While the world watches on, the innocent people of Gaza are facing an all-out military battering by an unchecked Israeli war machine hell bent on carpet-bombing the Gaza to oblivion. With so much wanton destructions of schools, homes and hospitals it is uncertain how many blameless and trapped Palestinians will survive the most brutal of air and ground invasions by Israeli forces.

So why are Palestinians treated worse than animals by Israelis; why is ethnic cleansing not a crime to them, more so to the world?

The unprecedented, unthinkable, and undetected surprise attacks by Hamas inside Israel’s walled borders in the early hours of October 7, 2023 caught everyone by surprise and horror. One of the world’s most sophisticated military powers – with all its super security technologies and spy agencies – was asleep at the wheel; it couldn’t even anticipate, let alone respond to what on earth was happening. Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and defense analysts all over the world were caught with their heads down.

Sadly, tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children have been killed at homes and in hospitals in both sides of the fight. With the full backing of almost all western powers and their leaders, the Murdoch media conglomerate, and immeasurable military funding, the Zionist army is in full action in the air, from the sea, and on the land to annihilate as many blameless Palestinians as possible to secure their apartheid state and expand the illegal settlements for foreign Jews.

Only Israel and its protectors know what is next to come for the 2.5 million caged Gazans and those in the West Bank.

Many prominent anti-Israeli activists and organizations have expressed their full support for the Hamas actions on different media outlets. They are framing Hamas’s surprise attacks as a natural outburst of an anti-occupation struggle and hence a form of “resistance” for self-determination. To correct the fact that many Jews are against Zionism and apartheid state of Israel. They support Free Palestine Movement, and their right to resist occupation and self-determination.

On the grounds, Israeli security forces control everything in Gaza, a place termed by Former US President Jimmy Carter as the world’s largest ‘open air prison’. Israel controls food, water, fuel, electricity, and all essential supplies for Gazans. Ironically, the Israelis have forcefully made the local Arabs refugees in their own home and land. The foreign occupiers have put the original owners of the land in a cage since Israel implemented the land, air, and water blockade in 2005. They’ve been trapped in a densely-populated hell-hole of 350sqkm. None can go out or get in without the permission of occupying Israeli security forces. They’ve been trapped there for their whole lives, and lives of their children.

Who is actually guilty of war and genocide was written at the time of the creation of the State of Israel on the land of Palestinians in 1947. Like the US military, the Israeli military arm is flexed unchecked, its army can’t commit any atrocities, crimes, mistakes or errors when it comes to abusing, humiliating, torturing, and killing innocent Palestinians. Israelis can evict people at will and bulldoze as many homes, farms, waterways, hospitals, schools, places of worship when they want to make room for foreign Jews migrating to the occupied Palestine without facing any domestic or international legal or judicial repercussions.

According to an Al Jazeera report, before the British Mandate for Palestine, Jews made up approximately 6 percent of the total population. From 1947 to 1950, during the Nakba or “catastrophe”, Zionist military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians and captured 78 percent of historic Palestine land. The remaining 22 percent was divided into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During the 1967 war, Israeli forces occupied all of historic Palestine and expelled a further 300,000 Palestinians from their homes. Today, Israel continues to force Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank from their homes and lands, which are often taken over by Jewish Israeli settlers. So, certainly, it is not a crime to ask the forceful occupiers to return the ancestral land of Palestinians back from the Zionist state.

The seeds of ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict were planted by the British when its Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to Zionist leader Lord Rothschild on November 2, 1917 confirming the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in the heartland of Palestine. The British also divided India in 1947 to ensure Kashmir will remain a contentious hotspot between India and Pakistan. They did the same to make sure the people of Ireland will keep fighting as North and South.

Between 2008 and 2021, Israel security forces killed 5739 Palestinians versus 251 Israelis killed by Palestinians – 23 Palestinians for 01 Israeli. During the same period 121438 Palestinians and 5682 Israelis were injured. Who needs more right of self-defense, Israel or Palestine? Being the protector and promoter of Israel, the World powers have shown its real face of supporting the aggressor and occupier while pretending to solve Israel-Palestine conflict for the last 70 years. Anyone expecting that they will ever solve the problem is living in the fool’s paradise.

In the occupied Palestine, there is systematic discrimination, torture, demolition, eviction, humiliation, and murder of Arabs by the apartheid Israeli security forces. One of the most revered men of our time, a champion of fighting for self-determination and leader in the fight against state discrimination, Nelson Mandela, called Israel to be an apartheid state. Another South African fighter against white supremacy, most senior Christian cleric, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called the apartheid in Israel is worse than that of South Africa. Hamas is a resistance force committed to regain the land, dignity, and nationhood.

