Firstly, I would like all media to stop calling Gaza a war because it’s not. What it is, as described by Jonathan Sumption in his piece in the New Statesman, “Revenge visited on an entire population. It is, in short, a war crime.” A war crime which has seen any moral capital or empathy because of the centuries of religious persecution, the Holocaust and October 7th being evaporated; an own goal if there was one. In addition, the post holocaust guilt of the so-called democratic West has allowed Israel to commit war crimes, break all international and human rights conventions by using food and starvation, medicines, bombing hospitals, carpet bombing entire neighbourhoods, destroying water and power infrastructure and the displacement of an entire population of two million, as weapons of war. I will go one step further than our former esteemed Supreme Court Justice, if killing tens of thousands of women and children is not both ethnic cleansing and genocide, what the hell is it? It is also ironic and indeed sickening that Israel is a signatory to the 1951 Genocide Convention. Omer Bartov, Professor in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown’s University who also served in the Israeli army, said that genocide does not need to look like the Holocaust to be called genocide and concludes that the actions being carried out by the IDF under the instructions of the current Israeli government in Gaza, “I know it when I see it” its genocide. Like Peter Beinart, he is likely to be ostracised by his own.
Netanyahu, a war criminal indicted by the International Criminal Court, announced a complete blockade of all aid into Gaza. Then, out of the blue, came the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, founded by the Reich and supported by the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. The so-called foundation has provided next to no aid but has been complicit in the killing of hundreds queuing for food, including dozens of children. Huckabee is a fundamentalist Christian Zionist and void of a moral core and any humanity, believes that, according to the Bible, “from the river to the sea, not a Palestinian should be seen.” He is probably also one of those who believe in the Second Coming, praying for Armageddon, Christians.
Israel is committing genocide and war crimes on a scale not seen since the Second World War, without consequences. Our Prime Minister, like Trump, Macron and Merz, do not have the moral and political courage to recognise Palestine as a state. Why, because Gvir, Smotrich and Netanyahu might call them out as anti-Semitic, and we cannot have that stain on their character.
Let us put this one to bed. As much as October 7th was a horrendous event, placing it into a historical perspective is seen by some commentators as tantamount to validating it. This conflict started with the Nakba in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their land, followed by two intifadas, the failed Oslo Accords, Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel living in effect, what is an apartheid state with 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, many without trial. Palestinian land is being stolen, supported by the Israeli government, an emboldened settler movement, unrelenting expansion into the occupied territories, an economy barely functioning and with no hope for a future. If you treat people like that, it is no wonder that the consequences will be violence and the creation of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The goal of destroying both these movements is a political and military fantasy. To add salt to the wound (understatement of the year), Lisa Nandy, devoid of a humanitarian backbone and the right-wing press get perturbed about a guy chanting “Death, death to the IDF”.Just as an aside, this so-called professional army is killing children in their thousands, 20,000 according to the UN and many human rights organisations, and furthermore, the IDF describes them as “collateral damage”. For those of us still appalled and horrified by this genocide, and not yet immune or indifferent to seeing the bodies of dead and mutilated children, we feel helpless in the face of the indifference of our Labour government and the wider democratic world.
Finally, it is to my sadness and bafflement that the Israeli electorate seems to have failed to appreciate that a two-state solution is in their interests and the interests of future generations of Israeli and Palestinian children and in addition, please reflect, is this what Jehovah has” chosen” you to do?
Suneil Sharma: Read my many articles on Gaza
21st July 2025
The Gob 
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