Genocide is a divisive word at the moment, we are quibbling over the appropriateness of its use and some people are struggling with the concept of what to term this ongoing bombardment of Palestine. Whether it’s an ethnic cleansing or genocide or a war… what we call it shouldn’t matter, but what it is, is a debasement of human life where you see your fellow humans as undeserving of a full life. We can quibble all we want about the terms by which we call this, but we must not look away because on our watch babies are being bombed. In our names, children are being murdered by armies and still the world powers stand by complicitly.
Hind Rajab was a 5-year-old little girl, a child, whose body was found twelve days after a search. Hind was trapped in a car with her dead relatives following Israeli fire. She was murdered, her and thousands of other children, in this ongoing massacre that Netanyahu is waging against the Palestinian people whose only hope rests in the raised voices of protest coming from different corners around the world, from a public in opposition to their governments. Even in Israel there are voices of opposition to the way Netanyahu and his cohorts have gone about this bombardment.
This past Sunday in church, the priest spoke about Genocide and my ears pricked up. More than it normally would at the scripture post gospel when priests impart on us words that are meant to inspire goodness in us and translate the words from the bible which we often tend to misunderstand and misconstrue. When he mentioned genocide, he had all of my attention, part of which would’ve been diverted wondering if Greggs would still have their croissants by the time Church Ends. I do. I really do think about that. A lot. I digress, he went on the explain the origins of the genocide in Rwanda in the war between the Hutus and Tutsis, and how it emanated from one side seeing the other, not even as humans but as cockroaches that ought to be stamped to death, which provided a justification for their actions and reaction. It made it easy for them to do away with their humanity. He mentioned his anger about what he sees in the world today, a reoccurrence of that stripping of humanity, but stopped short of calling out what was happening in Gaza a genocide and yet his inferences were obvious.
I would imagine being a Catholic priest him going so far would ruffle feathers, and so what he cannot fully name, we can.
The Israeli government has issued a directive asking the refugees to leave Rafah because of its impending ground assault, which has started; they rescued two hostages, but the deaths of Palestinians caught in that crossfire is creeping up to one hundred. Let that sink in.
I ask the question we are all asking: WHERE ARE THEY MEANT TO GO? Rafah was supposed to be a safe place, it is home to over one million refugees who sleep in tents and live in appalling conditions. I listened to Khalid who called in from Rafah on Matt Frei’s time-slot on LBC- who remains defiant in the face of death, who has refused to leave his home, whose death is almost certain and whose blood would be on the hands of the Israeli government, his and countless others whose blood has already been shed in the justification of the genocidal war- and I am bereft.
What would have been gained in the end? Nothing but more hate and more denigration of humanity of those we see as “others”. Ripping through their homes, levelling their institutions, annihilating generations, killing children. If that isn’t a genocide, then what is it? Because this is not a conflict. A conflict would mean the powers are nearly evenly matched if not completely, a conflict would mean a tangible resolution but there is none in sight except to drive the Palestinians further into nothingness and it is all happening under the watch and support of global superpowers who ought to know better. Because we have been here before.
If the images coming out of Rafah this morning following bombardment of what was meant to be a “safe area” for the millions of Palestinians now displaced from their homeland, does not move you, does not make you scream with rage, does not make you irate, nothing ever will because you are simply choosing to be wilfully ignorant of the world around us. It cannot be business as usual because this should not be the usual. The world belongs to us, and we should fight to keep its soul and that soul is our humanity, without which we are all in a constant genocide.