Israeli airstrikes across Gaza killed scores of people overnight, as fears grow of the military campaign intensifying in the southern city of Rafah, a tiny pocket of the territory where more than a million people are sheltering.
Amid intensifying divisions in Israel’s government over the war, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was expected to arrive in the region on Sunday, his fifth trip since the militant group attacked Israel on 7 October, killing at least 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage.
Blinken is expected to spend the week visiting Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the West Bank to discuss a deal to secure the freedom of at least 136 remaining hostages in Gaza and a ceasefire intended to calm regional tensions, particularly in the Red Sea.
I am not being disingenious. I am being realistic.
Any bomb dropped on Gaza is a bomb dropped on a high populous area.
Some estimate that as many as ten million people died in the Congo Free State. Historians generally agree that what happened doesn’t meet the 1948 UN definition of genocide, because it requires intent and intent is hard to prove.
Another example: the Dasht-i-Leili Massacre. A US allied war lord stuffed thousands Taliban prisoners into metal containers, up to 250 per container. American troops were present when it happened. Oopsie doodle. It got a bit hot in the metal containers. It is likely that up to 2000 of them died from heat exhaustion and/or suffocation (and the occasional bullet). No one was ever convicted.
Remember former defense secretary Colin Powell? His meteoric rise started after he helped white wash the My Lai massacre.
Remember that time US soldiers gunned down Reuters journalists and laughed about it? Good news: they convicted someone for that. Bad news: they convicted the person who leaked the footage, Chelsea Manning.
This is how the world works. This is the standard of behaviour you can expect from militaries.
Which is probably why the Israelis will eventually get away with their crimes, just as other countries have before them. They can simply claim they were attempting to bomb Hamas, and that all those who have died are collateral damage. Don’t get your hopes up about the ICJ case. The fact that they didn’t push for an immediate cease fire should be enough to convince you of that. The world isn’t fair.
On a related note: the police are less nice than their portrayal in Brooklyn 99 would lead you to believe.