Gaza’s agony and the moral collapse of the Israeli state

For almost a year now Israel has been carrying on a campaign against the helpless civilian population of Gaza. Ironically, those who tout themselves to be the victims of the Holocaust unleashed by the Nazis have shown no compunction in embarking on a spree of atrocities against the Palestinians in Gaza on the pretext of ensuring Israel's security.

So far they have killed around 55,000 civilians, mostly women and children, a murderous onslaught that has been branded as criminal acts of war and attempts at ethnic cleansing. Much of Gaza's infrastructure has been reduced to rubble, hospitals have been destroyed and the civil population has been driven to and from across the strip as though they were a herd of sheep.

The far-right fascist dispensation in Tel Aviv has been emboldened by the support extended to it by an equally right-wing government in Washington, which has repeatedly come to the former's aid in forums such as the UNSC. However, Israel cannot ignore the reality that a majority of the world is ranged against it, including the common people of the US, no matter that Trump is taking action against what he has designated as antisemitic campus violence.

Clearly, despite being outwardly defiant in the face of global condemnation, the inherent insecurity of the Tel Aviv regime is gradually seeping out, as reflected in its exaggerated response to the actions of some activists!

A group of them, including the world-renowned Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, had set out from Italy on June 1, their objective being less to deliver aid and more to rouse the conscience of the international community against the forcible starvation of the population of Gaza. It may be noted that for quite some time the Israeli authorities had blocked aid from reaching the Palestinians on the pretext that Hamas was taking advantage of aid agencies and siphoning off food and medicines meant for the entire population.

They have also set up a sea blockade of Gaza so that aid cannot get through, while they prioritised distribution through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by Israel and the US but widely condemned by humanitarian groups. Rather than handle the situation tactfully and sensitively, Israeli forces dramatically boarded the boat and towed it to the Israeli port city of Ashdod even while detaining the group of activists, which included citizens of Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey, and forcibly deporting them from Israel.

By adopting such tactics, the Israeli authorities played right into the hands of Thun-berg and her associates, who posted dramatic tweets and milked the episode for its publicity value!

However, such a response also exposed the inherent insecurity being felt by Tel Aviv, and indicated that the latter is becoming increasingly nervous about having to go against global opinion in one case after another.