Israeli apartheid supported by international double standards

Following the deadly attack on “Israel” by Hamas fighters, “Israel” was quick to declare it as its own 9/11 and struck with mad fury, decimating innocent civilians, women children, babies, and the elderly. More than 1,400 have been killed in “Israel” in the week after Hamas staged the worst attack on “Israel” since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. At least 500 people have been killed in an Israeli air attack on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip. The death toll keeps rising.

The Hamas attack occurred on October 8 but on October 9, all Western leaders, including the US, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom like clockwork, issued a statement, which reads in part: “We make clear that the terrorist actions of Hamas have no justification, no legitimacy, and must be universally condemned.”

Ironically, the root cause of Hamas’ Operation Al Aqsa Flood was years of subjugation, maltreatment, and incarceration through lockdowns, blockade, embargo, and prohibitions imposed on the Palestinians by “Israel” have been callously brushed under the carpet. Western leaders have rushed soldiers, weaponry, and funds to aid “Israel”.

Equally paradoxically, the five Western leaders quoted above went on to ascribe the incursions of Palestinian fighters into “Israel” on October 8, and the resulting violence, to Hamas alone. The statement by the five leaders highlighted that Hamas “does not represent the aspirations of the Palestinian people.” If this statement is to be accepted then there is no justification for all five Western leaders to blindly support “Israel” in its collective punishment of all Palestinians, irrespective of their allegiance with Hamas. Secondly presenting the rationale that “Israel” is justified in razing the Gaza Strip and its more than two million occupants under the pretext of “self-defense” is a false premise. 

Propagating that the Palestinian action on October 7 had “no justification” is a painful attempt to deny history. Gaza was a pressure cooker, waiting to burst owing to the suppressed steam of Israeli oppression and tyranny. Israeli-sponsored massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, notwithstanding, Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem, an AlQuds-based non-profit organization whose stated goals are to document human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, and combat any denial of the existence of such violations, have documented the Israeli brutality. According to B’Tselem, Israeli forces have killed 10,000 Palestinians between the year 2000 and the end of September 2023. Mass imprisonment, denial of basic amenities, right to prayer in the holy mosques, and crushing the Palestinians to a pulp were bound to have consequences. 

It is a quirk of fate that in the melee of extending solidarity to “Israel” in suppressing the Palestinians, by numerous Western countries and organizations, one organization, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) stands exposed. WUC is an international organization of supposedly exiled Uyghur groups that claims to “represent the collective interest of the Uyghur people” both inside and outside of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. Based in Munich, Germany, the WUC claims to be a non-violent and peaceful movement that opposes what it considers to be the Chinese “occupation” of ‘Eastern Turkestan’ and advocates rejection of totalitarianism, religious intolerance, and terrorism as an instrument of policy. It is funded in part by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) of the United States. In its bid to follow its Western mentors, the WUC, parrots the Occident’s mantra of the alleged Chinese oppression of Uyghur Muslims but it failed to condemn the bloody massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza by Israeli forces, which is neither an accusation nor a fake story but is well documented by international media outlets. 

“Israel” has been pounding Gaza with airstrikes for the past two weeks killing more than 3,750 civilians and cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity to the Palestinian enclave, and ordered civilians to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground assault aimed at eradicating Hamas.

Yet Dolkun Isa, the current President of WUC, in a much-publicized statement, condemned the “horrific attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians” and stressed that the “WUC is deeply concerned about the prospect of escalation of conflict and further loss of lives. We stand in solidarity with all those suffering from terror and war, and we keep all those impacted by violence in our prayers. The WUC urges the international community to act urgently to protect civilian lives and to establish an effective mechanism for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Contrarily, China urged “Israel” to stop its collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

The most pressing initiative would be to halt the Israeli offensive and its relentless spree of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the residents of Gaza. Western leaders should discriminate between the oppressors and oppressed for a change.