World condemns Israel for ‘collective punishment’ of Palestinians

THE State of Israel is earning global condemnation over its more brutal and deadlier response against the Palestinians living on the Gaza Strip in response to the attacks launched against its territories by the ‘Hamas’ early this month that killed over a thousand Israelis.

Videos and footages available on the Internet and as reported even by the Western corporate mainstream media showed hundreds of thousands of people– Muslims, Arabs and non-Muslim all over the world including Muslims in the Philippines– holding protest demonstrations to condemn Israel’s policy of ‘collective punishment’ against the Palestinians.

Gaza blockade harks back to Nazi siege of Leningrad

The immediate, brutal response by Israel leveled entire residential blocks in Gaza City that more than tripled the casualties suffered by the Palestinians since the Hamas launched its attack on Israel in the early hours of October 7, 2023.

Incidentally, the Hamas operation came exactly 50 years after the start of the ‘Yom Kippur War’ in 1973 when the armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan attacked Israel to force the ‘Two State’ solution between Israel and Palestine as approved by the United Nations General Assembly as far back as 1948.

While the initial reports said that the Hamas, an Arabic abbreviation for the ‘Islamic Resistance Movement,’ caused the death of over 1,400 Israelis and other foreign nationals when it started its assault on October 7, 2023, the latest numbers placed the number of Palestinians killed past 8,000 of which a huge number of them, some 3,000, were children.

About 9,000 more were wounded and at least 1.1 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes without food, water, electricity, medicines, and fuels due to the deliberate bombing and shelling by Israel of the entire Gaza Strip and its policy of allowing only a trickle of humanitarian assistance to enter the besieged city.

The most brutal attack committed by Israel—despite its official denial—was the missile strike at the Christian hospital of Ahli Arab in central Gaza last October 17. The Gaza Health Ministry said they counted 471 killed—many of them children—and over 300 more “critically wounded.”

The IDF said it was an “errant missile” of the Hamas (or Hezbollah) that landed at the hospital, but objective expert analysts not involved in the conflict said the missile that struck Ahli Arab was most likely a US-supplied ‘JAGM’ (joint air to ground missile), a precision guided missile that can be delivered by jet fighters.

Commenting on Israel’s denial, Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Affairs Minister of Russia, challenged the United States– which parroted Israel’s position that it only exercised its ‘right to self-defense after the October 7 Hamas attack– to show its satellite feeds of the situation in Gaza.

“Today everyone is talking about the tragedy in Gaza, where a hospital was attacked, hundreds of people were killed and hundreds more wounded.

“Why not ask the Americans for the satellite images of the attack, considering that they are undoubtedly monitoring the area?

“The strike could not have gone unnoticed,” Lavrov remarked during an interview last October 20, 2023, released by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, commenting on the destruction of Gaza City by the unrelenting and indiscriminate air strikes and shelling by Israel and its blockade of the city, likened the situation to the ‘Siege of Leningrad’ when the city was besieged by Hitler’s Germany in the early months of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

PH on wrong side of history again?

As the known American stooge this side of Asia, the Philippines said it would work for the designation of Hamas as a ‘terrorist organization’ under the country’s own Anti-Terrorism Law or RA 11479 after its attack on Israel last October 7.

In a statement last October 13, National Security Adviser Eduardo M. Año, said the move is to show the country’s “solidarity with the people of Israel.”

The Philippines’ blind adoption of all US foreign policies and its turning a blind eye on Israel’s atrocities is pushing it towards the wrong side of history and towards isolation even among its ASEAN neighbors. The result of the voting showed that only the Philippines stood alone in support of Israel and the US while the rest of ASEAN– Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam Laos, Singapore, Myanmar, Timor Leste, and Indonesia, voted in favor of the resolution. Cambodia, it appears, was absent during the session.

At the United Nations, the Philippines again showed its subservience to US Imperialism when it abstained from voting on a resolution tabled by Jordan last October 27, calling for “immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas. The main aim of the resolution is to safely bring in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians trapped inside Gaza that Israel continues to block.

The resolution was adopted by 120 countries, with the US and Israel leading the 14 countries opposed to the ceasefire. 45 countries, including the Philippines, abstained.

The result however proved meaningless after the US, a permanent member of the Security Council, vetoed the resolution, the only country to reject it in the 15-member Security Council.

Philippine foreign affairs secretary Enrique Manalo last October 30 was quoted in the media as saying the country took the fence-sitter position on the resolution as it failed to mention the Hamas attack on Israel last October 7 that also resulted to the collateral death of 4 Filipinos.

However, it should be noted that the exclusion of the Hamas was also the excuse given by the US and its allies in rejecting a ceasefire proposal first tabled by Russia before the Security Council last October 16.

The Philippines’ blind adoption of all US foreign policies and its turning a blind eye on Israel’s atrocities is pushing it towards the wrong side of history and towards isolation even among its ASEAN neighbors.

The result of the voting showed that only the Philippines stood alone in support of Israel and the US while the rest of ASEAN– Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam Laos, Singapore, Myanmar, Timor Leste, and Indonesia, voted in favor of the resolution. Cambodia, it appears, was absent during the session.