The Absence of Humanity

First off, let me just say that I've been planning on writing something for a while now, but I haven't been able to sit down and organize my thoughts. I'll try to make this as coherent as possible, but no promises.

As I'm writing this, on day 13 of the assault on Gaza, the death toll is at 763, with 3120 injured. Civilians make up a huge percentage of both of those numbers. It started off as heavy air bombardments, with 100,000 tons of bombs being dropped on Gaza at the beginning. And now, it's a full-scale military operation by air, land, and sea. Tens of thousands have been made homeless, and at least 70% of the population is without water or electricity. Hospitals are bursting at the seams, with doctors working around the clock and being forced to perform surgery on the floor. Thousands of patients are at risk of dying simply because the hospitals don't have the gas or electricity that they need to keep machines running to keep people alive.

Over half the population of Gaza is under 17 years old. That means some 50% of them are children. And they're being subjected to a degree of brutality and savagery that nobody should ever have to experience. Everywhere they turn, they see things that no human being should ever have to see. Do you cringe when you see the images of dead bodies or dying people? Well imagine seeing those bodies in your living room, in your bedroom, on your street. And imagine those are the bodies of your parents, brothers, and sisters. And then imagine trying to run away, but having nowhere to go. Everywhere you go, there's more death, more carnage.

So people are terrorized and traumatized, and understandably so. They haven't slept for almost two weeks now, because bombing continues throughout the night. Just last night, there were over 30 airstrikes. There's also no food, no water, no medicine, no fuel. It's an absolute catastrophe, that goes against the very essence of the human spirit.

But still, Israel denies that there is a humanitarian crisis. It says it's doing its very best to spare the civilian population. Really? Gaza is 360 square km, with over 1.5 million people living there. That's a population density of 4270 people per square km (just as a comparison, Canada's population density is something like 3.2 people per square km). So if Israel drops a 1000 pound bomb on a house, how many people will that affect? How many people are going to die or be injured from just that one bomb?

And then consider the fact that according to Amnesty International, Israel is using civilians as human shields. They do this by occupying the upper levels of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay on the ground floor while they use the rest of the house as a military base and sniper position. So the house, with the family still inside, becomes a target in the fighting. But hey, if they say they're trying to protect civilians then I guess we should take their word for it.

Furthermore, according to Israel, virtually anything is a legitimate target. They've targeted houses, schools, mosques, hospitals, clinics, ambulances. Entire families of 13, 14, 15 people are being killed in one shot when their homes are bombed. The other day they bombed two - two! - UN schools where thousands of people had taken refuge. At least 45 people have died so far from those bombings, and surely more will die from their injuries. To target a UN school is absolutely unconscionable, no matter what the circumstances are.

But Israel does try to justify these acts, by saying that there were militants there, or an arms cache, so the bombing was legitimate. It's unfortunate that there were 10,000 people seeking protection at the UN school, but it had to be bombed. It was just a coincidence that the mosque was bombed during prayer time, meaning it was full of people.

History shows, though, that Israel has often used this justification of the "legitimate target," only to have independent investigations, reports, and enquiries determine that it was an outright lie. In 1996, there were 106 Lebanese civilian refugees who were killed at Qana, a UN compound. Israel claimed that there were Hizbollah fighters at the compound too. It was later revealed as a lie. In 1982 there was the Sabra and Shatila massacres at refugee camps in Lebanon, where over 1,700 Palestinian civilians were slaughtered. Same justification was given, same lie was revealed. The same lie is being given this time, and our wilfully blind world leaders are still are content to accept it. Even though UN officials have clearly stated that there were no fighters present when the school was bombed, our leaders are still content to to remain consciously ignorant about the real situation.

This ignorance is especially strong now that Israel has declared that it'll halt the bombings for three hours per day to allow humanitarian relief to be distributed. It seems kind of them, doesn't it? But wait. That means we have 21 hours of bombing and 3 hours of "halt"? And what exactly happens in those 3 hours? Well, yesterday during the "halt," a UN convoy was fired upon by Israeli soldiers, killing at least 1 person. And Israel has continually blocked ambulances from travelling from place to place. According to one Red Crescent administrator, ambulances are being prevented from reaching 80% of the calls from the north of the Gaza Strip. 80% of the people calling for help aren't getting it. In some intances, wounded people are being transported on donkey carts.

But still, Israel and many world leaders are claiming that Hamas brought this on themselves by not renewing the truce and firing rockets into Israel. Yes, the spin doctors have been working hard on this front too. In fact, before it expired, the truce had actually been violated twice by Israel. Once on Nov. 4, when an air raid killed six Palestinians, and then again on Nov. 17, when it killed four more. And this is in addition to the fact that for the 18 months leading up to the expiration of the truce - including the 6 months of the truce itself - Gaza was under complete siege. Borders were closed, preventing people from coming and going. Just enough basic humanitarian supplies were getting in to keep people alive without starving them to death. Hospitals were already running out of medicine, and the whole territory was suffering from a gas shortage. Every aspect of life in the Strip had been decimated during the so-called truce. Essentially, for the people of Gaza, there was no truce, it simply didn't exist.

And while I don't agree with firing rockets aimlessly into Israeli territory, it's important to keep some perspective. Since 2005, 13 Israelis were killed by these rockets. Since 2005, 1400 Palestinians were killed by Israeli operations in Gaza. Neither of those numbers include the people who have died in the current assault. Proportionality matters. This cannot be justified.

What's going on now is not a conflict or a war. Both of those terms presume that you have two relatively equal parties fighting one another. This is a massacre, a slaughter, a butchery, an attack on the entire population of Gaza. Right now, Israel is saying that it's an attack on Hamas, and that's it. But consider what Moshe Yaalon, the former Israeli Defence Force Chief of Staff, said in 2002: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." He's talking about the Palestinian people as a whole. All of them must see themselves as being defeated. By any means necessary, it would seem.

This is the reality of the situation today. It's the entire population that is being attacked, and killed by Israeli war crimes. The people are being denied the right to enjoy their humanity, to live in dignity, to be treated as human beings. The people of the world have been incredible, with hundreds of thousands taking action in solidarity with Gaza. And this mobilization need to continue, it's absolutely crucial. But so is political leadership. Where is that leadership? Where is the humanity of the world leaders? How long to the people of Gaza have to live through hell before somebody does something?

I don't know the answers to those questions, but I know that nothing will change if people don't take action at the grassroots level. That's why the organizing, the demonstrating, the campaigns, the letter-writing, and the petition signing all have to continue. If the leaders can't find their own humanity, or their own sense of human decency, then we have to shove our humanity in their faces, to make them understand and to force them to act. There are 1.5 million Gazans counting on that action, so we have to make it happen.