THE numbers continue telling the sad story of Occupied Palestine, where 4.29 million stateless citizens have been imprisoned in their occupied homeland for more than the past seven decades, encamped in open-air prisons or forced to flee to neighboring and distant nations by the millions, as refugees-for-life.
In Gaza, millions have lived in worse conditions for 56 years, unable to freely-go anywhere without Israeli permission.
There have been three previous holocausts like seen today in Gaza, which the Palestinians call ‘The Nakba’ (Catastrophe) in 1948, 1967 and 1973.
Today, every Palestinian citizen knows or has lost someone, or even an entire family, through the types of nightly bombings and raids of the past fortnight of terror.
Half of Palestinians are under 18, while over 70% of the dead and wounded are elderlies, women and children, and over 30% of the dead are children.
Meanwhile, over 490,000 Israeli settlers occupy Palestinian lands occupied by force.
Gaza From A Distance
But let’s look at Gaza from a distant Caribbean perspective:
• For starters, it’s the most-populated-place on earth, with 2.3 million people in 365 square-kilometers- an area nearly-half of Saint Lucia, a little smaller than Barbados and 500-times smaller than Guyana.
• Over 70% of the population has lived off daily food handouts from UN and other international aid agencies for the past 16 years
• 1.4 million people (almost half the population) have been displaced
• 600,000 are sheltering at United Nations (UN) facilities
• Over-18,000 have been injured, leaving hospitals and health facilities overwhelmed
• 15 of 35 hospitals have been forced to close due to lack of fuel and medical supplies
• Two-thirds (66%) of health facilities have been destroyed or rendered inoperable
• Thousands of patients are unable to leave already-overcrowded hospitals, with no homes to return to
• Bodies are being buried in mass graves due to lack of morgue spaces, forcing use of ice cream vans to store unidentified bodies
• Ambulances are being destroyed and emergency health workers have died trying to save and help victims
• 23 journalists have been killed in the first three weeks of the conflict. Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh, lost his wife, 17-year-old son, 7-year-old daughter and 15-months-old grand-daughter, bombed to death in a place they felt safer after fleeing their home.
• 20 trucks of aid were allowed in from Egypt, which only catered for 2.5% of the population
• Food, water and fuel are being used as Weapons of War, as Gazans feel the brunt of Ethnic Cleansing by bombings in the dark of night
• After three weeks of terror, there’s no safe place left in Gaza
• Households are marking family-members with similar bracelets, to facilitate identification should they be blasted-to-pieces while having dinner, or praying at a mosque
Deadly Statistics
The statistics are deadly and virtually-impossible for the average Guyanese or Caribbean Community (CARICOM) citizen to immediately understand, far-less keep-up-with:
• One-day after the surprise Hamas October 7 attack on Israel, official reports were: 198 Palestinians and 350 Israelis dead, with over-100 Israelis captured
• After Israel’s first response, within-hours, the number of Palestinians killed nearly-tripled to 560, with 130,000 displaced
• By the end of the first week of terror, Israel reported it had dropped 6,000 bombs on 3,500 targets in Gaza, resulting in 2,277 Palestinians killed and 8,614 wounded, including over 700 children
• After the first fortnight (October 21) over 4,600 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis had died – by then almost-three-times more Palestinians
• On United Nations Day (October 24), 5,087 Palestinians were dead, including 2,055 children and 1,119 women
• The UN also mourned for 35 staff killed
• Over 56% of residential units and buildings in Gaza (170,000) were destroyed in the first fortnight of bombings, as churches and mosques, hospitals, schools and UN shelters were targeted
• By October 26 the number of Israeli fatalities remained at 1,408 (including 331 soldiers), but the number of Palestinians killed also rose to 6,546 – almost five times more
• To date, over 6,600 Palestinians have been arrested and held without charge
• Israel also this week carried-out border raids and arrests in the Occupied West Bank, including in Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Jenin, where over-100 Palestinians were killed and over 1,400 arrested
• Israel is also fighting the more-powerful Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and threatening to obliterate the already-besieged state.
Three Weeks of Terror
The world rightly-condemned the Hamas attack on October 7, but Israel’s overly-disproportionate response has been a slaughter of Gaza citizens with no remorse — and full-support from its traditional Western allies.
The world has witnessed three weeks of absolute terror and genocide that’s been widely-condemned with protests in capitals across the world, from London and Sydney to California and Paris.
The world is even-more-divided over Gaza today than Ukraine — and the UN has again proven unable in brokering a ceasefire, far-less peace.
Apocalyptic Babble
Arab and African nations have united behind Palestine and Gaza, while the largely-Christian Western world continues to arm and support Israel in its declared War of Destruction on Gaza, with weapons of mass destruction.
Five centuries ago, the Vatican’s Doctrine of Discovery allowed invading Europeans to cross The Atlantic on ships with red crosses on their sails to commit native genocide in the Caribbean and The Americas, in the name of Christianizing godless natives.
But despite the deadly doctrine’s renunciation earlier this year by Pope Francis, some still use Christianity to-this-day, to justify mass-killing in the name of Christ.
Never mind the babble of apocalyptic Christians today, Israel does not have any License-From-God to commit Mass Murder and Genocide in the name of Christ.
Fact is, nothing happening today in Gaza has anything to do with the Israel or Palestine referred to in The Holy Bible.
The holy book offers echoes from history with many pointers to lessons for today and tomorrow.
But using biblical phrases to commit Ethnic Cleansing in the Name of God the Father is, plain and simple: both ungodly and devilish.