Saturday, August 9, 2014
Apocalypse ignored: As Gaza grabs the headlines, epic slaughter engulfs the rest of the region. But where are the protests?
The
fragile ceasefire in Gaza was still holding last night after three days,
offering a glimmer of hope that the brutal conflict between Israel and
the militant group Hamas might be at an end.
Israel
believes it has killed more than 700 Hamas fighters in the past four
weeks and destroyed at least 32 of the underground passages through
which Hamas smuggles weaponry and launches terrorist attacks on the
country.
In
their cold-blooded parlance, Israel’s military leaders say they have
‘mown the grass’ sufficiently to enable a withdrawal of troops from
Gaza. In other words, they have degraded Hamas’s military capacity to
the extent that they believe it will take three or four years before the
terrorist organisation can become truly belligerent again; before the
gruesome cycle of Hamas provocation and ruthless Israeli retaliation
begins once more.
Scroll down for video
Militant: Palestinian fighters from Islamic Jihad hold their weapons at the funeral of a fellow militant in Gaza
Aftermath: A Palestinian rides past
residential buildings in Beit Lahiya town, all but obliterated by
Israeli shelling and air strikes, in the northern Gaza Strip
Destruction: A boy sits among the
ruins of a destroyed house in Beit Lahiya, hours before the 72-hour
ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came to an end
Cost: Mohammed Ali Wahdan, a
two-year-old Palestnian boy, lies on his bed at the al-Shifa hospital in
Gaza City, as he receives treatment for burns and other injuries
Recovering: Wala Abu Zaid, a
10-year-old Palestinian girl injured in an Israeli military strike on
Gaza, lies in a bed at the the Makassed hospital in East Jerusalem,
where she was transferred by the Red Cross during the ceasefire which
has endured since Tuesday
Hanan Abu Leil, a six-year-old
Palestinian girl injured by an Israeli airstrike, recovering in the
Makassed hospital in East Jerusalem. Doctors and aid agencies are trying
to capitalise on a truce in Gaza to evacuate more wounded Palestinians
for life-saving medical treatment in east Jerusalem, Israel and Jordan
The
battle raging in the Gaza Strip has transfixed the world. Relentless TV
and media coverage has concentrated on the appalling death toll of
1,900 Palestinians, hundreds of them children.
Protest
marches sprung up across the globe as the conflict caused widespread
outrage and some of the worst manifestations of anti-semitism the West
has witnessed since the Thirties.
At
Westminster, Foreign Office minister Baroness Warsi — who was passed
over for promotion in David Cameron’s latest reshuffle — resigned
allegedly as a matter of conscience, while the Tricycle Theatre in North
London cancelled its annual Jewish film festival.
Horrific
though events in Gaza have been, they were actually a sideshow to the
appalling slaughter now raging across much of the Middle East as well as
Libya in North Africa.
What is so
extraordinary is that the voices protesting so vehemently against
Israel’s actions remain resolutely silent over this bloodshed which is
on a far greater scale than ever took place in Gaza.
Despite
the indignation of so many at Israel’s ruthless display of power, the
country has gone to great lengths to prevent civilian casualties by
using leaflets, text messages and phone calls in Arabic to warn people
to leave targeted buildings.
No
such niceties were afforded the hundreds of innocent victims of armed
militia groups running rampant in Libya and battling for control of its
major cities Tripoli and Benghazi. There were a staggering 1,700 of
these groups at the last count.
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