“WHERE is the world?” a despairing Palestinian man asked amid the ruins of the al-Tabieen school in Gaza after an assault by Israeli forces that killed at least 90 people sheltering there.
It is a good question, and one that could be repeated every hour of every day in Gaza, after 10 months of genocidal onslaught.
Right now, the Israelis appear to be targeting schools in particular and have destroyed 21 over the last month alone.
That is entirely consistent with Israel’s aim of eradicating the Palestinian people as an entity. In the course of its Gaza offensive, it has taken care to reduce to ruins every university, every hospital and health centre, every cultural institution and very many mosques, eliminating the infrastructure of existence.
And the world, at least the world of governments, has allowed the Israeli forces to go about their business with impunity. Indeed, they continue to sell the aggressor the means to conduct genocide, accompanying the weapons with nothing more than a modest amount of hand-wringing.
In the wake of the school slaughter, US Vice President Kamala Harris chose to emphasise the importance of releasing Israeli hostages held in Gaza since October.
Yet it is abundantly clear that Israeli Premier Netanyahu has no interest in securing their freedom. He raises one obstacle after another to agreeing on the ceasefire which is the only means of ending the hostage crisis.
That is a combination of political calculation — a prolonged pause in the war would likely mean an end to his government — and the priority he has given to destroying the Palestinians as a people throughout his sordid career.
Netanyahu is today politically dependent on fascist elements like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich who asserted last week that the starvation of millions in Gaza might be “justified and moral.”
Yet the US continues to pour arms into Israel and deploy its own armed forces to the region to protect it from the consequences of its reckless actions in Teheran and Lebanon.
The British government is no better. In a joint statement issued today with French President Macron and German Chancellor Scholz, Keir Starmer managed not to mention the attack on al-Taibeen or, indeed, the loss of Palestinian lives at all.
The statement managed to twice call for the release of the hostages and issued a warning to Iran against military action without any recognition of the Israeli provocations which have escalated tension across the region.
Behind all the warm words, the main imperialist powers are ultimately committed to supporting Israel, whatever it does. United pressure could have forced Israel into a ceasefire long ago, but the US and its allies are unwilling to act.
A rampant — even a genocidal — Israel may be an awkward asset for the imperial world order, but it is an asset nonetheless.
But there is another answer to the anguished question asked by the Palestinian man. The world is on the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people in a movement undiminished after 10 months.
Indeed that movement in Britain is broadening and deepening as it connects the Palestinian cause with the urgent need to stand against the Islamophobic far right in our own communities.
It is not accidental that the Palestinian flag was waved at many of the anti-fascist counter-protests, no more than that the Israeli flag was to be seen at the march organised by far-right grifter “Tommy Robinson” last month.
The world stands with Palestine and owes it to the victims of genocide to redouble efforts to impose a political change on the imperialist governments whose fingerprints are all over every Israeli atrocity.
