6 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
The absurdity and horror of life in a time of genocide in Gaza
It happens with dread regularity: cooking dinner on the barbecue as the radio begins playing reports of starvation in Gaza.
My plate sickening me, revolting me.
I eat my lunch while the TV shows children with their brains blown out. I open social media on holiday and am confronted with the reality of genocide.
Human beings are being pounded with bombs, starved and then shot as they scrabble for food at aid stations. We're witnessing live-streamed genocide. This is hell.
I don't want to look away. I must look, because to not look is to not know, and we must know.
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I am not, I hope, a stupid man, or someone incapable of processing their emotions, but I don't know how to fit what I see, read and hear into the plodding reality of my day-to-day life.
I'm not sure what it says about my humanity that I can look at pictures of a land levelled to ash, then get in my car and go shopping.
There's an absurd horror to how we all - everyone and every government across the west - is responding to what's happening in Gaza and being done to the Palestinian people.
That sense of absurdity clashing up against horror reaches from the level of the lone individual - how a plate of food can accuse me like an indictment - to the level of a society or nation.
I watched the British satirist John Oliver on television this week feel compelled to prove to his viewers repeatedly - mounting evidence upon evidence - that Israel is starving the people of Gaza.
Why must he be made to do this? Can't we all see what's happening with our own eyes? Do we require proof recounted endlessly?
Britain arrests hundreds of ordinary men and women as terrorists for daring to hold signs reading: 'I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.'
These people are the conscience of our country. Many are elderly, respected in their communities.
It isn't an act of terrorism to speak out against genocide. It isn't an act of terrorism to defend an organisation which protests genocide. It isn't an act of terrorism to spray-paint planes in protest against genocide.
If Palestine Action members break laws of trespass or criminal damage, then charge them with that. Don't make terrorists out of protestors. Don't tell ordinary citizens they're terrorist sympathisers.
Palestine Action at Trump Turnberry (Image: Milo Chandler)
As protestors were dragged away by police, Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to increase the attack on Gaza. Dear God, what does that even mean? How can you increase what's already beyond bearing?
More than 50,000 children have been killed in Gaza. Yet only now is the British government preparing to 'urgently accelerate' efforts to bring around 100 badly injured children here for medical treatment.
Isn't this madness? Isn't it all madness?
Amid this absurdity in the face of unspeakable horror, Israel stands accused of crimes including genocide.
The World Health Organisation says starvation in Gaza is 'man-made'. Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières concluded that Israel is conducting genocide.
Israeli groups B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights say the country's conduct constitutes genocide. Israel is being investigated for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, says 'humanity is failing in Gaza … It should really shock our collective conscience … It will haunt us'.
Lord Sumption, a former UK Supreme Court Justice, said: 'Genocide is a question of intent. It means killing, maiming or imposing intolerable conditions on a national or ethnic group with intent to destroy them in whole or in part.
'Statements by Netanyahu and his ministers suggest that the object of current operations is to force the Arab population of Gaza to leave by killing and starving them if they stay. These things make genocide the most plausible explanation for what is now happening.'
The UN committee investigating 'Israeli practices affecting the human rights' of Palestinians said 'Israel's warfare in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide'.
In the wake of the Hamas October 7 atrocities which began this monstrous period of history, Netanyahu said: 'You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.' The quotation refers to God commanding the destruction of the Amalekites.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: 'We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.' Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel had 'returned Khan Yunis to the Stone Age'.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari boasted Gaza would be turned into a 'city of tents'. Politicians have variously called for 'erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth' and 'crushing and flattening Gaza'.
The former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel is 'committing war crimes'. He added: 'What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It's the result of government policy - knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.'
Israel's government denies the accusations against it, as do many of its supporters around the world and here at home.
One could go on: recounting the blood, the deaths, the accusations, the rebuttals. The absurd horror.
All I can see is mountains of dead. All I can see is once sensible people and governments standing in the shadow of crimes which history will never forget, too dumbfounded or scared or self-interested to act or speak up.
Why can't we just say what we see? We saw that Hamas committed monstrous acts and we rightly raised our voices in revulsion because our shared humanity demanded that response.
Since then monstrous acts have been committed by Israel and our shared humanity demands we respond with outrage.
Our shared humanity doesn't demand that we arrest those who speak in defence of the weakest. It demands that the hostages be freed, and it demands that the Palestinian people be freed with them.
Neil Mackay is the Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics
