Gaza Genocide: Who stands for justice-and who stands in the way?

An injured Palestinian girl is carried into Baptist Hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli strike in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. AFP

Emboldened by support from Western imperialists such as the United States, Britain, and Germany, the Zionists continue an outright genocide in Palestine, which they illegally occupy in defiance of every rule in the international law book

What kind of world do we live in—one where justice and humanity have fled to brutish beasts, and world leaders, particularly those of the Western world, seem to have lost all reason? With hundreds of starving Palestinian civilians bombed daily in Gaza as they sleep and gunned down when hunger drives them towards death traps camouflaged by Israel and the United States as food aid centres, humanity is divided into three categories: those who commit war crimes and are directly complicit; those complicit through silence; and those who boil with outrage at the injustice inflicted on the people of Gaza and at the broader resistance against Western imperialism.

To the first category belong the bad guys—and gals. They commit war crimes, launch illegal wars without United Nations sanction, and pursue an immorally ambitious march to eliminate every obstacle in their path to global dominance. They are the Zionists and the Western imperialists.

They believe that might is right. They do not respect international law, yet they profess to uphold a rules-based international order. Until recently, to mask their ill intentions of wreaking global havoc through wars and mayhem, they at least outwardly presented themselves as paragons of virtue—championing human rights, democracy, and climate justice. But now, they commit their immorality shamelessly in full view of the world, as if to say, ‘Condemn me, I dare you.’

Emboldened by support from Western imperialists such as the United States, Britain, and Germany, the Zionists continue an outright genocide in Palestine, which they illegally occupy in defiance of every rule in the international law book. They kill unarmed Palestinian civilians—including women and children—with impunity and publicly brag about their war crimes in media interviews and social media posts, projecting themselves as a bulwark against the “barbarians” or “Amalekites” who, they claim, seek to obliterate not only Jews but the entirety of Western civilisation.

Why do Zionists and Western imperialists not accept that they are the baddies and make amends by righting their wrongs? If the UN community of experts, without a single dissenting voice, can rule that Israel is violating international humanitarian laws, what prevents Western imperialists from acknowledging the same? They are incapable of doing so. They are blind; their hearts have been hardened. The spiritually inclined would say that this is divine punishment upon them.

Their sociopathic disorder drives them to launch a witch-hunt against public figures who have the courage to stand up for justice for Palestinians. Two weeks ago, the Western imperialists demonised renowned activist Greta Thunberg and dozens of others who joined her on the Freedom Flotilla to break the blockade on Gaza. Last week, Britain went to the ridiculous extent of declaring Palestinian activists terrorists because they damaged some state assets at a military base, prompting UN experts to denounce the pro-Zionist Keir Starmer government’s move.

“We are concerned at the unjustified labelling of a political protest movement as ‘terrorist’. According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property but are not intended to kill or injure people should not be treated as terrorism,” the UN experts wrote to the British government. 

Then came another incident. To stir the conscience of Western imperialists—based on the mistaken assumption that they still possess something called conscience—the London-based punk-rap duo Bob Vylan (Bobby Vylan and Bobbie Vylan) used a BBC live programme to drive home their cry for justice for Palestinians, shouting ‘Free, Free Palestine’ and ‘Death to the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces)’. Now both the UK and the US governments are mulling punitive action against the duo for lending their voice for a just cause. O tempora! O mores!

Also this week, the US strongly advised UN Secretary-General António Guterres not to extend the term of the highly acclaimed and internationally respected human rights advocate Francesca Albanese in her position as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The Trump administration interpreted her human rights activism as terrorism and accused her of anti-Semitism a cover under which Zionist criminals find sanctuary in some Western nations that readily gag any criticism of Israel, to hell with their so-called claim to champion freedom of speech.

In another outrageous act, President Trump is threatening to deport Zohran Mamdani, a naturalised US citizen, who last week won the Democratic Party’s ticket in a hotly contested primary to be the party’s mayoral candidate for New York City. Trump holds out this threat not only because of the progressive social reforms Mamdani is pushing but also because of the upright stand he has taken in crying for justice for Palestinians and his virulent criticism of Israel for its genocidal acts in Gaza.

The US, Britain and other Western imperialists are upending the very values of Western civilisation. 

While the actions of the US and UK governments exemplify the moral turpitude and disgraceful descent of the imperial West, the nations complicit through their silence over the genocide in Gaza also deserve censure. Their condemnations barely make a ripple, let alone compel Israel to halt its atrocities. Among these countries are not only major powers such as Russia and China, which have the audacity to challenge US hegemony, but also nations like India and Sri Lanka, once at the forefront of championing the Palestinian cause during the halcyon days of the Non-Aligned Movement—and also the 22 members of the Arab League and 57 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Many analysts today see India as a strategic partner of Israel. But what about our country—Sri Lanka? Its statements on the Palestinian issue are better binned than read. The statement issued by Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry in the wake of Israel’s recent aggression against Iran is egregiously bland. By calling on both Iran and Israel to exercise restraint, the ministry refuses to condemn Israel’s—along with the United States’—illegal war, which violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and lacked Security Council authorisation. Sri Lanka’s response seems to endorse a world order that renders the UN irrelevant. At a public forum to mark Nakba Day in May this year, Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya condemned what she called ‘silence by complicity’, but what action has her government taken to break its silence? Little or nothing. On the contrary, while claiming to be adopting strategic neutrality, its actions are seen to be pro-Israel. In deference to Israel, the government, despite claiming to be a progressive one, allows illegal Israeli businesses to flourish in Sri Lanka and arrests activists for having content critical of Israel on their phones. 

O tempora! O mores!

It is because of the silence of ‘good’ nations that evil thrives in the world—in the form of genocide in Gaza, among other manifestations. It is because of their silence that Gaza has become the graveyard of humanity’s conscience.

Well, the silver lining emerging from the dark clouds of injustice created by Western imperialists and their Zionist partners is the youth-led marches for Palestine’s freedom. The imperialists and the Zionists, together with their mercenary mainstream media, may do what they can to demonise the pro-justice marchers and label them as terrorists. However, the more the pro-justice activists are oppressed, the more strength they derive to advance the Palestinian cause.