by Gamini Seneviratne

Appropriate though they are, the words in the heading do not refer to those who are slaughtering the human beings resident in Gaza and the West Bank. They are the ones used by the Zionist invaders to refer to the people of Palestine.

Indeed, the term “human” is used by them and their fellow criminals in the western world in this context only as an adjunct to ‘shields” employed by Hamas. Incidentally, and there are many such features ‘incidental’ to the completely false Zionist-Euro-American narratives, no evidence has been forthcoming of Hamas shielding itself behind anyone, least of all the people they represent and protect.

As a matter of fact, visible for decades, it was the “Israeli Defense Force” (IDF), so-calling themselves, who employed Palestinian civilians as human shields whenever they entered Gaza. The oh-so-brave chosen race sheltered behind them when they, the ‘IDF’, embarked on their earlier manifestations of bestiality in Palestine.

As for the ‘terrorist’ threat posed by Hamas a few bits of information would lay that to rest.

Not a single apologist for the genocide that’s currently on, not Netanyahu, not Biden, not Blinken (a rabid Zionist-terrorist), nor Sunak, nor Sanders (indeed!), has produced any evidence of “Hamas” murdering 1,200 Israeli civilians nor of sexual assaults (also, as was to be expected of ‘human animals’, extra-brutal), on Israeli women taken hostage by Hamas.

The whole narrative, which Israel and its numerous advocates who keep on spreading these fictions via, let us for convenience say, ‘western’ media, has been exposed by reporters in that region. It has been nailed perhaps most effectively by Professor John Mearsheimer, a distinguished political scientist (Cornell, Harvard and Chicago) who seems to be frequently called on by media that engage in political analysis, in his case on Ukraine (which he characterizes as an ill-advised American ‘policy’ initiative the failure of which the NATO commanders who manufactured that war are scrambling to distance themselves from in the face of an impending Russian victory), Palestine-Israel and the Middle East.

He debunks the numbers (1,200) put out by the Zionist propagandists (he actually laughs at it), indicates that Hamas were intent on taking hostages not killing people and the Israeli civilians killed were shot by the IDF. (The self-same IDF shot dead two Israeli hostages released by Hamas a week or two ago: what, after all, are their weapons for?)

Mearsheimer debunks the myth being put about to account for the assault on the people of Palestine, stating quite clearly that Hamas is “Not an existential threat to Israel”. A few details, given below, on the strength of Israel’s armed force as it was 20 years ago would show that there are no grounds for what Mearsheimer calls “the escalation of conflict” that Israel has engaged in with the further supply of armaments by the USA (to which, must be added the USA’s shamelessness in vetoing UN Security Council resolutions on the ground that they do not blame Hamas for Israel’s merciless program of ethnic cleansing).

As for the treatment of the hostages by Hamas the evidence, as articulated by them, testifies to the humane treatment they had received. An early ‘returnee’ was seen and heard, on record, describing how she and other women taken hostage by Hamas had been handed on to Palestinian women – who had ‘cleaned us up’ and ‘given us the same food as they had’. She proceeds to describe the one meal a day that they all had. After that group of hostages was released by Hamas (in mid-October) an IDF operative could be heard saying “She should have been kept in a room and a statement from her made”.

The hostages handed over more recently have revealed that Hamas procured medicine for them as possible. All that has been described by Alon Bin David, a senior defense correspondent on military matters for the Israeli Channel 13. Ironically, even as Bin-David spoke, Israeli bombers continued to target hospitals, doctors, patients especially children, ambulances and every supporting service – fresh water, electricity, drugs, dressings. Those were early days: by now the Zionists have achieved total success: the people who have yet survived in Gaza have been deprived of access to even a loaf of bread.

Details of what was being done by these Zionist barbarians were spelt out by Dr. Tanya Taj- Hasan, Paediatric Intensive Care specialist with Doctors Without Borders (Medicine Sans Frontiers – MSF). “This was not indiscriminate bombardment – it is targeted, hospitals, health care services, schools, churches, mosques, refugee camps, densely populated in Gaza right now”. She spoke in October and the chances are that the IDF have dealt with her.

Further testimony, by a senior American nurse, Emily Callahan, remained on YouTube for some time. Her account goes from the first days of the ‘operation genocide’. “We lost a nurse on weekend one. He was killed when an ambulance outside the hospital was blown up.” She sketches the process by which the assault was carried out and spells out telling indicators of her personal experience. The “cleansing” included foreign workers: “I know that a thought is being pushed around that anyone who stayed behind was going to be considered as some kind of a threat”.

She continues, “The people I met were some of the most incredible people I’ve met in my life. In the moments of absolute desperation of civilians, they were the ones who were steadfast and calm and said (of her and other workers for MSF and UN agencies) “These people also have no supplies, they have no food and water They are also sleeping outside on the concrete” – and did it in such a beautiful way that they were able to talk them down with love and kindness. There was no violence in their hearts’.

And she had said to them “If I have an ounce of the heart that you have, I’ll die a happy person”. Nurse Callahan is rescued and brought back home to her family and friends in America and interviewed. Asked by Anderson Cooper on TV whether she’d go back to Gaza she replies, “In a heartbeat. My heart is in Gaza it will stay in Gaza”.

This brings to mind the words of the best-known British explorer of Arabia, Wilfred Thesiger, writing in the 1940s, around the time the Zionist ‘state’ was being set up: “I went to the ‘Empty Quarter’ with a belief in my own racial superiority, but in their tents I felt like an uncouth, inarticulate barbarian, an intruder from a shoddy and materialistic world”.

