Much of the World Awakens to a Decades Long Genocide

by Kim Petersen / May 28th, 2024

Several times over the past two decades, I have written about the malevolence of Israel (and by that I mean Zionist Israel, which is predominantly Jewish, although there are likeliest quislings among the Palestinian ranks, e.g., Mahmoud Abbas). Israel is part of Historical Palestine. However, the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine wrested a chunk of Historical Palestine away from Palestinians.

Since its inception, Israel, the self-declared Jewish State, has been staunchly backed by the US with the tacit support of other western nations. Israel, indeed, has a powerful lobby.

Israel has managed to chip away at the original 1947 UN partition plan map, that set borders for Jews and Arabs in Historical Palestine, until Palestinians were left with a fractional land base. Yet, when many so-called pundits speak of a two-state solution, they invariably speak of the 1967 borders and not the 1947 borders. Meanwhile, Israel, which acknowledges no borders for itself, has become ensconced in Syria’s Golan Heights, Lebanon’s Shebaa farms, and chunks of the West Bank.

Many Palestinians have been forced to live their entire lives outside their homeland. Ilan Pappe wrote a book called The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine which relates the plight of 800,000 Palestinians pushed outside Historical Palestine.  In my review of Pappe’s book in 2007, I credited him with putting words to the Zionist crimes against Palestinians, but I (and my colleague Gary Zatzman) took issue with Pappe’s reluctance to call the “Israel-Palestine conflict” (Pappe’s wording) genocide.

I concluded,

Why is it an “Israel-Palestine conflict”? It implies an equivalency between the two sides. There is no equivalency. It is a Zionist genocide perpetrated against Palestinians, abetted by much of the bystanding world. This is what it has always been and continues to be.

Finally, in 2009, Pappe demurred and called ethnic cleansing a “genocide in slow motion.”

Israeli academics had already argued that ethnic cleansing is genocide, although they eluded mention of the Nakba.

Following 7 October, Israel amped up its destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques, homes, etc; committed several massacres and war crimes; to which Israeli officials uttered openly racist epithets dehumanizing Palestinians which is just more of the same from Israeli officials, as racism and apartheid are Israeli policy. (See “Israeli Zionist Racism Unmasked”  and the series: “Defining Israeli Zionist Racism” Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.).

Now, with the amping up of the destruction, massacres, and openly racist epithets by Israeli officials against Palestinians and Palestinian society, much of the fence-sitting world has recognized what this has always been: a genocide perpetrated by Israeli Jews (with polls indicating support by a majority of Israeli Jews, a stable sentiment over the years). Nonetheless, many western governments continue to provide cover for Israeli war crimes; for instance, sending in the gendarmes to crack down on the free speech rights of morally centered students opposed to the genocide against Palestinians. Or, in the US case, sending arms to Israel.

It took South Africa to have the fortitude to haul Israel before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

And it seems the ICJ directives for Israel to halt further aggressions against Palestinians gave the International Criminal Court (ICC) the gumption to issue warrants for the arrest of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant. For good measure, three Palestinians — Yahya Sinwar (Hamas leader), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (commander-in-chief of the military wing of Hamas), and Ismail Haniyeh — were also indicted, for alleged involvement in the October 7 attacks, even though  Palestinians have the inalienable right to resist occupation and oppression.

They say justice delayed is justice denied; only time will tell if the international legal deliberations to protect Palestinians from Israeli war crimes will be successful.

Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.