SYDNEY, Jan 13 (IPS) – Thank God, we have survived another year of genocide, war, destruction and climate crisis. The passing year of 2024 has been a mixture of hope and despair. It began with some hope as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in favour of South Africa’s case against Israel for committing genocide and ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the Genocide Convention, and to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Alas, the hope quickly vanished as the genocide continues by the very people who promised, “never again” and worked tirelessly for the Genocide Convention. Officially, more than 45,000 killed – mostly women and children. According to the prestigious medical journal Lancet, the actual death toll by July 2024 reached more than 186,000 due to the cumulative effects of Israel’s destruction of hospitals, blocking of aid, cutting off water & electricity supplies and every other means of ethnic cleansing.
Ironically, it is possible for the apartheid state of Israel to trample on the ICJ and the international humanitarian laws only because of its backing by the US and its allies. One grapples with the inexplicable spectacle of its stone-faced Western allies ignoring, and indeed justifying, the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
I wrote three pieces for IPS trying to explain the inexplicable – Gaza Massacre and Western Hypocrisy (4 Mar., 2024); ‘Unbounded’ Impunity Emboldens Israel (27 Feb., 2024) and The West’s Frankenstein Moment (14 Feb., 2024). Amidst the continued horror, injustice and the miseries of the occupied Palestinian people, I thought it was pointless to write or make academic analyses.
