Beyond the Logic of Dehumanization – Those for Whom We Weep Will Win the War (Part I)

An article by Ronnie Kasrils

Zionism is not dead, but it is certainly dying. The cost will be devastatingly high, high beyond measure, but those for whom we weep will win the war.

In Gaza, six children are murdered every hour.

More than 17,000 children have been butchered. None of us, not even the poets, can summon words adequate to the horror of the fascistic bloodlust of the Israeli regime and the society that backs it.

A year after the attack on Gaza began, over 42,000 people had been killed. This number does not include the missing. More than 10,000 people are assumed to be dead, their bodies buried under rubble. More than 100,000 people are wounded, many grievously.

A study published in the esteemed medical journal, The Lancet, in July this year estimated that the total number of dead, due to direct and indirect causes, could exceed 186,000 people as of June 19, 2024. More than 70 percent of the dead are women and children. Over 1,000 children are now amputees, the highest number for a comparable period in history.

A study by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins of Brown University, published on October 7 this year, shows that 90 percent of people in Gaza are displaced, 96 percent do not have enough food and water, there is no electricity, and just under 90 percent of the hospitals have been destroyed, with more than 880 health care workers killed.

Four in every five children are consumed with depression, grief, and fear. Infectious diseases are running rampant.

The confirmed deaths of 42,000 people as a direct result of the attacks by the Israeli military amount to almost two Sharpeville massacres every single day for a year.

After Sharpeville, there was relative calm after the storm. The wounded were taken to hospital, and the dead were buried with dignity. The regime was momentarily shaken by global condemnation.

In Gaza, the killing is relentless.

The Zionists and their liberal allies justify this avalanche of killing as a legitimate response to Operation Al Aqsa Flood on October 7 last year.

There is an internationally recognized right to armed resistance against occupation. There is no internationally recognized right of defense by an occupying power.

It is true that the right to armed resistance against occupation does not extend to taking civilian hostages or to deliberate attacks on civilians. We need, though, to be clear on three things.

The first is that the Israelis, backed by their allies in the United States and elsewhere, ran a brazen propaganda campaign after Operation Al Aqsa Flood. The claims about forty beheaded babies and organized mass rape have been comprehensively debunked.

The second is that more than 300 of the people killed in Israel during the operation were soldiers on active duty and therefore legitimate military targets. Many of the civilians killed were part of the Israeli military reserve and therefore off-duty soldiers. Moreover, it is well documented that many of those civilians were killed by fire from the Israeli military.

The third point is that in these matters, it is always necessary to take context into account. The context is 75 years of colonial dispossession and murderous ethnic cleansing throughout Palestine. Around 80 percent of Gazans are refugees from the Israeli ‘ethnic cleansing’ in 1948 and 1967.

Gaza has suffered a bloody siege for 17 years. The civilians taken hostage were taken to exchange them for the thousands of hostages in Israeli prisons.

Reem Haddad

Editor – in Chief