and genocide it is conducting, by its exposing of its own cruelty and inhumanity.

And every time negotiations are near to a settlement, to a precious ceasefire – and when top figures from Qatar and Egypt, and William Burns the CIA boss believed to have a heart in his body because he once was a diplomat who believes in diplomacy get agreement from Hamas on behalf of all the resistance groups, now unified in the Beijing agreement, then Israel goes and does something unthinkable. The last unthinkable thing was assassinating the Hamas negotiator. This is unheard of savagery. He is a Hamas political leader, known for his ability to unify people. He lived openly in Qatar, and travelled to Iran for the swearing in of the new President. Everything was official and out in the open. So, Israel just went and killed him – and anyone else near him. So, where does that leave “negotiations”, if one side, Israel, assassinates the negotiator of the other side, Hamas? And the USA – the Biden, now a doddering lame duck Biden and his rhyming co-criminals, Blinken, Sullivan, Austin – just announce undying following of anything Israel does – crimes against humanity, torture, genocide, whatever. Even as Israel falls apart: it was outwitted by the military attack on 7 October, humiliated, and since then it has lost so many tanks it does not know what to do, the people are in the streets calling for Netanyahu to go, the ICC is on the brink of issuing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for, and I quote from the ICC statement:

“ Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;

“ Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);

“ Willful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);

“ Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);

“ Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;

“ Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h);

“ Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).”

Two of the three Hamas leaders who are also under imminent threat of arrest, are not. Israel has just gone and assassinated them.

And now, Israel, a country without a heart or a mind, let alone a soul, has run amok. It is provoking Iran, and thus provoking the USA. And Israel has nuclear weapons, and the USA has nuclear weapons. So, we are heading for a Middle East war of terrible proportions. And all that the Israeli leaders do, also fits the plans of the USA’s own ruling class – or a big part of it. Yes, the USA is heading for a War on Iran. Yes, the USA will follow the madmen of Israel, because it is leading them, in a way. Did we not see the Congressmen, all with invisible puppet-strings, standing up and clapping like a weird Punch and Judy Show, and then plop back down on their chairs, and then immediately stand up again – in the unison and enthusiasm of standing ovations – scores of times. Someone says it was 58 times. I just gaped at it. Why do they want to show us all that they are puppets of the AIPAC lobby that has literally bought them – they have sold their souls to those huge American firms, that manipulate a big Evangelical base of Zionists and a fast-shrinking base in the Jewish community, and then the elected Congressmen. It was truly shocking. 

I look forward to the delivery to our house in Ragoo Lane on Monday of my copy of the just-published new Ilan Pappe book Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic. If the Delivery Man can manage to get through all the road works in Bambous all the way to Ragoo Lane.

Lindsey Collen, for LALIT