In six weeks (42 days), human beings were killed like flies and wiped-off the face of the earth by-the-minute in Gaza; and last weekend, international anniversaries passed largely-unnoticed, despite mattering-more this year than ever to men, women and children in the most-populated piece of land on Planet Earth.
Saturday (November 18) marked six weeks since the shock October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Southern Israel, on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, that took 1,200 lives, including over 300 soldiers and 237 captives and leaving many injured – the worst Palestinian attack on Israel ever.
Sunday November 19 was silently observed as World Hunger Day elsewhere, while food remained a weapon of war in Gaza, where less than 10% of the food required is allowed to enter by Israel and a sanitation crisis caused by a water shutdown is giving rise to World Health Organization (WHO) concerns about diarrhea, cholera and other related deadly diseases.
Sunday November 19 was also observed as International Men’s Day everywhere else than Gaza, with men the-world-over coming to grips with the sad reality that at-least 5,000 men have been killed in less than 50 days in Gaza.
Monday November 20, 2023 was International Children’s Day and this year was the deadliest in the life of children in Gaza, with 5,600 killed in only three fortnights.
On World Hunger Day 2023, the UN had already previously under-estimated there were at least over-820 million people going to be hungry every night, with hopes that 2023 would also have ushered welcome dreams of new tomorrows with less hunger in 2024 and beyond.
But food – like fuel and water – is also being used as an effective Weapon of War in Gaza, where at least US $260 million per-day is spent by Israel on its bombardments by day and night, while premature children died in incubators from Israeli-induced power cuts fueled by deliberate fuel shortages.
Men and children in Gaza, like women and elderly citizens, are referred to and treated as ‘human animals’ by the Jewish extremists in Tel Aviv, while UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres easily admits this is ‘the worst’ he’s seen in recent history of global conflicts.
Israel’s treatment of Palestinian lives as useless is being accepted as a ‘to-be-expected’ type of ‘vengeful norm’ by those who mistakenly believe the false claim that this latest battle between Israel and Palestine only began on October 7.
The Israeli government and army are facing very-possible charges of ‘War Crimes’, including ‘Genocide’, as the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been formally asked by South Africa (and several other states) to investigate whether to prosecute Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is seen at home as possibly having no personal interest in the war ending sooner-than-later, as his political future virtually dead and actually ends whenever the war finishes, the sitting prime minister facing possible jail sentencing on corruption charges he was found guilty of (long before October 7) by the same judiciary his right-wing administration tried very-hard (but failed) to bring under their political control, up to the day this latest war started.
As the world watched Gaza last weekend, International Men and Children’s Day and World Hunger Day didn’t make news headlines.
But on the long and deadly weekend of November 18-21, 2023, official Israeli and Gaza government and media reports indicated journalists had started coming under attack, with four Palestinian journalists and media workers killed and outlets destroyed across Gaza, through alleged ‘targeted killings.’
By Tuesday, November 21, the numbers and reports from official Gaza and the Occupied West Bank sources, as well as from Israel’s Defense Force (IDF), the WHO and other UN agencies, International Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) Societies, US, and UK, Canadian and European media houses, ABC, BBC, CNN, CBS, Sky News, Al Jazeera, CCTV, RT and others, continued to numb normal senses in these very-abnormal times:
• 13,300 Palestinians killed in Gaza
• 215 Palestinians killed in Occupied West Bank
• 1,200 Israelis killed, including 300 soldiers (on October 7)
• 68 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza
• 104 UN Refugee Agency workers killed
• 126 children killed daily
• 65 media workers — including 62 Arab journalists — killed
• 202 medical workers killed
• 5,500 (or 40%) of Gaza’s dead are children
• 3,550 Palestinian women killed
• 133 babies died-at-birth at Gaza hospitals
• 28 newborns evacuated to Egypt after 4 died in dead incubators
• 51 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients died from induced power cuts
• 4,400 women and children missing
• 1,800 children missing
• 6,500 Palestinians missing
• 30,000 Palestinians injured
• 2.3 million Palestinians displaced
• 30,000 Israelis displaced
• 2.2 million Palestinians in urgent need of food assistance
• 237 captives held by Hamas
• 33 children among Gaza captives
• 800 Palestinian minors in Israeli jails
• 200 illegal Israeli squatter settlements in occupied West Bank
• 2,750 injured and 2,850 detained Occupied West Bank
• 62 Israeli tanks destroyed in Gaza
• 16 media outlets destroyed
By any measure, the scale of destruction in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, is simply immeasurable.
Interestingly, Ukraine and Israel are supported by the West in the name of their ‘right to self-defense’, while Palestinians are denied that same right and instead subjected to collective punishment through mass killing, in the name of God.
Israel has now banned Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, while Israel’s Western supporters are finding it increasingly-difficult – almost impossible – to keep blindly-supporting the continuing mass slaughter of Palestinians in their own homes, schools, hospitals and shelters.
Ethnically-cleansed Palestinians, to this day, remain prevented from being recognized as a nation in their own lands after 75 years of occupation.
But decent human beings the-world-over are increasingly saying ‘Enough is Enough!’ and asking ‘How many more must die?’ for the world to start acting beyond talking.
Meanwhile, the killing continues in Palestine with no end in near sight – and more doubt it will ever end with just a full-stop.