The U.S. Is Complicit in Slow-Motion Genocide in Palestine

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The U.S. Is Complicit in Slow-Motion Genocide in Palestine

November 18th, 2017

Awake Goy

Gaza remained under an Israeli air, sea and land blockade, in force since June 2007. The continuing restrictions on imports of construction materials under the blockade, and funding shortages, contributed to severe delays in reconstruction of homes and other infrastructure damaged or destroyed in recent armed conflicts. Continuing restrictions on exports crippled the economy and exacerbated widespread impoverishment among Gaza’s 1.9 million inhabitants. The Egyptian authorities’ almost total closure of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza completed its isolation and compounded the impact of the Israeli blockade.

The grisly results of this total isolation and blockade of Gaza is human suffering which is almost impossible to describe. As Noam Chomsky often explains, the result is that Gaza is now the “largest open-air prison in the world.”

According to the United Nations which puts it quite bluntly, Gaza will be “unlivable” by 2020 – that is, in just a couple short years. As the UN explains, “Gaza has continued on its trajectory of ‘de-development’, in many cases even faster than we had originally projected.” One of the biggest issues confronting Gaza, the UN explains, is the near total lack of electricity for its residents, which makes keeping food and many life-saving medicines impossible.

The truth is that, for many, Gaza is already unlivable. In a recent interview in the Israeli paper Haaretz entitled, “Gaza Kids Live in Hell: A Psychologist Tells of Rampant Sexual Abuse, Drugs and Despair,” trauma treatment expert Mohammed Mansour relates that the situation in Gaza has taken a drastic turn for the worse even in recent months. Dr. Mansour explains, in his most recent visit,

I encountered a large number of cases of sexual abuse among the children. That’s a phenomenon that has always existed, but in this visit, and also in the previous visit, in August, it suddenly reached far larger dimensions. It’s become positively huge. More than one-third of the children I saw in the Jabalya [refugee] camp reported being sexually abused. Children from ages 5 to 13.

Dr. Manour makes it abundantly clear that it is the Israeli blockade and the resulting “de-development” of Gaza that is leading to this dire situation:

Most people don’t work, and those who do, earn pennies – the average salary is 1,000 shekels a month [$285]. Mentally and physically, parents are simply not capable of supporting their children. They are immersed in their own depression, their own trauma. . . .

I’ve seen the starvation. I visit meager, empty homes. The refrigerator is off even during the hours when they have electric power, because there’s nothing in it. The children tell me that they eat once a day; some eat once every two days.

As Dr. Manour concludes, “[t]he trauma does not end and will not end. Adults and children live in terrible pain, they’re only looking for how to escape it. We also see growing numbers of addicts.”

Of course, while few in this country are willing to say it, this destruction of the very social fabric of Gaza is according to plan. Israel is intent on the destruction of the Palestinian people, and it is engaged in a slow, patient, but systematic genocide.

Given that the U.S. props up Israel with billions of dollars of annual military support, the U.S. too is responsible for this slow-motion genocide. And the citizens of the U.S. can no longer be silent as our tax dollars go to support this unspeakable crime. The plight of the Palestinian people cries out for justice – a justice which we must give them.