The world's paramount terrorist state

The state of Israel has, till this point, murdered nearly 1,600 Palestinians in Gaza. Twenty-six days, till the writing of this report, have gone by. And yet the ferocity exemplified by Benjamin Netanyahu and his men has not subsided. They say they are destroying Hamas weapons and tunnels. They do not speak of the lives they have put an end to. Their friends in the Obama administration condemn the shelling of the United Nations school, where hapless Gazans had earlier taken shelter, and the deaths caused by the raid. But they do not condemn the criminality of the Israeli government. Indeed, the US administration remains "committed" to the "security" of Israel. The security of ordinary Palestinians does not appear to be its concern.

Between 2008 and 2019, as estimates suggest, the United States will have provided military aid to the tune of $30 billion to Israel. There are reports, as Israel shoots down Gazans, that fresh arms will be on the way for the Netanyahu outfit. The deaths of children and their parents, the hasty burials, the endless fear of the transience of life as Israeli missiles rain down on Gaza do not matter. Not even the outrage expressed by the UN secretary general matters. The Israeli military machine has no time to pause. And Benjamin Netanyahu does not see the irony in a Jewish state, all these decades after the atrocities committed against Europe's Jews by Hitler's Nazi goons, cheerfully taking the lives of people whose homeland it commandeered in May 1948.

It is a government based on callousness and insensitivity Netanyahu presides over. The terrorism that Israel showers on Gaza, on the Middle East, pales before the putatively roguish behaviour of such states as Saddam's Iraq or Gaddafi's Libya or Taliban-run Afghanistan. There is little scope for politeness here. Under Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk, Israel has swiftly mutated into the world's paramount terrorist state. It has targeted the power station in Gaza, leaving fearful Gazans with no more than two hours of electricity every forty-eight hours. It has, through its pounding of innocent people in a conflict that is more the murder of a nation than a war against an enemy, left Palestinians worrying about supplies of food. The absence of electricity has led to a crisis in water supply, for the water Gazans need must be brought up from underground sources by power pumps. The destruction of homes and schools and other structures has, besides killing hundreds, left many more hundreds, perhaps thousands, badly wounded. The medicines they need are in a state of fast depletion.

The world watches. Those states that are quick to slap sanctions on nations they think are guilty of human rights violations or are ignoring the need for democracy, feel little need to impose sanctions on Israel. They look away from its brazen behaviour in Gaza. Large sections of the media in these states focus on Hamas terrorism. Israel, for these embedded journalists, is under assault. That is the lie being peddled before the world. The truth is something else: the deaths of 63 Israeli soldiers at the hands of Hamas are a hint of how Israel might be tying itself in knots. If Hamas has not been defeated in 26 days, what guarantee is there that it will bite the dust in the next 26 days?

And there lies the dilemma for Netanyahu. He cannot defeat Hamas, which is why he does the next best thing: he bombs sleeping Gazan children to death. As Israel's monstrosity expands in Gaza, one recalls the war criminals in 1940s Europe and Japan, in 1990s Africa, in 1990s Europe. Hitler, Tojo, Taylor, Milosevic and Mladic paid or are paying for their sins.

It is now time to identify the world's newest war criminal, none other than Benjamin Netanyahu. He happens to be leading a militarily sophisticated terrorist state called Israel, one that is today a clear threat to stability around the world.