By José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero on January 16, 2024 from Havana
photo: Bill Hackwell
January 14th marked the 100th day of this new phase of the conflict between “Israel” and Palestine. More than 24 thousand Palestinians have lost their lives as a result of the brutal Zionist bombings and the situation in the Middle East is increasingly tense, aggravated by the recent attacks of the coalition commanded by the United States against Yemen.
These 100 days of continued genocide provide a number of regional and international lessons.
The first, and perhaps the most important, because of its repercussions on the geopolitical architecture built after World War II, is the patent inability of international organizations to influence certain conflicts. And, associated with this, the double standards by which different situations are measured.
Despite multiple meetings of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, the denunciations of the various international agencies and organizations associated with it, and even the request of the Secretary General himself, no concrete course of action has been taken to halt the murderous Israeli aggression against the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank.
Also evident is the cynicism of the supposed “universal human values” upheld by the great powers of the West and blocs such as the European Union, which beyond some lukewarm pronouncements, have symbolically and economically supported “Israel” and criminalized demonstrations in support of Palestine in their countries. All this in clear contrast to the sanctioning agility and the tone of moral superiority with which they have approached other conflicts.
The crisis in which the great Western powers are plunging the UN, a crisis that has been palpable in the last 100 days, will have incalculable geopolitical consequences for the near future.
Another lesson of these days is that the military capacity of the Israeli army was not as high as the propaganda claimed, nor are the Palestinian resistance movements as weak and unpopular as we were led to believe.
The Palestinian resistance is a child of the colonial and violent conditions imposed by the Israeli state since 1948 on the Palestinian population in the occupied territories and the small portions of land that still remain in Palestinian hands. Their vocation of struggle is directly proportional to the brutality and impunity of the enemy they face and they are the expression, in the first instance, of the will to struggle of a people determined not to be dispossessed of their historical lands and who do not accept to be treated as subhuman by the dehumanizing and supremacist ideology of Zionism.
In its development, the Palestinian resistance has been articulated with the so-called Axis of Resistance, a powerful articulation that has been key to stop the imperialist plans in the region and to promote a pan-Arab agenda of struggle and collaboration. It is precisely the forces that make up this bloc that have most resolutely taken up the cause of the defense of the Palestinian people, forcing “Israel” to open costly fronts on its border with Lebanon and hitting hard its maritime trade in the Red Sea.
Another important lesson, which although known, it is useful to reiterate, is that the great Western corporate press is nothing more than a tool at the service of imperialism and its agendas. That is why they have unconditionally embraced the discourse of “Israel” as a state victim of “terrorism” from which it does nothing but defend itself. Their reading of the conflict is not only misleading, but also complicit, by hiding from the public opinion of their countries the dimension of the genocide being committed against Gaza.
Contrary to the discourse maintained by this corporate press, “Israel” is not only seeking to defend itself and guarantee its security. As in the numerous operations of the recent past, the current one aims at one main objective: to destroy any possibility of life in the coastal enclave of Gaza. The recent bombardments and actions point not only to the destruction of all facilities and services vital to life, but to the moral and psychological breakdown of the will of the Palestinian people by killing and arresting their doctors, paramedics, rescuers, arresting individuals who are symbols of resistance in the enclave or destroying a university or mosque, which not only violates the humanitarian provisions in this regard, but aims at destroying hope.
The Israeli high command means by pacifying what the Romans meant at the end of the third Punic War: a desert plowed with salt. They consciously apply the old Latin maxim of Tacitus: “They call rapine, murder and robbery by a false name governing, and where they create a desert, they call it peace.”
But perhaps the most important lesson of these days for all of us who follow closely what is happening in the region is the conviction that Palestine will win. Despite the pain, the devastation, the mutilated childhood imposed by the Israeli aggressor, the will of a people to be sovereign will always prevail.
José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero is a Cuban writer and journalist. He is a Member of the Hermanos Saíz Association (AHS), Coordinator of the Cuban chapter of the Network in Defense of Humanity and a Rector of the University of the Arts
Source: Network in Defense of Humanity – Cuba, translation Resumen Latinoamericano