Genocide Blog 54- Who perpetrates genocide, who opposes it – and how?
04.10.2024
When LALIT decided to delegate its members to go to help out in Palestine – the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza – exactly 20 years ago, it was because we saw the on-going slow-motion genocide beginning to accelerate during the “2nd intifada” or uprising, of the Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation. We called on members to volunteer because we saw that Israel was against the two-state solution, while its puppet-masters than run it from Washington, pretended Israel was in favour of it. We saw through the charade, the facade. And our members being there, in person, would mean that LALIT could STAND BY the Palestinian people, and then help spread the word truthfully about this colonial crime being committed on our watch on this earth.
We knew we were up against not only Israel, but also the USA, UK and European States. But, we already were up against them on the Chagos, including Diego Garcia issue. We found the two issues to be one and the same: continued colonization and oppression by militarism. We found the perpetrators to overlap – the USA, in particular, but also the UK.
So, in association with friends and comrades from South Africa, we got in touch with Palestinian organizations and two of our members volunteered to go to Palestine to help out. Both spent their time there doing basically two types of peaceful protest: opposing the violence of the Israeli Occupying Forces, inaccurately called the Israeli Defense Force, and opposing the violence of Israeli colonial settlers who hound Palestinians off their own land day-in day-out. When the LALIT members on their respective visits bore witness, they found that the entire West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza were all militarily occupied, and we found out what form this takes. It takes two forms: one, occupation by a state-of-siege as in Gaza, and the other, by the imposition of military force on any and every street corner throughout the rest of the Palestinian land, while imposing a form of Apartheid more lethal than that imposed by the racist South African regime from 1948 to 1994. So, our knowledge of Palestine is informed by our support action, feet not boots, on the ground.
Today
Today, as 7 October comes around on Monday, it is one whole year of Israel’s hideous slaughter and destruction, massacres and enforced starvation, wanton killing of children, the aged, women, the ill and infirm, even pet cats and birds, and the annihilation of hospitals, dispensaries, schools, roads, blocks of flats, water supplies, universities, cafés and libraries, plantation and small industries, fishers’ boats and museums – even the zoo. All sewerage has been uprooted or bombed. People have been herded, as if they were animals, into ever-smaller bits of sandy, barren land within Gaza. They are refugees who have again become refugees. Gaza, already cut off from the West Bank, is now cut off from Egypt altogether because Israel has occupied a strip called the Philadelphi corridor that it has flattened with bulldozers, and that it now occupies.
Is it genocide?
We know what is going on is genocide because the highest international court, the ICJ, was asked to study it. It did. It said in its “Preliminary Measures” issued in January 2024 that there was “plausible” genocide. So, we know. Every thinking human being on earth knows it is genocide. All you have to do is google then read the very short, easy-to-read “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”, watch any self-respecting TV station or on-line social media outlet and you will draw your own conclusion.
Who are the perpetrators of genocide?
We know who is perpetrating the genocide: it is basically two forces. The Israeli state, including its leaders and, unfortunately, with the support of most of the people of Israel behind it – even if in their ignorance, confusion and having been brain-washed so thoroughly – and the American State, its President and Vice-President and a big majority of its Senate and House of Representatives, but with only one-third of the American people still, by June 2024, standing behind their own State’s giving the armaments for the genocide.
So, those are the two main perpetrators: Israel and the USA. Biden finances, arms, covers diplomatically, and literally eggs on Israel. Without the USA, Israel could never commit this genocide. All the red lines Biden pretended to draw, he has seen crossed as if he hadn’t even pretended to draw them. Which means the genocide is his intention. Biden said, for example, “There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory.” Israel has destroyed Gaza, made it unlivable in. Is that not attempted forcible displacement? No reoccupation, he said. But Gaza is occupied, and the ICJ found, in July 2024, that Gaza is effectively occupied. The ICJ judgment statuted on exactly that issue. Biden said Gaza must not be “under siege and blockade”. But it is. And Gaza’s territory has been reduced by the Philadelphi corridor of 150 km2 and Natzarin corridor of 32 km2. Biden also said that the “...extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop”. It goes on. It gets worse. The killing spreads. “I made it clear that if they [the Israelis] go into Rafah ...,” Biden said to CNN, “I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” But Israel did go into Rafah and destroy it with Biden’s bombs. So, Rafah, too was a red line crossed. Biden also said, “But there’s red lines that, if he crosses them, [we] cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead.” But there are estimated to be 186,000 dead Palestinians since the 7 October last year, according to The Lancet, leading British medical journal.