It has long been a transparent ploy of the Zionists and their supporters to project ‘Hamas’ as a goni-billa, the evil group of terrorists in and around the-never-promised-by anyone – man or god or beast – land. Hence, to the surprise of nobody but the western media and their clients, ‘Hamas’ are projected not merely as fair game but the necessary and lawful target of all the people in Gaza, especially women and children.

In his novel set in Israel “Little Drummer Girl” Le Carre mentions Israeli operations 50 years ago: Le Carre writes, “Israeli jets bombed the crowded Palestinian quarter in Beirut on the pretext that it was intended ‘to destroy the leadership’, – “though there were no leaders at all among the several hundred dead, unless, of course, there were future leaders among the many children killed.”

By the turn of this century Israel already had 180,000 heavily armed regular troops in their “defense” forces, 140,000 conscripts, 4,300 impenetrable Merkava battle tanks, 10,000 light tanks and armored cars, 500 missile-laden fighter jets, 1,340 helicopters, three submarines, three destroyers and smaller warships. And, as has been undeniable even by ‘America’, the full might of that Israeli military force was projected into the tiny space of Gaza during the three-week period from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009.

It’s far more barbaric this time round. And there’s a quantum escalation, if those are the right terms, between Zionist brutality then and now. By way of example: a few days ago, IDF soldiers in the West Bank waited till a Palestinian mother left her home evidently for provisions leaving her children in. What did the IDF warriors do? – they soldered the door of that house shut with the children inside.

And. in the midst of the carnage being visited on the Palestinians, US President Biden has offered the Zionist barbarians, over $700 million worth of military hardware. Oh, and yes, he has also offered. via USAID, a sum of $ 10 million to Palestine. To be channeled through Israel. Naturally. Biden, in whom people located hopes for humanitarian governance has, after all, done no more than confirm that America has no shame.

Quite early in the long-planned, rationale and all, Israeli genocidal assault on Gaza, it emerged that the bullets used to kill the Israeli civilians three months ago had been supplied by the USA. Biden et al have continued to parrot the slogan “Israel’ s right to self-defense” and continued to arm these criminals. Last week, acting under an authority delegated to him by President Biden, Antony Blinken bypassed Congress and approved the sale of high explosive artillery shells and related equipment to Israel.

Blinken pushed through the 147million dollar deal by declaring it an “Emergency”. He had made a similar decision just a month ago on December 9, approving a 106 million dollar “sale” of tank ammunition for Israel. During his first visit as Netanyahu launched his genocidal attacks in Gaza, Blinken appears to be in love with him and wishing maybe to become Netanyahu’s fourth wife.

Let us look at what the engagement of the rulers of America (its military-industrial coalition) with Israel translates into. In February 2009, investigative journalist Conn Hallinan was to describe Gaza as “Death’s Laboratory”. Israel’s new weapons had caused injuries never before seen in the hospitals of Gaza. Many of these were the result of the widespread use of a new class of weapons called Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME). These were initially developed by the US Air Force and scientists from the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in 2000.

DIME weapons consist of a high explosive core around which is wrapped powdered tungsten alloy in a carbon fibre container. On detonation, the tungsten sprays out explosively over a ten-meter radius shredding everything in its field. The resultant injuries are truly shocking. Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert commented: “The muscles are sort of split from the bones, hanging loose, and you also have quite severe burns. . . Those inside the perimeter of this weapon’s power zone will be torn completely apart.

Good for us, eh, Biden, Blinken …. ?

Considering the no-holds-barred attacks, all orchestrated by the Zionist hit squad (known as American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC) on high profile academics in the USA (including the President of Harvard who was forced out of office a few days ago) and on numerous journalists the following words from John Pilger the Aussie journalist who died last week become more pertinent indeed: “Journalism is nothing if it’s not about humanity – it has to be about people’s lives”. And, given the venom of Biden’s America in the matter, we must recall here Pilger’s statement on Julian Assange: “A truth teller who has committed no crime but revealed government crimes and lies on a vast scale”.

Many public personalities have been punished by AIPAC operatives in the corporate world, notably the print media and the film industry. Maha Dakhil, celebrated Hollywood agent who represented Anne Hathaway, Tom Cruise and other celebrities was forced to step down from her leadership positions in the industry. Her crime? She had written: “What’s more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide? Witnessing the denial that genocide is happening.”

Another to be sidelined was Susan Sarandon who had encouraged others to keep speaking up in support of Palestinians. “People are questioning, people are standing up, people are educating themselves, people are stepping away from brainwashing that started when they were kids.” Yet another, Melissa Barrera, had described Israel as committing genocide, and “brutally killing innocent Palestinians, mothers and children, under the pretense of destroying Hamas”.

I conclude this with some words of Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer, song-writer and savant who died a few months ago and is revered by millions of people throughout the English and Irish speaking world. In September 2014, only a few months after a bloody Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, she canceled a concert in Caesarea, a town located halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Speaking with Hot Press at the time to explain her stance, O’Connor said: “Nobody with any sanity would have anything but sympathy for the Palestinian plight There’s not a sane person on earth who in any way sanctions what the f**k the Israeli authorities are doing,”.

I recall too at this point the hope expressed by the late Ian Goonetileke that writers would pursue “the interests of truth, justice, equality, and the overpowering need to bear witness”. The last he translated, in Goethe’s words, as being “a primary responsibility of the creative writer: One must repeat from time to time what one believes in, proclaim what one agrees with and what one condemns”.

In this context it should be mentioned that, to its eternal credit, our Island newspaper published three years ago an article headed “Has Israel a Right to Exist?”