US-backed Israel's genocide of Palestinians continues.
On May 27, the settler state carried out an air strike at a displacement camp in Rafah, days after following an order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt all military operations in Gaza's southernmost city. The attack killed at least 45 people according to Reuters, a count that includes many women and children. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported many of them burned alive inside their tents.
As it wasn't any clearer before this new wave of undignified killings, Israel, the United States, and all that supported this genocide should be considered the current greatest threat to peace and humanity. With the nature of violence they are inflicting in the name of colonialism, their actions are nothing short of barbaric and they belong nowhere in our civilized world.
Desecration
Immediately following the air strike, videos appeared online of a headless child helplessly carried by a crying man, another of people pulling out burned and melted corpses from piles of ashes and cloths, smoke and blood-stained rubble lit in orange by the fire of their burning tent city.
Earlier in this genocide, images of corpses flattened by Israeli tanks; a video of a child hanging from a broken wall, her lower half gone; and a baby whose bones are nearly visible from their skin because of starvation.
These scenes have persisted for almost 8 months now since October 2023 and still, the governments of the world have done little to stop the maniacal terrorists in Israel from bombing children. In fact, Israel has repeatedly turned down any hostage deals with the resistance group Hamas in exchange for the end of the violence.
Add to this the TikTok videos of Israeli soldiers in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) documenting their exploits in Gaza—smiling as they bomb entire neighborhoods, universities, and museums. They even posted themselves looting houses and stealing pieces of jewelry and women's clothes.
The atrocities that Israel is deliberately committing are a perversion of humanity that must be stopped by all means possible. Condemnation is not enough and at this point in their suffering, it does little to stop the storm of bombs in Gaza.
Hope
Israel has shown no remorse other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's admitting of the latest Rafah massacre as a "tragic mistake." Empty words from the face of this genocide as he found no mistakes when bombing aid trucks, killing Palestinian journalists, and dropping bombs on United Nations displacement camps. This is deliberate.
Even with multiple calls for a ceasefire from various governments, Israel has enjoyed immunity with the protection of the United States' veto power in the United Nations. The worldwide system has shown itself essentially useless to stop the continued killing of innocents. Nothing else can describe this better than an apocalypse of the moral world.
While the systems currently in place only serves a few people, the rest of us are resisting.
From protests and marches in the streets to encampments and boycotts in the schools, there is a clear moral hope for the world as millions of people are resisting their governments' suppressive orders against anti-genocide protests and risking their safety to speak up and speak out against Israel's genocide.
The hope for a better world cannot lie in Palestine's freedom alone, but it is hard to deny that there is now an equivalence of the fight for Palestine's liberation to the fight for worldwide systemic oppression of the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the world's ethnic groups. It is also right to see that a win against the US and its colonial puppet, Israel, would be a win against this evil system that allowed a child to be decapitated.
Liberation
The call now goes beyond a ceasefire. After years of Israeli celebration of Palestinian suffering, coexistence shouldn't be an option anymore. After videos of Israelis blocking aid trucks from entering the starving citizens of Gaza, coexistence isn't possible anymore. When a significant number of Israelis support their government's genocide whether in action or silence, coexistence is a word that supports the continuation of oppression and suffering in the region.
For Palestine to be free from the river to the sea, the occupying entity must be dismantled. Long time has passed for the proposed two-state solution. If not for the grudges that will never heal, it is simply because Israelis wouldn't magically treat their neighbors well; they worked so hard to dehumanize and destroy every chance they could.
Peace can only be achieved through liberation, and Palestine can only be truly liberated by dismantling Israel's colonial settlement.
The world that emerges after the fall of the colonizers must also learn from the failures of denazification in Hitler's Nazi Germany so Netanyahu's Zionist Israel cannot take hold again in another form.
In the meantime, there is a need to continue making the loudest noise possible to rouse people to see the genocide unfolding in Gaza. Eyes aren't enough. This isn't a trend that pops up every time a bloody massacre is committed. The calls to stop this genocide must be sustained and must be disruptive so it permeates every sleeping corner of our society.
The massacre in Rafah last May was not the first and it will not be the last until Israel is completely stopped. Stopping the genocide and forcing colonizers out of the region is the only way to achieve peace and stability. It is the only path to restore the humanity we lost by letting the inhumane attacks in Gaza.
Like Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." But with lives on the line and an entire people under threat of elimination, it matters greatly to force the arc to its bend a little faster.
Article: Christian John Argallon
Cartoon: Kurt Aguilar Mendez
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