Opinion | Apocalypse now: hell on Earth for Palestinians trapped in Gaza - video Dailymotion

South China Morning Post

Post managing editor Yonden Lhatoo highlights the horrors of the Israel-Gaza war and the sheer scale of death and destruction among defenceless Palestinian civilians in particular.

Transcript

00:00 So let me ask you this.

00:02 Hath not a Palestinian eyes, hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,

00:10 fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,

00:16 warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Jew is, if you prick them, do they not bleed?

00:23 If you tickle them, do they not laugh? If you poison them, do they not die?

00:27 And if you wrong them, shall they not revenge?

00:31 Apologies to Shakespeare there for taking liberties with his original wording,

00:40 but I couldn't think of a better way to get the point across.

00:43 First and foremost, let's get the all-important disclaimer out of the way

00:47 by unreservedly condemning what Hamas did to the Israelis on October 7.

00:52 The militant Palestinian organization that governs the Gaza Strip fired thousands of rockets at Israel

00:58 and then sent its fighters deep into Israeli territory where they massacred more than 1,400 people,

01:04 civilians and soldiers alike, before retreating with nearly 200 hostages.

01:09 This indiscriminate slaughter and kidnapping of innocents, including defenseless women and children,

01:15 was it an atrocity? Oh, absolutely.

01:18 Should we call it terrorism? Sure, why not?

01:21 Now let's address Israel's swift and terrible retribution, which has only just started

01:26 and nearly 4,000 Palestinians in Gaza are dead and still counting.

01:31 More than 1,500 of those killed were children.

01:34 How is it acceptable or justifiable by any measure that Palestinian children are being slaughtered every day

01:40 as Israeli warplanes carpet-bomb the Gaza Strip?

01:43 Keep in mind this is a narrow stretch of land just 41 kilometers long and 6 to 12 kilometers wide,

01:50 into which 2.3 million unfortunates are crammed and confined for life, short as that life may be.

01:57 Should we call this much larger massacre of innocents terrorism as well?

02:01 Not if you ask the Western world, and the US in particular,

02:04 the one country that wields the power and influence to stop this asymmetric exaction of vengeance,

02:09 as much as Israel has the right to hunt down and punish those responsible for the mass murder of its people.

02:16 We're not even going down the rabbit hole of history to look into how much, much more the Palestinians have suffered and lost,

02:22 or the root and recent causes and consequences leading us to this latest crisis in the Middle East.

02:28 I'm just focusing on this latest escalation because it could easily plunge the region into a wider war

02:34 that the world cannot afford and surely should not allow.

02:37 Surely this is something to contemplate for the US and its Western allies as they dominate the global narrative

02:43 and the megaphone muscle of the ever-compliant stenographers in the Anglo-Saxon legacy media,

02:48 granting Israel carte blanche to defend itself.

02:51 Pardon me for being unable to process how blowing babies to bits can be defense or defensible,

02:57 just as I can't fathom how gunning down children in their homes or young people at a music festival can be justified as resistance.

03:04 Sorry if I'm causing offense on both sides. It's the human in me, I guess.

03:09 Speaking of humanity, or the lack of it, in this zero-sum zeitgeist,

03:13 don't forget how American and European officials and politicians weaponized words like "sheer terror"

03:19 and "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" when they condemned the impact of Russia's war on Ukraine on civilian lives and infrastructure.

03:27 But the same concerns cannot be applied to the far worse plight of the Palestinians.

03:31 Why? Because they're not white?

03:33 Oh, and one more for cognitive dissonance.

03:36 I was given the distinct impression that the West cares really, really deeply for Muslims,

03:41 judging by its very, very vocal concerns about China's treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

03:47 So let me ask you this.

03:49 Aren't Palestinians Muslims too?

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Opinion | Apocalypse now: hell on Earth for Palestinians trapped in Gaza

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