Who are the main colluders?
The main colluders are the rich Arab kingdoms’ leaders. They could twist the US President’s arm any day.
Other colluders are all the leaders of the world, for not doing enough.
Who are the forces supporting the people suffering the genocide?
First, it is the Palestinian people themselves, including all their armed resistance groups, who are the backbone of the stand against the genocide. Since 1948, and from before, they have stood proud. Until now, we see a housewife picking up a palm leaf to sweep some order into her house, now a pile of rubble. Until now we see children in Gaza making donations for those in Beirut who Israel has bombed into leaving home because they supported the Palestinians. It could break your heart. Until now we see children organizing a 5-a-side football match, even in all that horror around them. Until now we see men, in the midst of the rubble, reconstructing their own gym and beginning to help train their sons and daughters. We see the young journalist Abubaker Abed tending his yellow rose. And we note how, while Israel’s soldiers targets children and those in hospital beds, and do so with American blessings about “the right to defend themselves” when they are the occupying power, which has no such right, we note how the Palestinian fighters – all the different groups – avoid targeting the Medevac helicopters that come to rescue the dead and wounded Israelis after the fighters have blown up an American tank squashing their land, or after they have shot an Israeli soldier pacing their land. The Palestinians aim at military targets. Their colonizers, their occupiers, who should turn around and leave, are the ones who target the families, the aged, the babies of Gaza. We note, in passing, and because it is so striking who it is that has the high moral ground.
Second, there are countries and groups within countries – all of them ostracized by the West: Hezbollah, the Houthi movement called Ansar Allah, resistance groups in Iraq and Syria, and the state of Iran that oppose the genocide. Then there are countries like South Africa and Nicaragua that have put cases before the ICJ against Israel. That, too, takes courage.
These first two groups must be recognized as those opposing the genocide. But they are not all.
Thirdly, there are the people – working people and students, women and intellectuals, artists and writers – world-wide that have stood up and are standing up. In the Yemen. In the UK. In Jordan. In the USA. In Canada. In almost all European countries. In Turkey. In Australia. In South Africa. Even in Mauritius. We have had demonstrations, vigils, conferences and talks, poetry readings, open letters, and three of us have put the Israeli leaders on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). We have called on government and opposition parties to take stands, when we know this will help. And we act ourselves.
So, what can we do?
We must all face this question: What can we do? How can we join those opposing the genocide? How can we be sure we are not colluding by our silence or our inaction?
The first thing we can do is put the issue on the agenda of the General Elections in Mauritius. Make each alliance stand up and commit to:
- Calling for Israel to be suspended from the UN, and for an embargo on Israel – arms and goods embargo. Get everyone in the African union, then everyone with relations with Mauritius to undertake to isolate Israel.
- Cutting all Mauritian links with Israel – official links, trade links and supposed technical assistance. Follow the guidelines on this prepared by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Disinvest and Sanctions movement.
- Sending some of their leading members to go in person to the West Bank and Gaza, like the LALIT members have done.
And our other actions continue.
On Monday, for example, I will be speaking at a Symposium on Palestine – The Tragic Genocide of a Nation – organized by the Centre Documentation Islamic, to be held at the Municipality of Port Louis. I will, with my friends, keep up this blog.
And soon, in LALIT, we will have another of our members volunteering in Palestine. We will, this way, stand by the Palestinians in their time of need. We will bear witness. We will spread the word. We will help end the genocide now.
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT 4 October 2024
