Dear Editor,
The BBC headline on March 18, 2024 reads: “Gaza Famine Imminent.” A week later, as predictably as the sun will surely rise, the situation is measurably worse. More Palestinians are dead from hunger, disease, bombs, and bullets – all man-made.
How is this possible in the year 2024 in full view of humanity?
We claimed that the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust was the result of our ignorance of the events as they were taking place. We made laws to prevent such an event from ever happening again. Today we are deliberately supporting this genocide with the mantra that “Hamas must be exterminated”. And the cost of Palestinian lives to satisfy this bloodlust is secondary to the accomplishment of this absolutely necessary task.
The Western superpowers are wringing their hands in despair in such a pathetic manner that can bring us to tears as to their woeful plight in stopping the genocide that is of their facilitation. We keep hearing the mantra, “Hamas must be exterminated” for the so-called war to be stopped. The thirty thousand plus confirmed dead Palestinians, along with the thousands wounded, maimed, many with limbs missing, the unaccounted dead buried under the rubble, are all “collateral damage”. The deliberate destruction of everything necessary for human existence, is seen as incidental, in comparison to the carnage of human beings. And the world looks on, obviously helpless to do anything to stop it, despite the attempt of South Africa to initiate a process at the ICJ to halt the madness of the spectators’ sport of genocide in the civilized world.
We are witnessing, in front of our very existence, through Western rationalization, how the international slave trade and slavery unfolded as a world system in real-time. The rationalization of slavery must have been argued in a similar manner that a hundred years of genocide perpetrated on the Palestinian people was “humanely” done. History is staring us in the face as an “existential” reality to use the most overused cliche of the moment.
Several weeks ago, a close friend called me seeking emotional support for his supposed helplessness to do anything about the slaughter of the Palestinian people. The murderous attack on the Palestinian people, fueled by blatant lies and supported by thousands of bombs, made his blood boil. I assured him that his emotional response was the first step of empowerment.
We are now witnessing the rage of the masses in the streets on a worldwide scale. These street demonstrations have caused the authorities in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, amongst others, to panic. They are busy trying to legislate laws to protect “democracy”, to suffocate the outcry of the masses. Democracy is now revealing its mailed fist beneath its supposedly silken gloves.
We, Guyanese at home and in the diaspora should embrace the plight of the Palestinians as that of Guyanese.
We must make allies of every entity that has a genuine concern for the Palestinian people and mobilize them into political action as a means of empowering themselves by channeling their emotions into political action. The plight of the Palestinian people has entered the phase of inevitably of death by famine, disease, bombs and bullets, as a natural disaster, incapable of human intervention to stop it. Palestine is not the only place that the West is ignoring while wholesale slaughter is occurring. There is Haiti, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and so many other areas of the world where news is conveyed, as vividly as in the title of Joseph Conrad’s book, “through Western eyes” which means either blatant neglect or blatant collusion.
During the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, we united various groups in solidarity, organizing vigils and pickets outside Western embassies to protest what are now widely recognized as egregious wars and acts of aggression targeting brown and black communities in countries across the world. It’s essential that we persist in this tradition of peaceful advocacy.
Demonstrating against the forces of darkness does not make us vulnerable to them. On the contrary, it becomes the best protection we have against them, if they seek to meddle in our affairs by regime change.
If the human beings of Palestine can be exterminated by the civilized world as currently unfolding in front of our eyes, what makes anyone of us think we are exempt from such a fate?
Yours sincerely,
Rohit Kanhai,
Working People’s Alliance
