Genocide & ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza by zionist state of Israel

by Koh Kay Yew

The attack by Hamas on Israeli villages and defence posts on the border with Gaza on October 6th 2023, did not just occur like a thunderbolt from heaven.

Hamas is the cutting edge of Palestinian national resistance against the ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies of the Zionist State of Israel (since its foundation in 1948) that have treated even Palestinian citizens of Israel as second-class citizens and dehumanized Palestinians living in Gaza and West Bank under a sixteen years-long siege through tight restriction of food, fuel, medicine, building materials and equipment, and even water at Israeli controlled security checkpoints on the border.

Ilan Pape, a leading Israeli academic and critic, has described Gaza as the biggest open-air museum in the world and wrote extensively on the ethnic cleansing policy of Palestinians by Israel in order to progressively acquire and absorb what’s left of Palestine (only 26% of their original territory)  into the Zionist state since its founding in 1948.

The 225 sq miles of Gaza is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, three-quarters of whom survive barely on UnWRA aid due to the high unemployment and lack of economic opportunities created by the destruction of factories and businesses in the past sixteen years of repeated Israeli invasions and bombardments (2006, 2012, 2014).

In spite of her long western border with the Mediterranean Sea, fishing by Palestinian fishermen is restricted only to a three-mile limit where the catches are poor due to over-exploitation.

Even prior to the current conflict, the living conditions in Gaza was described as “uninhabitable for humans” by various international aid agencies, including the U.N.

Living conditions in the West Bank are marginally better as the Palestinian Authority led by Ferhat Abbas acts as the security subcontractor of Israel to ensure local compliance in return for thirty pieces of silver.

Even here, Palestinians have no freedom of movement beyond Israeli security checkpoints and often experience illegal and continuous expropriation of their land and properties to accommodate the endless expansion of new Israeli settlements protected by the Israeli Army.

Though initially much larger than Gaza, the West Bank is now sliced into three parts (A, B, and C), with one part for Palestinians, one part for Israelis, and the third part for no man’s land).

The Palestinian villages are often separated by new highways that only Israeli vehicles are allowed, and movement is restricted by multiple security checkpoints open only at limited times each day.

Hamas was founded in 1987 and is part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its headquarters is in Gaza City and it is generously funded by Qatar.

Even Netanyahu was complicit in facilitating and enabling its genesis as part of his strategy to split the Palestinian resistance led by the PLO under Yasser Arafat.

Besides its military arm, Hamas manages an extensive network of social services. It was freely elected by the residents of Gaza in 2006.

In a recent interview, the former Director of the British MI6 stated that while it is feasible to kill Hamas military leaders, it is not possible to eliminate Hamas as an idea and as a movement.

For any foreign government leader to allege that Hamas attacked Israel to provoke death and destruction on their own people revealed a total lack of historical understanding and gross ignorance of realities.

The leadership of Hamas was absolutely correct in exhorting Palestinian residents in the north of Gaza to stay in their homes and ignore the Israeli warning to move south for their own safety.

Though many were intimidated into doing so, they found no security as the south was not spared from Israeli bombardment.

Even worse, the addition of so many outsiders to the existing overcrowded and unsanitary conditions enhanced the risk of public disease and higher fatalities.

The southward migration of Gazans was just part of a second ‘Nakba” designed to intimidate and push the entire 2.3 million Palestinians out of Gaza into refugee camps across the border in the Golan Heights of Egypt to enable the acquisition and absorption of Gaza into Israel!

As the released women hostages testified on TV - it was the Israeli government’s own gross negligence in failing to detect and protect their border from Hamas’ incursion that was responsible for the 1400 Israelis killed on October 6th.

Israeli border security had been diluted by the diversion of the Army to protect the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Hamas fighters who crossed the border knew they were on a suicide mission but were prepared for martyrdom in return for Palestinian liberation.

The Israeli death toll has stagnated at 1400, but Palestinian fatalities have soared to over 8400 as of October 31st 2023, with an additional unknown number buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, including hospitals. The majority killed included 3500 children, primarily women, and entire families.

Singapore rightly voted with the overwhelming majority of 120 member states of the United Nations General Assembly in a non-binding resolution for an ‘Immediate Ceasefire’. Our close and cosy relations with Israel did not cloud nor impair our moral and principled judgment.

Given the many well-staffed and funded think tanks that we are endowed with, let us hope they will provide insightful and strategic guidance to our government in the years ahead to navigate the higher global turbulence and uncertainties.

The greatest human tragedy is unfolding before our eyes. The lives of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are effectively coming to an end.

Those who survived the present carnage, especially children will suffer from PTSD and shorter life expectancy from the uninhabitable living conditions they are forced to endure for prolonged periods.

They will become “the Walking Dead”. The utter hypocrisy and double standards of the West in condemning Russian ‘genocide’ in Ukraine are conspicuously silent over Gaza, notwithstanding unprecedented mass protests in the streets by their residents, including many of Jewish origin, especially youth.

Neither can the Zionist state of Israel prevail in their ethnic cleansing in spite of their impunity to act as they wish without observing any so-called “rules-based order”, under the patronage of US imperial power.

There are just too many Palestinians (about 7 million) living in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, to be exterminated by any genocide planned by Zionist Israel, nor can their national resistance and resilience be domesticated in any apartheid system of ‘bantustans’ as attempted unsuccessfully in South Africa.

US special forces are now actively engaged in coordinating and guiding the Israeli land invasion of Gaza based on their experience in the capture of Mosul, which took nine months and cost 14,000 Iraqi lives.

It is unlikely that Israel will enjoy a similar time span for success, given the enflamed passions of the Muslim majorities in the Middle East, where rising tensions threaten domestic stability. Only time will tell if and when war will break out on multiple new fronts.

Given the Muslim majority population of our immediate neighbours too, will our national leadership rethink and reconsider a realignment of our values and sentiments with those of the rest of Nusantara? Or do we remain in a fossilized past under the security umbrella of US/Western Imperial power?

Let us hope and pray that the road to our continued social stability and prosperity will be through an enlightened integration with the region and not as a sub-contractor of Western Imperial power.

This op-ed is in response to Mdm Ho Ching’s Facebook posting on October 16, 2023.