Words of Mass Destruction — The Israeli Gaza Nuclear Threat Fallout
‘There are no non-combatants in Gaza.’
‘Providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute a failure.’
‘The monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves […] They can go into the deserts.’
‘The Gaza Strip has no right to exist.’
‘Anyone waving a Palestinian flag shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.’
Netanyahu took 5 hours before taking disciplinary action against his Heritage Minister Eliyahu, suspending him from cabinet meetings ‘until further notice.’
The PM communique barely disavowed Eliyahu’s subtextus:
‘Minister Amihai Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality. Israel and the IDF are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents. We will continue to do so until our victory.’
One runs out of sophisticated ways to say that something is bullshit. One runs out of ways to say something is deliberately evil. One runs out of ways to say that something is fascist without using that word, because one runs out of patience for this deliberately evil bullshit.
In the 29 days since the Hamas attack on 7 October, 9500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip alone. 3900 children. 35 journalists — targeted for daring to show the world the hell-scape that the antediluvian lands have become under 18,000 tons of IDF explosives. 90 of UNRWA humanitarian staff, many serving the most vulnerable in the clearly marked UN and Red Cross hospitals and schools, struck in heinous breaches of international law. Unequivocally categorised as war crimes.
Article I of the 1864 First Geneva Convention declares that ‘[a]n individual carrying out medical duties, no matter whether he belongs to the armed forces or not, is considered inviolable by the enemy.’ In 1968, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 2444, reaffirming the protection afforded to all non-combatants. UN GA Resolution 2675 of 1970 emphasised the obligation to take all feasible measures to protect civilians trapped in conflict zones. Further, Resolution 3318 condemns any reprisals against the civilian population. Article 18 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention unambiguously mandates the protection and respect for all medical facilities. Article 19 thereof extends such protection to all medical and humanitarian personnel. Complementing the Geneva framework, the 1977 Additional Protocols I and II further reinforce the safeguarding of civilians in the context of armed conflict, underscoring the imperative to shield civilian populations from harm, and mandating all warring parties to employ all possible precautions. In 1999, the UN Security Council Resolution 1265 expanded upon the organisation’s commitment to civilian protection in international armed conflict. A year later, Resolution 1296 specifically emphasised the imperative of ensuring humanitarian access to conflict-affected areas. The 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court designates the deliberate targeting of civilian objects as a war crime in its Article 8(2)(a)(iv). Article 8(2)(b)(ix) explicitly posits that, inter alia, ‘medical units, transport, and personnel using the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions’ are not only excluded from designation as legitimate military objectives under jus in bello but to be shielded by the belligerents. The 2009 UN SC Resolution 1894 condemns the targeting of humanitarian personnel and facilities.
It is an odd thing for a lawyer in the field of use of intra&international armed force to say, but none of this matters. You just intrinsically know that this is fucked up — as a human.
The MoD of Jordan condemned the ‘blatant and unacceptable violation of international law and humanitarian law,’ and urged ‘immediate action against it.’ Qatar’s Foreign Ministry observed it to be ‘a serious incitement to a war crime,’ while the Saudi counterpart considered that ‘the failure to immediately dismiss the minister from the government and merely suspending his membership reflects the utmost disregard for all human, ethical, religious, and legal standards by the Israeli government.’
Evidently, you do not even need humanity to be sickened by Israel’s modus operandi. Even the Saudi government can do it.
But the international community has reacted. The expeditious denunciations from the Arab world were promptly followed by the widespread rejection of the proposed iter: the US and EU leaders, generally well willing to let Israel have its long-awaited genocide, were not prepared to risk their universally unstable domestic situations.
Sunak, seeing hundreds of thousands participate in pro-Palestine marches from his window every Saturday since the start of the war, facing an utterly existential threat to his party in the next general election.
Macron, fresh out of violent street crashes following the increase of the age of retirement, and, in a Kafkaesque and almost comical fit of unfortunate timing, the Islamophobia-driven ban on abayas in schools — effectively mandating that Muslim children dress more revealingly to access education.
Biden, juxtaposed as always and fair-weather as ever, just oversaw a historic ousting of the Speaker of the House by the most far-right supporters of his predecessor and likely successor.
Not that any of them care about chain reactions within the IDF’s Teller-Ulam model nuclear weapons, detonating TNT equivalent 520 times greater than the bomb that doomed Hiroshima to be the symbol of hell on earth forever. Not that they would ever spare a thought for the Middle East, the foreign and untameable lands their lineage exploited for centuries. But they care about their home fronts. About their trust funds.
And they will now do everything in their power to support Netanyahu’s claim that this rogue, insignificant, and anyway, now dismissed minister does not speak for Israel. He only did for about 5 hours, after all. Only until the international condemnation reached a critical mass.
Grasp the gravity as this is of the utmost urgency: on 5 November 2023, Israel broke a 7-decade-long tradition of strategic ambiguity concerning its nuclear programme.
Since the 1950s, international observers accepted that Tel Aviv had a nuclear weapon stockpile. 70 years, 8 significant wars, 15 Prime Ministers, 20 defence ministers, 28 governments, no one broke ranks and stated, on record, that Israel is a nuclear proprietor. Until 5 November 2023.
One of many, the untranslatable Arabic term يقبرني [ya’aburne] refers to one’s wish to die before one’s beloved do. Another similar concept, فناء [fanas] acknowledges the inherently transient nature of existence and the inevitability of crossing over, and, at its core in the context of Islam, the shadow of death is often met with a degree of tranquillity, for it carries the promise of جنّة [Jannah].
May our Muslim brothers and sisters in Gaza and around the world find solace in whatever the fuck can provide it. As for the rest of us, wishing to see justice during our lifetime, the court halls of Hague will keep standing long past the last cancer hospital in Palestine. Long after its last high school was levelled by the very same Mk80-type bombs that the US deployed against Vietnamese civilians in 1973 — the same year the Godfather was released, the VCR was introduced, and the SNL aired its first show.
Those who refuse to learn from history intend to repeat it. As we bear 24/7 live witness to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, its increasingly desperate and isolated government, firmly rejected by over 80% of its own people, tests how far can it step to execute its final solution to the Palestinian question.
To be clear: I am not implying that under its current leadership, Israel is a fascist state. I am saying that explicitly.
