At some level, it’s not complicated. Making civilians, including children, responsible for the acts of a guerrilla group should obviously be considered a crime. And that crime is functionally being supported by my country. In early November, after denouncing the acts of Hamas on October 7th as the crimes that they were, Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, added that “the collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians.” Unfortunately, the U.N. remains a remarkably powerless organization.
And no less sadly, despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza, ending (however briefly) the killing of civilians at historic rates in our time, little has changed there. Yes, during those ceasefire days, increased amounts of food, fuel, and water were delivered to Gaza to remedy the Israeli decision to cut off more than two million people (almost half of them children) from such essentials, whether they had anything to do with October 7th or not. Still, it remains a horror that what’s largely been delivered to Gazans, including those hundreds of thousands of children, has been disease, starvation, and water that’s unsafe to drink.
People there are now all too literally starving to death. Pregnant women, in particular, find themselves in a hell on earth without functional hospitals or much else, including housing, significant parts of which have been destroyed by Israeli bombing. Meanwhile, the response of President Biden and crew to all of this has essentially been to ignore it and offer ever more support to Israel.
Today, with Israel having resumed its bombardment of Gaza after a week-long truce ended, TomDispatch regulars Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox put this nightmare in a larger international context — of not just the United States but India as well, while reminding us of how key countries have aided and abetted a nightmare of the first order. Tom
The Israel-India-U.S. Triangle
Its Human Toll Will Be Incalculable
In 1981, India’s post office issued a stamp showing the flags of India and occupied Palestine flying side by side above the phrase “Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” That now seems like ancient history. Today, Hindu nationalists are flying the flags of India and Israel side by side as a demonstration of their support for that country's catastrophic war on Gaza.
It’s a match made in heaven (or do we mean hell?), because the two nations have similar “problems” they’re trying to “solve.” Israel has long been engaged in the violent suppression of Palestinians whose lands they occupy (including the current devastation of Gaza, an assault that 34 U.N. experts have labeled a “genocide in the making”). Meanwhile, India’s Hindu nationalist government continues the harsh oppression of its non-Hindu minorities: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and indigenous people.
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