Yet, sadly, the superpowers behind the creation of the Zionist state and the pro-Israeli media can’t see or deliberately hide the daily atrocities, tortures, humiliating discrimination on the Palestinian Arabs, Christians and Muslims. The world had seen how a very highly respected Australian journalist who was a presenter of 60 Minutes TV show, Richard Carleton was pushed far away by Israeli security forces in occupied territory and his Australian passport was thrown away on the ground. But no one was charged, because it is normal for the apartheid state to treat people like the way they want. No accountability, no respect, no legal consequences. Imagine, if this can happen to a highly respected Australian journalist of European descent, what happens to ordinary Palestinians who leave under the mercy of the Zionists.

Last year a Gaza based US-Arab Christian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israel. Committee to protect journalist (CPJ) says that 20 journalists died by Israeli military fire in 22 years. No one has ever been held accountable. The world must be familiar with a new fact that anyone killed by Israeli security forces has no legal right.

An Israeli bulldozer killed 23-year-old American woman Rachel Corrie on March 16, 2003, as she protests a demolition campaign that destroyed over a thousand homes in the Gaza Strip. The court case of her parents was rejected by a Haifa judge in 2012. Her parents launched the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice, in pursuit of human rights and social, economic and environmental justice,” emphasizing efforts to end Israeli apartheid.

New York based Jewish Political scientist Norman Finkelstein said, “the end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simple: Israel and the United States just need to follow international law.” Unfortunately, Israel is above any law and accountability.

On 22 July 1946 a Zionist underground organization, the Irgun bombed the British Mandate Office in Jerusalem, situated at the King David Hotel killed 91 people mostly Arabs and Britons, and 46 were injured. The same group  carried out more than 60 attacks against Palestinian people and the British Army. No one was ever charged for their terrorist acts. They performed acts of terror, but they are not ‘terrorist’ as the Zionist (are not Muslims) so they can’t be terrorists.

On 8 June 1967, the USS Liberty Navy Ship was attacked by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian NSA employee), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. Again, no one was brought to justice.

If the Zionist state could get away with terrorist acts on the superpowers, Britian and America, why they would care for the caged Palestinians who are helpless and treated like lower class animals?

Norman Finkelstein said that Israel has brought upon the Palestinian aggression upon itself. He also said, “if Israel had allowed the results of the Palestinian elections of January 2006, allowed them to unfold, and not sealed off Gaza because the elections showed popular support for Hamas, there would have been a normal – more or less – election cycle. Although, a former US President Jimmy Carter called the elections completely fair and free.” The Israel and its allies don’t want any democratically elected group to run Gaza, although there were 7 non-Muslim candidates from Hamas in the election.

Whenever the apartheid state of Israel is criticized for political reasons or for their violent acts, the Zionist lobby quickly term it as antisemitism, although there is no hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people. They are always ready to counter any legitimate criticism of the Jews State and people regardless of its validity and truth. Ironically, the way Hitler treated Jews in Germany, the Zionists are treating the people of Palestine much worse than that.

The rulers of Israel strongly believe that they are superior to Arabs, Christians and Muslims, because they are intellectually, morally, physically much better than Palestinians (and others non-Jews). This superior status drives them to abuse, assault, humiliate, and kill anyone, let alone the people of Gaza. The same racial superiority believe led Australia and other European colonial powers to practice `white only immigration’ policy.

Gradual occupation of Palestine is the beginning of expanding Israels boarders to the “Greater Israel”, “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates” as dreamed by the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, as a Jewish State. So, make no mistakes, Gaza is just the beginning. Once the buffer state with strong resistance force is defeated, the IDF would move to other neighboring Arab kingdoms to create the “Greater Israel” soon.

If anyone, especially in the US and Europe, is genuine and serious about the Israel’s `right to defend’ itself, and lasting security, must first ensure Palestinian right of self-determination and recognise the State of Palestine. It was a big mistake not to recognise and allow the democratically elected Government of Hamas to rule Gaza in 2006 just because so called promoters and protectors of democracy conveniently don’t want it for Palestinians.

Now is the time to get real and do the right things to stop continuously endangering lives of innocent Israelis and Palestinians including children, women, and men, and give both sides their future. If the US stops using the blood of the people of Israel and Palestine to show their power and test their lethal weapons, and don’t use Israeli army as proxies in the region to control Arab states then the world will be a much better place to live.

[Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are of the author’s own, and not of any affiliated institutions.]

Professor Dr Shahjahan Khan

Emeritus Professor, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

Vice Chancellor, Asian University of Bangladesh

Email: vice-chancellor@aub.ac.bd