Crimes in the Darkness

As 2023 comes to a close it’s difficult to think about anything other than the wars that surround us. Violence has seeped into our everyday lives. The year started with the continuation of the grim attrition in Ukraine, the horrors of which receded into the background as Israel bombed Gaza in retaliation for the attacks by Hamas on October 7. It’s exhausting and debilitating being witness to this, and now the juxtaposition between the tinsel and the terror is brutal, especially as we come to celebrate a story of people seeking sanctuary in Bethlehem. People are tired. It is cold and the only source of heat is warming your hands on the bin-fire that is our social media.

It’s impossible to exaggerate the horror experienced by the people of Gaza over the last two months. As I write the macabre arithmetic is as follow: at least 20,000 people have been killed, including more than 8,000 children. At least 52,586 have been injured, including more than 8,663 children. More than 6,700 people are missing, among them 4,900 children. Among the dead were 96 journalists, 310 healthcare workers, and 35 civil defence workers.

In fact a new aspect of the ‘war’ is the deliberate targeting of journalists by the IDF. Abdullah Olwan lost his life in the Israeli attack on Jabalia Refugee Camp. This brings the number of killed journalists up to 96.

Abdullah Olwan

Speaking at a pro-Palestine protest in London, Husam Zomlot the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, said: “Israel targets journalists because its enemy is the truth. It wants to commit its crimes in darkness.”

Yet these crimes are not in the darkness. One of the dark ironies is that we are all – if we don’t turn away – watching this unfold before us. It’s partly due to the bravery of journalists on the ground, who are facing not just a war-torn bomb-site of unimaginable horrors, but the the threat of intimidation, violence and death by the Israeli occupying force.

This exposure may leave us stunned and acutely aware of our own impotence. In the west the guilty consensus may be crumbling in the face of the horror, but it is too little and too late for too many. There’s been talk for years of the first ‘social media war’ – the conflict that was the first to be livestreamed in real time. Various conflicts have made the claim.

But this isn’t a war, or if it is its one that’s so asymmetrical it doesn’t fit the description. So this is the first livestreamed genocide. That leaves us as individuals, as political leaders and as the ‘international community’ with problems that are moral, psychological and legal.

As Arundhati Roy has written: “If we say nothing about Israel’s brazen slaughter of Palestinians, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it. Something in our moral selves will be altered forever. Are we going to simply stand by and watch while homes, hospitals, refugee camps, schools, universities, archives are bombed, a million people displaced, and dead children pulled out from under the rubble? The borders of Gaza are sealed. People have nowhere to go. They have no shelter, no food, no water. The United Nations says more than half the population is starving. And still they are being bombed relentlessly. Are we going to once again watch a whole people being dehumanised to the point where their annihilation does not matter?”

One of the emerging realities exposed by the assault on Gaza is the lack of any real world order. The post Cold War world is one of brute force. You got enough military power? You can do whatever the fuck you want. You can say that is an eternal truth but the forces like the UN look increasingly bereft and hapless. This despite the overwhelming consensus on the need for a ceasefire and the best efforts of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, urging the UN Security Council to act on the war in Gaza.

Article 99 allows the secretary-general to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

In his letter to the council’s president, Guterres invoked this responsibility, saying he believed the situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, “may aggravate existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security”.

Guterres – who has been calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” since October 18 – also described “appalling human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories”.

Article 99 is a special power – and the only independent political tool given to the secretary-general in the UN Charter – that allows him to call a meeting of the Security Council on his own initiative to issue warnings about new threats to international peace and security, and matters that are not yet on the council’s agenda.

Of course the council’s five permanent members – China, Russia, the US, the UK and France – hold veto power. The US used that veto on October 18 against a resolution that would have condemned Hamas’s attack on Israel while calling for a pause in the fighting to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

That’s where we are.

As Arundhati Roy has it: “Today every bomb that is dropped by Israel on the civilian population, every tank, and every bullet has the United States’ name on it. None of this would happen if the US wasn’t backing it wholeheartedly. All of us saw what happened at the meeting of the UN Security Council on December 8 when 13 member states voted for a ceasefire and the US voted against it. The disturbing video of the US Deputy Ambassador, a Black American, raising his hand to veto the resolution is burned into our brains. Some bitter commentators on the social media have called it Intersectional Imperialism.”

If the international order is moribund all we can do is put pressure by supporting those giving aid, take part in mass protest, show solidarity and join the movement for boycott and divestment, and blockade arms. This is what it takes to stay human this winter.

Few other opportunities exist, although DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now), founded by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his 2018 assassination, has submitted a dossier on “the officers and commanders responsible for executing Israel’s war in Gaza” to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

According to DAWN:

“At the top of the list of suspects is Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. On October 9, 2023, Gallant ordered a complete siege on Gaza City, cut off the supply of potable water to the entire population of the Gaza Strip—over 2 million people—and blocked the entry of humanitarian aid. “We are fighting human animals and we’ll act accordingly,” the defense minister said, explaining the decision. One day later, he told Israeli troops on the Gaza border: “I have released all the restraints… Gaza will never return to what it was.”

Also included is the head of COGAT (the Israeli military’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian. Maj. Gen. Alian is responsible for administering the siege of Gaza, and was responsible for cutting off the supply of water, food, and fuel in the early days of the war. On October 10, 2023, Alian said in an Arabic-language video message to the civilian population of Gaza that Israel was imposing a total blockade, “no electricity, no water, just damage,” adding a chilling warning, “You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

This is perhaps the most hopeful way forward, though it exists in a context of moral depravity and desperate need. Is there another source of light in the darkness?