Now is the time to declare Israel a ‘terrorist state’
Last Updated on April 30, 2024 4:10 am
Israel, known as the ‘cancer of the Middle East’, is mainly responsible for the conflicts and conflicts that are going on throughout the Middle East. The country does not care about any international law. The Netanyahu government has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza in the last six months.
Dead bodies are still being recovered from the rubble every day in Gaza under the Israeli occupation. The United Nations says that it will take about 14 years to repair and restore the amount of housing that has been damaged in Palestine since October 7.
The evidence of mass graves found in Khan Yunis is enough to understand the horror of Israel’s brutality in Gaza. Israeli soldiers have killed people like crazy. More than 350 bodies of people have been recovered from that mass grave.
Currently, the population of the Gaza Strip is more than 2.3 million. About 95 percent of these people are food insecure.
A few days ago, Israel’s conflict with Iran also created tension in the Middle East. Israel attacked Iran first. The Iranian consular building in Syria was attacked. Several Iranian officials died in it. Enraged by this, Iran also attacked Israel. Israel has a conflicting relationship with Iran.
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu the butcher of Gaza on Sunday. He compared Netanyahu to German Nazi leader Hitler.
Israel recently launched an operation in Rafah, Palestine. Before this campaign, the whole world banned the country. Israel launched an attack on Rafah without responding to the call of its biggest ally, the United States. Analysts then said that Israeli leaders had gone astray.
What does ‘extremist state’ mean?
In the international context, an extremist state means a state that does not obey any international law. Create chaos regionally or internationally without regard for any rules. However, Western political interests determine which country will be given this title. This term has been in use since the time of Bill Clinton.
After 9/11 in 2001, the US launched a campaign against terrorism. Although through this basically the anti-western states which did not obey the international law were given the title of extremist states.
In this era of globalization, it is the demand of the time to award Israel with the title of radical state. Because the country is the root of chaos in the entire Middle East. The country has violated all limits of international law by conducting genocide in Gaza.
Why should Israel be called a ‘terrorist state’?
International institutions and organizations have emerged to establish peace in the world. The objective of international law is the same. All states agreed to adopt and make laws to avoid chaos. But Israel is constantly undermining these laws.
Israel launched an attack on Gaza on October 7 last year. So far 14 thousand children have died in this attack. According to the international human rights organization Oxfam, Gaza has the highest daily death toll of any conflict in the 21st century.
In Gaza, the operation carried out 900 attacks on health facilities. Israel has killed about 700 medical workers. 26 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been destroyed.
Israel raids Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, claiming it has a Hamas military base. During the two-week operation, all the modern medical equipment there was destroyed.
When the Israeli soldiers were leaving after the operation, crows were seen eating the meat from the corpses. Then hundreds of bodies were found in mass graves.
Human rights workers who work to help starving people are not exempted from Israeli brutality. About 200 such workers have died in the last six months.
Israel has violated any laws?
Article 79 of the Geneva Convention states that journalists and civilians may not be killed during war. But it was found that almost all of the victims of Israel’s attacks were civilians. They also killed journalists in a well-planned manner. Even the journalists’ families were not spared. According to the data, 75 percent of the journalists killed in 2023 will be in the Israeli military operation in Gaza.
Israel is desperate to start a war with the United States in the Middle East. The country attacked Lebanon 4 thousand 733 times after October 7.
The country killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRDC) in an attack on the Iranian consulate. Several other leaders also died.
Israel does not care about the opinion of the majority in the UN General Assembly. Last December, 153 countries voted in favor of a Hamas-Israel ceasefire. Only 10 countries voted against the proposal. However, Israel did not agree to a ceasefire.
On March 25, only the United States voted for a resolution raised in the UN Security Council to stop Israel’s aggression in Palestine. The remaining 14 countries voted against Israel. Still the country is not stopping.
Recently countries like Canada, Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Belgium have also suspended arms sales to Israel. This shows that providing arms to Israel means blocking the way to Palestinian liberation.
Original Author: Somdeep Sen, Associate Professor, Department of International Development Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark
Translation: Sajib Hossain
Source: Al-Jazeera