It has been a year of erasing a people, systematically, ruthlessly and unrelentingly. A massacre here and another there. 500 killed yesterday and ‘only’ 140 today.
It has been a year of obliterating a culture, an identity and a collective memory. A year of levelling universities, libraries and museums. A year of burning archives, photographs and centuries-old manuscripts. A year of bombing mosques and churches.
It has been a year of rendering the land uninhabitable, inch by inch. An olive orchard bulldozed here and a water treatment plant bombed there.
It has been a year of unspeakable horrors for the children. An American surgeon said that “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.” Other doctors wrote about the children who were deliberately shot in the head or chest ‘..on a regular or even a daily basis.’ The iconic ‘Napalm Girl’ photo is said to have prompted the end of the Vietnam war. Today, we watch hundreds of images of maimed and burnt Palestinian children but none seems to herald an end to the inferno in Gaza.
It has been a year of killing those bearing witness. A year when a ‘Press’ helmet and vest became an invitation to the bullets of Israeli snipers and a death sentence.
It has been a year of ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ and ‘Human Shields’.
It has been a year of shame for Arab governments and rage on the Arab street. Mohammed bin Salman reportedly told Antony Blinken “Do I care personally about the Palestinian........