Netanyahu's terrorism

Palestinians are not statistics. That is how a United Nations official put it the other day even as Israel's air power rained down on Gaza. Palestinians are certainly not statistics. They are innocent people who have, in the past eight days, been murdered in their scores by forces unleashed by Benjamin Netanyahu. For the Israeli prime minister, civility and respect for the dignity of the individual, especially if the individual happens to be a Palestinian, has never mattered. He has now vowed to continue his mission of bombing Palestinian men, women and children to pieces, despite any and all condemnation of his behaviour.
Netanyahu only reinforces the long-held notion around the world of his country being a proper purveyor of state terrorism. Israel's leader has spoken of his resolve to break the backs of Hamas 'terrorists' who have been firing missiles into Israeli territory. The Hamas 'terrorists' have not killed Israelis. For his part, Netanyahu has had his military murder as many as 173 (the number keeps climbing) Palestinians in Gaza since Tuesday of last week. Israeli war planes have bombed civilian targets in Gaza as many as 1,300 times, destroying homes, laying streets and homes waste, burning up nature. A quarter of those the Israelis have killed have been children. Thousands of people injured in the air raids have ended up in hospitals in an already ailing Gaza.
Nothing of this affects Netanyahu and men like him. The Israeli government has warned that there will be no let-up in its ferocious attacks on Gaza until Hamas has been seen off or has retreated. Israel's prime minister has waved away US President Barack Obama's offer of an American role in a cessation of hostilities. He will not listen to reason, which raises the question of whether he can be stopped in his deadly campaign against Hamas. Unfortunately, none of his supporters in the West appear ready and willing to make him see reason. Beyond a pointless mouthing of concern, nothing has happened. No perceptible move against Israel's state terror can be seen in the UN. Such silence or such looking away from the actions of a predatory state, which men like Netanyahu and his extreme rightwing followers have reduced Israel to, only encourages the man in his killing missions.
Is Netanyahu getting away with it? For an answer, you need to survey the miserable state the Middle East has turned into in recent times. The Egyptians will do nothing, beyond expressing regrets, about bringing the crisis to a halt. The Libya of Muammar Gaddafi does not exist any more. The people of Syria, consumed as they are by a war that is haemorrhaging the country, have little time to come to the aid of the Palestinians. Amongst Palestinians, there have been leaders who have happily been waging war between and among themselves.
Netanyahu is therefore bubbling with confidence. His friends will not come in the way of the murders he is committing. His detractors are legion but scattered. It stands to reason, therefore, that Israel's leader will have little cause to draw back from his deadly mission. Like one of his predecessors, Ariel Sharon, he is determined to neutralise the Palestinians. Sharon failed. And there is precious little sign that Netanyahu will succeed where Sharon failed.
Israel's prime minister has clearly launched a war that is an eerie reminder of what Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic once did in Bosnia. If in places like Nigeria, the terrorist outfit Boko Haram is kidnapping people or killing them, in the Middle East today, Benjamin Netanyahu warns Palestinians to leave their homes because he needs to do some more bombing. And he does that in the manner of a man with an abundance of hubris and an inadequacy of shame.
Netanyahu is committing atrocities not different from the criminality extremist organisations have been causing elsewhere. He kills with impunity and with no thought to the consequences. It is what a warmonger does. It is what a war criminal does.
Had the world been without hypocrisy, Benjamin Netanyahu would be known as a war criminal. Even so, it ought to be the world's business to put him on a leash. Hitler was not stopped, Milosevic was not stopped, the Taliban were not stopped. Because they were not, fires raged around the globe and lives and countries were destroyed.
Netanyahu will destroy a whole world if the world remains indifferent to his criminal intent. There is the sinister in him. Letting him carry on will be a crying shame.