On 8 October, Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot shared a powerful video online. It imagines a scenario where, in 2040, people finally accept that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza between 2023 and 2024.
Around the world, people mark its anniversary. And children ask their parents what they were doing during the genocide and why they didn’t act despite it happening right in front of their eyes to children like them:
Powerful. pic.twitter.com/BTDxRYDvJE
— Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) October 8, 2024
We will all be judged on Israel’s actions
In Britain and elsewhere, many people continue to march regularly against the genocide despite media and political smears. But not enough people have taken enough action to really force Western governments to end Israel’s impunity and their own complicity in its war crimes.
Videos like this serve as a reminder that our descendants will judge us on how we acted, or didn’t act, during the horrific extermination campaign that Israeli colonisers have inflicted on Palestinians and others.
Upon the one-year anniversary of the start of Israel’s latest genocidal attack on Gaza, occupation forces have killed 16,756 children. As Al Jazeera reports, this is higher than in any other conflict in the last two decades. Indeed, 69% of all the victims of Israel’s crimes are women and children.
Never again means never again for anyone
We shouldn’t allow this genocide to become a political football for cynical actors to manipulate.
The video above, for example, apparently comes from the Turkish government, which has consistently been the ‘world’s worst jailer of reporters’, has been found guilty of war crimes itself in recent years, and has refused to recognise its country’s own genocide of Armenians over a hundred years ago.
As a key NATO member, Western media outlets and politicians have also granted it impunity for its crimes. However, in its criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it is right and has put its NATO allies to shame.
We don’t all need to see eye to eye on everything to oppose genocide. It should be a human issue. Anyone with an ounce of compassion should be able to condemn the brutal murder of children and take action to stop it from happening now and in the future.
As Holocaust survivors and their descendants wrote in 2014:
As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors of the Nazi genocide we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and Western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.…
We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the siege against and blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!
Featured image via screengrab
