Over-100 Days after the fateful Hamas attack that took 1,139 Israeli lives and sparked the all-out war of obliteration on Gaza that killed 28,000 Palestinians, Israel’s killing spree simply continues while the world discusses the legal prospects and parameters of South Africa’s compelling Genocide case against the Zionist state before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The Jewish state stood in the dock before the World Court at the start of 2024, accused of multiple war crimes, human rights violations and flouting international conventions and rules of engagement in its brutal war on Hamas and citizens of Gaza.
But Israel remained defiant, assured of the backing of the usual suspects – US, UK, Canada, Germany and other Western G-7 European Union (EU) and NATO sponsors – trying to justify its collective punishment of a defenseless population with nowhere to run, hide, or shelter by blaming it all on Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Israel’s legal team pleaded absolutely Not Guilty to all charges brought in the 84-page South African submission and instead argued that every charge against it, blaming the victim for its aggression.
On the same day Israel’s lawyers pleaded ‘not guilty’ before the ICJ in The Hague:
• The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) was killing 250 Palestinians per day
• The IDF bombed at least 150 targets that day and night
• Israeli bombing had destroyed over-65% of schools and educational facilities, including those serving as shelters for the displaced
• 270,000 homes were reduced to rubble
• Over-90% (2 million) of Gaza’s 2.3 million people were forcibly displaced
• 70% of hospitals were forcibly closed by Israeli attacks and/or lack of water, medical supplies and electricity, while patient numbers increased by 500% for those still open
• 350 Palestinian health workers and 152 United Nations (UN) employees were killed
• 155,000 pregnant and lactating mothers are facing nutritional deficiencies
• The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that an entire population faced everything from famine and diseases to massive health crises, while food and water became brutal Weapons of War.
And in the midst of it all, 117 Palestinian journalists and other media colleagues were killed, many targeted by Israeli drones while covering The Gaza Nakba, as the aggressor played victim while exacting bloody revenge on a displaced population.
On Day 100, Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and other occupied territories, backed by supporters and sympathizers protesting worldwide, said the suffering was “More Like 100 Years” and simply “100 Days Too-many!”
That message was (and still is) also growing louder and clearer in Israel, with more frequent and larger mass public protests against the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s complete failure to achieve any of its set goals: to ‘completely eliminate Hamas’ and destroy its military facilities — and ‘bring the captives home’.
With at least 60 Israeli captives killed by Israeli bombs on Gaza and more soldiers dying since the October 31 ground invasion into north, south and central Gaza, increasing numbers of Israeli citizens have also joined calls for an end to their government’s bombardment to ensure a safe return of relatives – and further, for Netanyahu to step down as PM and call early general elections.
But the beleaguered Prime Minister has no incentive or intention to step down or to stop the war, either of which can lead to his conviction and/or imprisonment on outstanding corruption charges that preceded his government’s unpopular effort to weaken the judiciary, leading to nationwide mass protests up to October 6, 2023.
However, on the 100th Day, the world also far-better understood why South Africa — a former Apartheid state — was able to copiously identify the countless ways and means by which Israel is using a fatal combination of religion and violence to obliterate Gaza and subject Palestinians to a 21st Century Zionist version of Apartheid.
Indeed, even while answering to charges at The Hague amounting to a Holocaust Against Gaza, Israel intensified its continuing bombardment of Central and Southern Gaza, since then taking the death toll to close to 28,000 Palestinians (including over-10,000 children and more than 7,000 women and adding the over-8,000 still missing).
In addition, over-60,000 Palestinians have been injured to date by the Israeli attacks.
As the war speeds towards its fourth month, Israel’s global sponsors continue to play for time in world courts and the global public square, allowing the Jewish state to continue its massacre and demolition in Gaza, while splitting tongues and parting hairs over language and procedures, creating distractions to justify starting a regional war against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Yemeni Defense Forces, in the name of protecting global supply chains, with no apparent care for the cause of 2.3 million Gazans.
Indeed, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s five trips to the region have yielded nothing but escalation of the conflict beyond Palestine.
But the phenomenal global awareness of the atrocities played-out before people’s eyes everywhere would have been impossible without the work of the Palestinian journalists covering the war from inside Gaza, while their international colleagues are still denied entry.
Thanks to the exposure of the bloody carnage by Palestinian journalists and media houses committed to showing and telling the truth about what’s happening in Gaza, the world has also seen the emptiness of the coverage by the traditional international media houses that usually parade in the name of Press Freedom, with unholy blessings of imperial emperors in fortified glass-houses on Towers of Babble.
Palestinian journalists and international colleagues not at the beck-and-call of the traditional mainstream international media demonstrated high levels of courageous resilience in the first 100 Days of Israel’s long and brutal war on Gaza – and the numbers killed also continues to rise.
For 100 Days, they spoke the quiet truth to the growling goliaths of the northern plains, ensuring world public opinion was better informed about the worst war, with the most casualties, known to Humankind in modern history: a nuclear power carpet-bombing the most-overpopulated strip of land on Planet Earth, killing citizens in their sleep with million-dollar bombs, engaging in the clearest case of ethnic cleansing before the eyes of the world.
Clearly, what the world saw during the first 100 Days of Israel’s War on Gaza was proof-positive of the deadly combination of Zionism and Apartheid through Genocide.