After hearing about the killing of 7 aid workers working for World Central Kitchen by the IDF, my mood became sombre and low. This incident is yet another of many tragedies that have taken place since October 7th, when Hamas militants massacred 1200 innocent Israeli civilians. What started days later as a war against Hamas, has been turned by the current Israeli government into a war against the Palestinian people in the form of collective punishment. This is in blatant breach of Israel’s obligation under Article 33 of Geneva 1V relating to the protection of civilians. The IDF over 5 months, under the guise of targeting Hamas militants, has killed over 30,000 Gazans of which over 12000 are children, turned Gaza into a moonscape and are using starvation as a weapon of war. During the same period, Israeli spokespersons have been allowed to come on TV to deflect, prevaricate and gaslight British audiences without any real pushback.
What happened on April 1st in Gaza was that 7 aid workers working for World Central Kitchen a charity that has provided 42 million meals to the starving of Gaza, were targeted and killed in a missile attack by the Israeli Airforce drones. This after, the route, the time of the departure and the number of vehicles (all branded with the WCK logo) were agreed in advance with the IDF. The murder of these 7 humanitarian heroes adds to a list of almost 200 aid workers killed since the start of this current round of conflict.
Well, on the 2nd of April on the evening Channel 4 news, Krishnan’s interview with Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer, made my day.
Krishnan opened the interview by asking the Israeli government spokesperson if the Israeli government were going to apologise to the families of the aid workers who were killed. The Israeli government spokesman started on the same premise as many of his colleagues. Firstly, by expressing grief and when asked to apologise again by Krishnan, he politely refused under the now well-trodden and classic deflection, an investigation will be carried out to establish the facts. Facts that you would only fail to recognise if you were unfortunately both blind and deaf. Krishnan pushed on issues of restricting aid and how the Israeli government saw other aid charities and again he responded with the usual gaslighting and deflection.
David Mencer, at the end of the interview, finished by spouting some extraordinary BS, saying we, I presume he meant the Israeli government, is trying to go for peace and trying to go for coexistence. Does he really think we believe that Netanyahu, Gvir and Deri are men of peace rather than men who are engaged in ethnic cleansing? Krishnan‘s response was something else when he finished the interview by saying” Just trying to get answers to questions if you can’t answer the questions, I can’t allow you to do the propaganda bit afterwards.” The pathetic response from Mencer to Krishnan was” You are such a sweetheart.”
Thanks, Krishnan, you put a smile on my face, made me cheer and in a few minutes showed what good television journalism looks like. I hope this encourages the BBC to do better and encourages both Sunak and Starmer to without prevarication, use the “C” word or as they would say in Belfast “FOR CRYING OUT LOUD TELL THE ISRAELIS TO STOP THE KILLING, NOW.”
Finally, I have been reticent to use the word genocide in my blogs when referring to Israeli military action in Gaza however, when David Mencer described Hamas who murdered 1200 Israeli civilians, as a genocidal terrorist organisation, is there now a case for people like me, on the centre-left and pluralist spectrum of politics, to call Israel’s actions genocide? If simple ratios are the matrix that decides the use of the term, then excluding the 10,000 Hamas militants that the IDF has said have been killed, then the 22:1 Palestinian civilian deaths to Israeli civilian deaths seem to fit the definition.
Watch the video by Ctrl and left-click on this link:
Suneil Sharma
3rd April 2024
The Gob 
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