Kev Tasker

Just imagine we had the recording of a 6 year old Israeli girl, desperately ringing the emergency services after Hamas militants slaughtered her relatives in a car, including 3 other kids. Imagine we also had a prior recording of her 15 year old cousin, desperately pleading for help, before you hear her being violently murdered by Hamas gunfire. Imagine then an Israeli ambulance sent to rescue this little girl was then blown up by Hamas militants, killing both paramedics. What would be the response? You know what the response would be. It would be offered up as evidence of the supreme evil and barbarism of Hamas. We would be told it showed they’re worse than the Nazis. It would also be offered up as justification for the need to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth. Every politician in the West would issue statements dripping with grief and righteous fury. None of that has happened here. Instead, the West continue to arm and back Israel’s mass slaughter, with occasional handwringing which its politicians know has zero impact on the behaviour of Israel. Even as Israel commits some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century - live streamed for the world to see - these Western powers refuse to describe a single act of Israel as a war crime. Two things. Firstly, none of this is to downgrade the value of Israeli civilian life. The value attacked to Israel innocent civilians’ lives is correct. It is just transparently not applied to Palestinian life. Indeed, secondly, it is nauseating that I even have to indulge in these “imagine if!” scenarios. It becomes necessary because Palestinian life has been stripped of nearly all value. In South Africa’s submission to the ICJ, this horror was described as the world’s first live streamed genocide. I think even more than that, it’s the live streaming of the suicide of the West. Much of the world already regarded the West’s claims of moral superiority with contempt. Well, contempt doesn’t even begin to describe those sentiments now. I don’t think it’s remotely appreciated how much fury at Western power - which has shrunk with every major conflict involving Muslim nations in the 21st century - is being whipped up. Finally, this nauseating episode has answered a question I’ve always been haunted by when studying the atrocities of the past. How did so many people who regarded themselves as humane, moderate, “normal” become so willingly complicit in self evident evil, either by not speaking out or actively cheering it on? Well, think of the badly decomposing remains of Hind and her family, and the incinerated remains of the paramedics sent to save her, and there’s your answer. There’s your answer!