Over 11,000+ Palestinians have been killed by the state of Israel in the last month, not taking into consideration the thousands of people lost in the rubble. That’s 1 in every 200 people just to put it into perspective. In just one month, “the number of Palestinian children reported killed in Gaza in just three weeks has surpassed the annual number of children killed across the world’s conflict zones since 2019,” There’s no denying that Israel is raging genocide on Palestine.
Genocide is when acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Israel’s intention is to destroy Palestine and eradicate its people from existence, falling right into the genocide definition, and this isn’t anything new either.
Back in 1948, we saw the Nakba, a significant moment in history which truly acted as the catalyst for the ongoing injustice suffered by the Palestinians. Back in 1998, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli foreign minister stated, “Everybody has to move; run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements, because everything we take now will stay ours. Everything we don't grab will go to them."
A few years later, his son Gilad Sharon echoed his thoughts, “We need to flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima—the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.”
Israel has intended to remove Palestine from existence for the last 75 years. It’s nothing new, the only difference now is we have the means and resources to bring their non-humanitarian actions and war crimes to light.
The very reason why Zionists and pro-Israel supporters turn a simple innocent chant, like, ‘From the River to the Sea’ into something violent like ‘Destroy Israel’ is because they are projecting their very own intentions.
It’s easy to blame Hamas, cause it’s easy to associate such crimes and horrors with a smaller more niche group, rather than accepting that a whole state can be this harmful. The Hamas attack on Israel may have been unlawful and horrific but it surely wasn’t unprovoked. It was a retaliation to years of oppression and the murder of Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis.
Many people want to take a neutral standpoint and claim they don't want to ‘pick sides’, but there are no sides to pick. While Palestinians die in the thousands without access to healthcare and, the internet and who are living in fear every day, people in Israel are making TikTok skits mocking those having to live in rubble watching their loved ones die. Israeli propaganda has however ensured that the residents of Israel as well as a lot of Western media consumers are led to think differently.
Now, Israel claims it has a right to the land of Palestine, but regardless of who you think the land belongs to these war crimes can’t be excused. However, many believe that there’s a darker secret behind Israel’s pursuit of Palestine and that is Palestine’s forgotten oil and gas resources.
A UN report published in 2019, revealed that “The total oil and gas reserves were valued at a staggering $524 billion” - all of which Israel does not have sole legal entitlement to. After all Israel does have a history of wanting to be at the top of the international food chain and an extra $500 billion would do just that.
The internet is pushing new information at us every day, which can be both overwhelming and hard to decipher. Ultimately making it difficult to understand the various ways that you can support Palestine, here are just some ways you can help:
Donate to the Save the Children campaign
Donate to Islamic Relief
Join weekly Saturday marches hosted by Palestine Solidarity UK - updates on protests and demonstrations are posted on their Instagram page.
Sign a government petition
The world has failed Palestine, thus it is our duty as a society to do better by them even if governments won’t.
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