My Take | How to kill children under siege legally
- Some of the most respected publications in Britain and America have resorted to obscure legal grammar such as the use of commas to justify killing children ‘legally’ in Palestine
The late United Nations chief Kofi Annan once said: “There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they can grow up in peace.”
The world is, at the moment, witnessing a sustained massacre of children before our very eyes, week after week, month after month, that will surely go down in history as one of humankind’s true horror shows. But the merciless perpetrators and their shameless apologists in the West are outraged that the rest of the world has now refused to stand aside and pretend mass murders are morally and legally justified.
What Israel has been doing in Palestine is completely beyond the pale. But what has disgusted the rest of the world in equal measure is the consistent response of much of the mainstream Western media and some governments.
In defiance of practically the whole world, Israel launched a heavy assault on Rafah, the last refuge of Palestinians in southern Gaza. On Sunday, it bombed a refugee camp, a place it designated as “safe” only last week. About 50 Palestinians were killed, many of them children.
Since the launch of the Rafah operation, some of the most respected publications in the Anglo-American news media have rushed to defend it. Perhaps this is what Israel’s legions of apologists and war-crime deniers mean when they ask, rhetorically, what country in the world has a military that warns civilians to evacuate before launching an assault?
As usual, Israeli forces claimed there were Hamas terrorists in the camp. Haven’t you noticed that every time there are mass casualties caused by an Israeli strike, “some terrorists were there” has been the default excuse?