Do Palestinians not bleed?

As social media sees the most heartbreaking images and words coming out of Gaza – some that Gazans say could be their last – it is obvious that the world is starkly divided between most of the West supporting the imperialist project of Israel and the Arab Street that has risen with one voice not just across the Arab world but also in countries across Europe. With the latest reports, as of writing this editorial, saying that Israeli tanks had entered Gaza territory, the one million Gazans asked to ‘evacuate’ ahead of this ground offensive are pretty much fodder for a brutal occupying force that is hell bent on its genocidal ways. While thousands did flee to southern Gaza after the Israeli army warned Palestinians to move out of the north of the strip, many have once again asked where they can go that would be safe for them. Groups like the Red Cross had warned that those asked to evacuate would not be able to get any assistance in time, but none of this likely matters to Israel which has bombed funerals, hospitals, ambulances, schools, and raided mosques in the past. No child is safe in Gaza, no human or animal life is spared when Israel decides to unleash its terror on the Palestinians.

This has been going on for decades. And the world has stayed silent. Today, with tanks rolling up to Gaza, and the US essentially greenlighting an ethnic cleansing of a whole people, Gaza has lost nearly 600 children (583 in total) to Israeli attacks in less than one week. In total, at least 1800 Palestinians have been killed and 6,388 wounded in Israeli air attacks. Not content with killing children and adults the way it always has, per verified reports by Human Rights Watch, Israel has also used artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border. While Israel has denied this, it hardly takes any stretch of imagination to think that the settler colonial state is more than capable of doing this against human beings its officials have called “animals”. White phosphorus is a toxic substance that burns at more than 800 degrees Celsius, creating a fast-spreading fire and thick smoke. Use of this over a civilian population is at the very least a war crime, and an obvious indication that Israel’s main aim now is to obliterate Gaza’s men, women and children. The occupiers had previously too used white phosphorus in 2009.

Among many casualties of the Israel onslaught on Palestine – including basic humanity – has been the truth. Disinformation has been on an all-time high in the past 4-5 days, and it seems has also been egged on or at least not checked by officialdom in Israel as well as Western governments and Western media. The Arab diaspora and progressive Western activists have said this is not a coincidence and is part of a well-thought-out strategy to obfuscate the reality that is Israel’s war crimes against its Palestinian victims. Some of the more pernicious fake news claims were even echoed by someone as right at the top as the American president. While there have been some retractions, some clarifications, and some silence, the fact is that the hysteria whipped up by the media, the complicity of the West, and the impunity of the Israeli regime has been for all to see and has led to a Gaza that stands in danger of being completely flattened. In the face of all this undisguised hatred and wrath against the Palestinian, one is tempted to ask world powers: if you prick them, do the Palestinians not bleed?