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September 18, 2025 by Jide Osuntokun
As I write, the Israeli army and air force is rolling into already pulverised Gaza. What is left is the full occupation of Gaza. Despite the opposition of about 70% of Israeli people and the leadership of the Israeli military and its intelligence and the vast international community, the government of Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to wipe out the two million Palestinians through direct military action, starvation and arrested procreation by ensuring the people of Gaza would be too distressed that the question of regular union between man and woman would be the last in the minds of people of Gaza as claimed by an independent committee charged to investigate the situation in Israel by the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations.
Already, there is a case filed by the government of South Africa before the world court over a year ago. At that time some people felt South Africa had no locus standi and that the country was jumping the gun so to say. But events in Gaza have now confirmed the charges of South Africa which is still pending. Although the UN is yet to ratify the committee report on genocide, it is certain the report will be confirmed. It is also certain that if it ever comes to UN Security Council, it will be vetoed by the United States. This is the hope of Israel that it can virtually do anything as long as President Donald Trump of the United States backs it, forgetting the ephemerality of the Trump presidency and that not the majority of Americans are in support. Netanyahu seems even to ignore the feelings of the majority of Americans which by all polling companies say they are worried by the direction of American foreign policy.
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Now the world is constantly hearing the word genocide which describes the scientific eradication of Jews in Europe from 1941 to 1945. It is ironic that Israel is being accused of committing the same thing and its prime minister and some members of its present right wing government. The only extenuating circumstance in this sordid situation is that the vast majority of Israelis in whose name rampant murders are being committed are loudly disowning the actions of the government. The question to ask is why the Netanyahu government is committing crime in the full glare of television. When the Nazi government of Germany did this to the Jews and others it rejected, it did this hoping that these murders will not be discovered. Israel is not trying to hide this as long as the Trump administration condones its actions and indeed supports it.
What worries me is its present United States’ Secretary of State, Marco Rubio who obviously is from the Latino minority is doing everything to please Trump and does not try to moderate the obviously wrong American direction that is alienating the global community. If this is what a former senator with considerable experience has to do to keep a job that he will be sorry in future when the Republican administration unravels.
Trump is having a smooth ride in the Middle East because the Arabs allow or shall we say, the corrupt Arab regimes which do not reflect the Arab street allow him because they are somehow dependent on American security support politically and financially. The US has troops for example in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar and the Mediterranean fleet which monitors the security situation in the Middle East. This is why the countries of the Middle East are not really free. Any of them that manifest true sovereignty is quickly destabilised and their leaders removed. The only country in the Middle East that tries to be truly free is Iran which from the time of Ayatollah Rumeini has suffered externally-engineered invasion by Iraq and internally mobilised religious and ethnic difference that have humbled its economy. Even far-afield Pakistan in spite of being a nuclear weapon state does not enjoy full sovereignty because of American political subterfuge. The political freedom enjoyed in previous times by Abdel Nasser’s regime and Syria’s Basher Assad’s is now forlorn history and this is why Israel is allegedly creating a Middle East in its own image where Israel has full control of the Middle East air with American and sometimes European support.
The problems Israel may have in the future when European security is decoupled from subservience to American command is that it will find itself facing a united Middle East detached from American control and in a world where American power is vastly diminished from its present global hegemony.
I write as a friend of Israel because as a Christian my religion says I should pray for the peace of Israel. But as a human being, I believe God also created the Palestinians. If I am to follow popular Christian interpretation of the Bible, Arabs are the descendants of Ismael while the Jews are descendants of Isaac, both of them are descendants of father Abraham. I cannot pray for one section of Abrahamic legacy and curse the other. I say this to satisfy those who base their arguments on crude scripture which I do not believe is sufficient to deny human rights to life to any particular people.
This reminds me of what Leopold Sedar Senghor, the first president of independent Republic of Senegal said about the “trilogy of suffering people, the African, Arabs and the Jews”. This feeling affected our foreign policy for years leading to Nigeria’s recognition of the State of Palestine and allowing its ambassador to be the doyen of all ambassadors in Nigeria based on his longevity of stay in Nigeria.
As we move closer to the next General Assembly of the United Nations in two weeks’ time when the EU and most countries in Europe recognize the existence of Palestine followed by the stampede of recognition by the rest of the world, Israel will remain completely isolated and alienated from the rest of the world. This will be a pity and unfortunate denouement for Israel which attracted the support of the whole of the world hitherto because the genocide committed against the Jews historically in Russia and Germany and the states hostility against them in Europe and the United States. The present wicked policy of murder committed against the Palestinians is now fuelling the rise of racism and antisemitism against innocent people of Jewish descent.
I just came back from visits to France, Spain, Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Ireland I noticed a perceptible and troubling hostility to Israel totally different from official relations of those countries with Israel. Parents were eager to protect their children from watching evening news disseminating killings by Israeli troops of defenceless women, children, elderly children labelled as terrorists. One is appalled by international global media parroting Israeli propaganda labelling these people being slaughtered as Hamas terrorists. The ongoing campaign of Israel in Gaza is totally unequal conflict between a modern army armed to the teeth with American and European weapons against a ragtag group of Arab murders which a well-trained mobile police force could have captured several months ago. To describe what is going on right now against poor people of Gaza as a war to root out 3000 Hamas is a misuse of words and portraying arrant murder and genocide committed against women and under age children as a war begs the question and shows a member- state of the United Nations disobey all the international protocols of war protecting children, women, elderly people and a civilian population and committing genocide because it has the United States backing is totally unbecoming of Israel for which Israel and the entire United Nations stand condemned and is condemned.
English (US)