Writing in The Telegraph, Jake Wallis Simons (JWS) editor of the Jewish Chronicle sounds positively euphoric about a UN request for confirmations from Hamas of the numbers killed in Gaza so far, a figure that currently stands at 35,000 (25,000 confirmed and 10,000 awaiting confirmation) and could equate to lower numbers of civilian casualties. Perhaps, suggests JWS, that not all were murdered. Some may have ‘gone into hiding’ or even ‘died of natural causes’ - starvation perhaps?
Wallis Simons isn’t triumphant because the numbers could mean fewer civilian casualties, but because a possible reduction in civilian casualties, in his book, lets the Israel off the genocide hook – even while the Israeli regime continues to murder Palestinian civilians in both Gaza and the West Bank. Maybe Wallis Simons doesn’t understand the meaning of genocide.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The legal terminology is clear. The numbers are irrelevant. The intent and pursuant actions are what define genocide.
According to Wallis Simons nobody debated civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria (though in a prior paragraph he points out that the final death tolls in those countries ‘remain intensely disputed’), ‘Yet when it comes to Israel’, moans Jake ‘it’s all anybody talks about’.
In reality, the Israeli leadership shot itself in the foot by preventing international journalists from entering Gaza, the same journalists who often veil the true horrors of war, believing the images to be too graphic for the public. Because of this, the world is witnessing raw footage from the mobile phones of victims and their families; images of toddlers hanging from ceilings like lampshades, their skulls crushed by the concrete floors above. Children with their brains blown out and small, dust covered cadavers propped up by the same walls that forced the air from their lungs and the blood to ooze from their mouths.
This is what war looks like. Bloody, horrific, graphic, heart-wrenching – just like war photographers and returning soldiers have tried to tell us across decades. And now we know, 24/7 on Twitter, Tik-Tok and Al-Jazeera (now banned in Israel).
Yet Wallis Simons believes the international media, political leaders, celebrities and the protesters on our streets have been ‘brainwashed’ to believe ‘the lie’ of the Israeli genocide. The same Wallis Simson who propagated the beheaded babies and raped children stories on Question Time while describing the actions of Gazan civilians who celebrated the momentary return to their lands and the mortal blow to their occupiers as those of ‘brainwashed Jihadi fanatics’ who share ideologies with ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Hamas doesn’t want a global Islamic revolution and their argument is not with Jews as detailed in points 16 and 17 of their 2017 Charter: ‘Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity…antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage…’
This isn’t just about Gaza. Or Israel. This is about the millions watching in horror, finally understanding what war looks like on the ground for those being murdered with western weapons – be it in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or Gaza - actions enabled by manipulated marionettes pumping out the same centuries-old war message via their media theatre - that all the colonising, theft, assassinations and killings on a biblical scale are in our ‘interests’.
Wallis Simons claims that ‘Israel did not choose this conflict any more than Britain chose to fight Nazi Germany’. Maybe he also believes Churchill was a hero, no wars are planned and bankers set up shop to help people get on the housing ladder. That the 'Four Powers' colonised the land, using Jewish settlers as shields, is well-documented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. It was a colonial expansionist project dressed up as a Jewish state to be built on Arabic lands - against the wishes of the indigenous people.
Despite the thieving of Arab lands (according to the 1922 Census, the population of Mandatory Palestine was predominantly Muslim (78%) with Jews and Christians making up 11% and 9.6% respectively, the remainder being Druze, Sikh, Baha’is, Metawalis & Samaritans) and seventy-six years of Israel controlling every aspect of Palestinian life, from checkpoints to water allocation, the torching of olive groves, bulldozing of homes, imprisonment without trial, the collective 'diet', the periodic bombing of civilian infrastructure and homes (mowing the lawn) and the annexing of Area C of the West Bank which stripped the Palestinians of 26% of GDP, Wallis Simons maintains this is a ‘just war’, even more so as the ‘Jewish state is estimated to be killing proportionately fewer civilians than any other democracy in the history of warfare’. Firstly, Israel isn't a democracy. Secondly, in the current Russia-Ukraine war (if Israel is a democracy, then why not Russia) an estimated 500,000 military personnel have been killed compared to 12,000 civilians or 2.4%. That would mean only 840 civilians in Gaza – and we’re very far from that.
The Times spews the same colony-defending rhetoric, accusing the leaders of Norway, Spain and Ireland of ‘arrogance’ for recognising the state of Palestine. ‘Terrorism works. That is the grim conclusion that the leadership of Hamas may yet draw from the recognition of an independent Palestinian state by Ireland, Norway and Spain this week’, claims the Times. Terrorism certainly does work. Just like it did in 1946 when the Zionist militia Irgun blew up the King David Hotel - an act deemed legitimate by Netanyahu - which expedited the withdrawal from Palestine of the British occupiers.
While delusional spokesmen from Eylon Levy to Avi Hyman continually fall back on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to convince the world that Israel is a generous State (‘we gave them Gaza’) and not an apartheid colony that treats Palestinians like the animals they believe them to be, living in what will inevitably be a military zone for generations to come, isn’t exactly a picnic for Israelis. One in seven suffer from addiction, 30,000 IDF soldiers have called a mental health hotline since the start of the assault on Gaza while 54% of 18-34-year-olds would emigrate if they could.
While Netanyahu feels miffed the 'anti-Semitic' ICC is targeting him while gentile war criminals like Blair, Clinton, Johnson and Bush Jnr walk free, he could perhaps comfort himself with the notion that not only was his journey to the slammer inevitable, he certainly won't be the last ICC target. No wonder Sunak’s running for the hills…though with an overreaching criminal justice bill and the tightening of surveillance laws brought in by his own government, he shouldn’t be too hard to find. Starmer on the other hand is a sitting duck.
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