Despair is the currency of massacre

 

Lital Khaikin on how deflecting from the Palestinian humanitarian crisis to the ‘Israel-Hamas’ war enables continued apartheid

“More than 20,000 Palestinians have perished in the new war,” reads a newspaper photo caption citing December’s death toll since the beginning of the Israeli siege. A young girl reading in a café remarks to her father, “Why? They call it a war, but it was an attack. Israel completely demolished Gaza.”

When Israel predictably bombs Palestinians every year, the episodic tragedy beckons many back to the writing of academic and literary critic Edward Said. Beyond documenting the cyclical nature of Israeli apartheid since the Nakba, Said’s essays anchor the politicization of emotion within the history of crisis in Palestine. What Said saw unravelling from the neglect—internationally and by Palestine’s own elected officials—of Palestine’s humanitarian crisis and the continuity of Israeli apartheid in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, has never been more urgent. The inability to address the racist and classist policies of repressive states is only adding fodder to reactive extremism and eroding ideological diversity in anti-imperialist resistance.

The Palestinian humanitarian crisis has long since been reduced to a story of periodic suffering and a media sandbox topic for the perfection of algorithms. Canadian policy-makers pay marginal attention to the daily reality of the IDF’s detention and murder of Palestinian civilians at Israeli checkpoints, inhumane medical and living conditions, targeting and murder of journalists, bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, and restricted mobility in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, now reduced to rubble.

In response to the massacre of around 1,200 Israelis by Hamas militants at a music festival, Israel launched the opening salvo of its assault on Gaza in October. In the months since, the siege has been rebranded as the “Israel-Hamas war.” A status update from the Times of Israel in December assures the world that the war is “almost half done,” while months of continued fighting are still expected. With December’s campaign against Hamas through a siege on northern Gaza, Israel is pursuing “full operational control” to continue expanding its illegal settlements. The Times founding editor David Horovitz has transparently described this as “a situation that is supposed to enable the beginning of a return and rebuilding of communities in sovereign Israel.”  (more...)

Despair is the currency of massacre