Israel’s response to United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' remarks shows the country’s hostility and disdain for the opinions of the international community. US President Joe Biden also revealed the same attitude through another response of his. Pointing out that 'Hamas attack did not happen in a vacuum', Guterres sets the current crisis in its historical context. He explained that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”. The Israeli ambassador, who expressed his outrage, called for Guterres to resign, alleging that the UN chief “distorts and twists reality”. Israel is trying to cover up decades of history before October 7, to justify genocide. Before October 2023, the Israeli army and Israeli settlers killed 10, 555 Palestinians (including 2270 children and 656 women) in three years (September 2000 to September 2003), according to B'Tselem, (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, a Jerusalem-based NGO). Despite international law banning settlements in the occupied territories, 13,000 illegal settlements were built by Israel in the occupied Palestine in 2023 alone. Israel was established in 1948 by driving out millions of Palestinians. About 80 per cent of the people in Gaza today are the descendants of those who were rendered homeless back then. Those are people who cannot travel out of their own country; who do not have the freedom of travel within their homeland; who have restrictions on work, electricity and even water; and who experience frequent attacks and raids. Israel bombed Gaza’s water storage system and sewage treatment facilities in 2014 and banned the import of equipment required to repair it, says Oxfam. In 2020, the UN had reported that Gaza was unfit to live in.
Biden’s words align with the Israeli policy of covering up such diabolical practices. The Biden administration, which provides military, political and economic support to Israel required for carrying out mass slaughter, even insults the Gazans who get killed. After justifying that "innocents will be killed and that is the price of war”, Biden also cast doubt over the Palestinian death count. He said that he had “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.” Biden mocked those killed in the war and also those who were injured by stating that Palestine is exaggerating the death count. One can only feel pity for the US president who has stooped low to the level of the video trolls emerging from Israel. Independent observers and agencies are already convinced by the figures provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. UN agencies, international media and Israeli media all rely on those figures. Neither the Israeli government nor the army has questioned their figures in the countless battles that have taken place so far. It might be the inner guilt that might have compelled Biden to seek refuge in such a false sense of relief. The 212-page list released by the Palestine Health Ministry on October 27 is an answer to Biden’s doubts. The list which includes the names and addresses of 6,747 people killed by Israel so far, is yet another indictment against Israel and the US.
Israel, which has been occupying Gaza for decades, is now carrying out its slow-motion genocide openly. The Zionist state is holding not only the Palestinians at ransom, but also the world's etiquette and rules. The responsibilities of the occupying powers and the rights of the occupied territories are clearly stated in the international documents including those in the UN Charter. The occupying nation of Israel is responsible for safeguarding Palestinian soil from illegal settlements. It is barred from appropriating parts of it or depriving it of its right to internal self-determination. Israel is also obliged to respect the human rights of the Palestinians and ensure that there are no unjustified arrests, torture or collective punishments. It is the responsibility of the occupying power to provide the required food, health care and education facilities to the people in the occupied territory. The same international laws also grant certain rights to the people in occupied territories. This includes the right to resistance and struggle for independence until the end of the occupation. International laws including that of the UN clearly state that peaceful protests, non-cooperation and non-violent protests should be allowed for the people in occupied territories. Which of these obligations has Israel fulfilled? Which of the rights of the occupied community has it not violated? After carrying out land grabbing and annexation, denying fundamental freedoms, imposing its own laws and rejecting countless resolutions by the Security Council and others, Israel is now committing war crimes and genocide. The Zionist nation and its allies are defying not just the UN and the Secretary-General, but the world itself.