By Babatunde Jose
Six months into the Israeli genocide in Gaza, facts are getting clear to the whole world, especially Western Europe and ‘grandpa’ United States that things are not what they thought it would be. There is no doubt they are all having a rethink about their initial support for Israel. Today, many European nations are not comfortable with the tag ‘supporters of genocide’ and with the United States have started sending cautionary signals to Netanyahu. But despite these, the United States and the West remain the major supplier of arms to Israel, hence, its continued intransigence in the face of world condemnation.
More than 33,000 people have been killed in Gaza, 70% of them children and women. 60% of Gaza stands destroyed and laid to waste. A destruction never before witnessed in modern time.
Of those killed in the Israeli air and artillery attacks on the Strip, 28,951 (92%) were civilians, including 12,345 children, 6,471 women, 295 health personnel, 41 civil defense personnel, and 140 journalists. Meanwhile, 61,079 individuals have been injured, hundreds of them critically.
Approximately 2 million or 85% of the total population of the Strip have been displaced from their homes and residential areas amid a lack of safe shelters.
The facilities that have been targeted by Israel include 320 schools; 1,671 industrial facilities; 183 health facilities, including 23 hospitals, 59 clinics, and 92 ambulances; 239 mosques; three churches; and 170 press offices.
Israel continues to escalate its military assaults against Palestinian civilians in an apparent attempt to expand its territory to include the entire Gaza Strip, uprooting the vast majority of the Strip’s population.
Israel is deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in order to cause as many casualties, material losses, and as much general destruction as possible as a form of retaliation and collective punishment. This is against international humanitarian law, the 1949 Geneva Convention, and amounts to war crimes according to the Rome Statute, which governs the International Criminal Court. This is tantamount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Unfortunately for Israel, the children that survive today’s genocide are the potential Hamas of tomorrow. There will never be an end to the state of war. Israel will never know peace nor sleep with two eyes closed. It must learn to live in peace with the Palestinians.
In 1939 Europe’s Jewish population was around 9.5 million people, and it is estimated that six million of these were ultimately slaughtered by 1945 by the German machine.
In an ironic twist of history, Germany that was responsible for the genocide of over 6 million Jews is today a major supplier of weapons of genocide to Israel for the purpose of exterminating Palestinians. What has the world turned to?
According to a BBC report Western governments are coming under growing pressure to halt arms sales to Israel over how it is waging the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is a major weapons exporter, but its military has been heavily reliant on imported aircraft, guided bombs, and missiles to conduct what experts have described as one of the most intense and destructive aerial campaigns in recent history.
Campaign groups and some politicians among Israel’s Western allies say arms exports should be suspended because, they say, Israel is failing to do enough to protect the lives of civilians and ensure enough humanitarian aid reaches them.
Recently, the UN Human Rights Council backed a weapons ban, with 28 countries voting in favour, six against and 13 abstentions. The US and Germany – which account for the vast majority of Israel’s arms imports – both voted against.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, which killed about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, according to Israeli tallies.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated military in the world.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 69% of Israel’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023.
The US provides Israel with $3.8bn (£3bn) in annual military aid under a 10-year agreement that is intended to allow its ally to maintain what it calls a “qualitative military edge” over neighbouring countries.
Israel has used the grants to finance orders of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, a stealth aircraft considered the most advanced ever made. It has so far ordered 75 and taken delivery of more than 30 of the aircraft. It was the first country other than the US to receive an F-35 and the first to use one in combat.
Part of the aid – $500m annually – is set aside to fund missile defense programs, including the jointly developed Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling systems. Israel has relied on them during the war to defend itself against rocket, missile, and drone attacks by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.
Since the start of the war, only two US military sales to Israel have been made public after receiving emergency approval – one for 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth $106m and the other for $147m of components to make 155mm artillery shells.
But US media report that President Joe Biden’s administration has also quietly made more than 100 military sales to Israel, most falling below the dollar amount that would require Congress to be formally notified. They are said to include thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, and small arms.
One deal that is large enough to require Congressional notification is the $18bn sale of up to 50 F-15 fighter jets. Congress has not yet approved the deal.
Even though the aircraft would need to be built from scratch and would not be delivered immediately, the sale is expected to be hotly debated by Democratic Party, many of whose representatives in Congress and supporters are increasingly concerned by Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has said she is prepared to block the deal and has accused Israel of “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza.
The US has reportedly allowed Israel to draw artillery shells from its reserve stockpile there, Israel is also home to a vast US army depot set up in 1984 to pre-position supplies for its troops in case of a regional conflict, as well as to give Israel quick access to weapons in emergencies.
Stockpiled munitions in the US. Military depot in Israel has reportedly been freely supplied since the start of the Gaza war.
Germany is the next biggest arms exporter to Israel, accounting for 30% of imports between 2019 and 2023, according to SIPRI.
As of early November, the European nation’s weapons sales to Israel last year were worth €300m ($326m; $257m) – a 10-fold increase compared with 2022 – with the majority of those export licenses granted after the 7 October attacks.
Components for air defense systems and communications equipment accounted for most of the sales, according to the DPA news agency.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been a staunch supporter of Israel’s right to self-defense throughout the war and, although his tone on Israeli actions in Gaza has shifted in recent weeks and there has been some debate in Germany, the arms sales do not appear to be at risk of suspension.
Italy is the third-biggest arms exporter to Israel, but it accounted for only 0.9% of Israeli imports between 2019 and 2023. They have reportedly included helicopters and naval artillery.
Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told parliament last month that Italy had honored existing contracts after checking them on a case-by-case basis and ensuring “they did not concern materials that could be used against civilians”.
The UK’s arms exports to Israel are “relatively small”, according to the UK government, amounting to only £42m ($53m) in 2022.
The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) says that since 2008, the UK has granted arms export licenses to Israel worth £574m ($727m) in total.
Much of those are for components used in US-made warplanes that end up in Israel. But the British government is coming under growing pressure to suspend even those exports.
But a senior government source has said an arms embargo on Israel was “not going to happen”.
However, as the genocide in Gaza continues, the situation continues to prick the conscience of many people and nations so much so that the Government of South Africa took the matter to the International Court of Justice at the Hague, accusing Israel of genocide. However, it has since been realized the as with most UN organs, ‘talk is cheap’, they cannot walk the talk as they lack means of enforcing their judgement.
Recently the Government of Nicaragua approached The Hague, on a similar mission demanding that the Court sanction Israel and stop the genocide, accusing Germany specifically of supplying weapons of genocide to Israel. Nothing will probably come out of it.
Even in the United States some Democrat senators have petitioned President Biden to order a halt to the sale of weapons to Israel.
Unfortunately, all the protests and marches all over the world have failed to yield any result, except that people are standing up to be counted. It is rather bizarre that Nigeria, the foremost anti-apartheid nation of old and a major leader of ECOWAS and EU has remained mute on the issue. Not even a pim. Who or what are we afraid of? If ‘Free Palestine’ is too heavy for us to say, then we need not wonder why our people continue to suffer and wallow in poverty, penury, and impoverishment in their own land. The government just doesn’t care and is not bothered by the plight of its people not to talk of the suffering of Palestinians.
With all the opportunities of economic leverage at the command of its Arab brethren, it is a big shame that little, or nothing is being done to ameliorate the plight of the beleaguered people of Palestine. But soon, something must give. It cannot continue like this. With this current orgy of destruction and killings, the world is getting to know Israel for what it is, apartheid and genocidal nation, land grabber and nation of mass destruction.
Barka Juma’at and happy weekend.
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