As I watched footage of Palestinian men of all ages stripped of their clothing and blindfolded, with their hands tied behind their backs, being herded on to open lorries by masked Israeli soldiers, feelings of revulsion and amazement welled up within me. Where had I seen similar images before?
The obvious answer was in grainy footage from eastern Europe in the early 1940s depicting helpless and terrified Jews being rounded up for extermination. The visual images were so strikingly similar that I wondered whether the IDF was not itself mindful of the impression they would make in the minds of the wider world. In both cases great efforts were made to ensure that such images were suppressed. But the images from Gaza, although quickly deleted, escaped military and political censorship, and were visible online to the entire world.
Those men were undoubtedly being prepared psychologically for in-depth interrogation by Israeli army and civil intelligence specialists, who would use torture and ill-treatment to identify Hamas targets whether among them or still at large.
I wrote here on October 11th, at a time when the IDF assault on Gaza had not yet commenced, that Joe Biden – who was then signalling strong military support for Israel – had “the lives of tens of thousands of people in his hands and he must take the responsibility if he transfers them into the cupped hands of Netanyahu”.
Was what has happened since foreseeable? Let me quote that article again: “There is a risk that Netanyahu will unleash such terrible destruction by air and land that tens of thousands of innocent humans will die, hundreds of thousands will be made homeless, and millions left with no social infrastructure, water, electricity, sewage, gas or access to food or health facilities. Reduction of millions to a living hell of disease and despair”.
That is exactly what has happened. You did not need to be clairvoyant to see what Netanyahu was planning to save his political skin. And I also wrote that if it did happen “all of Israel’s western supporters will share the blame”.
The sheer foreseeability of what has happened and what is happening robs Biden’s current handwringing of all credibility. We recently welcomed him to Ireland as a man who, among other things, wore his Christian values on his sleeve and who understands loss, as a result of the tragic deaths of his close family members, something he often refers to when consoling victims of gun violence in America.
But his reputation for decency seems hollow as we see children, women and non-combatants slaughtered in their thousand by Netanyahu’s soldiers and airmen. Biden sees exactly what we see. He should have foreseen exactly what was so easily foreseeable. If he cannot understand his own personal responsibility for what is happening in Gaza now his fitness to govern is the issue.
The same applies to some European states. They can sanction Putin but they can’t sanction Netanyahu. British Tories were baying for the cancellation of street protests and demanding the arrest of those who chanted for Palestinian freedom. Britain pathetically abstained on the recent Security Council resolution that Biden vetoed. The world spoke clearly in the UN General Assembly.
I have graphically predicted in the Seanad what would happen once the northern area of the Gaza Strip was destroyed; destruction of the remainder of Gaza; the mass round-up of civilians; the awful process of separating men from women and children (another chilling historical echo); use of terror and torture to gather intelligence from male captives; identification of those considered to be senior in the Hamas hierarchy; their possible trial or even summary execution.
Does anyone seriously think that the repugnant Hamas ideology will be extirpated by arresting 1,000 members of the Hamas hierarchy and imprisoning them or executing them?
Do intelligent Israelis not see that they are, in the words of the Old Testament, now sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind? International sympathy – much deserved after the Hamas atrocities on October 7th – is not merely ebbing; it is vanishing. What are the chances of survival for Hamas’s hostages in a prolonged meat-grinder onslaught on the remainder of Gaza?
Right-wing Zionist rejection of a two-state solution now openly embraced as Israel’s national policy is a slap in the face for all of us who have attempted to hope for a long-term solution to the Israeli-Arab question. Creeping annexation by settlement of remaining Arab lands in Palestine is now seen as the naked policy of Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners. When challenged on October 19th about Ireland’s past failure to beat the drum loudly on the creeping annexation of the West Bank, the Tánaiste remarked: “Saying it is creeping annexation is shameful.” Perhaps the scales are now falling from his eyes.