Tariq A. Al-Maeena

 

In July, the Israeli war machine invaded Gaza.  Bomb after bomb was rained on the hapless civilians of this besieged land, a people held hostage and herded into conditions similar to a concentration camp.  Although many described the latest round of attacks by Israelis as a continuation of an ongoing holocaust against the Palestinians, this did not help soothe the  nerves of the civilians ducking a daily rain of death.



Since then there have been calls by activists the world over to hold Israel accountable for the war crimes it has committed over the years. These activists have repeatedly questioned the integrity of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its dealings with nations. The ICC which came into existence in 2002 to prosecute crimes committed by nations and individuals against civilians has often been referred to as the "last resort for prosecution of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity."



In its short history, the ICC has investigated crimes of aggression primarily in some African countries.  Despite repeated calls, it has continued to ignore crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians.  It has remained mysteriously silent about the massacres of residents of Sabra and Shatila, the butchery of civilians in Jenin crafted by Ariel Sharon the Israeli premier at the time and the public display of genocide of the women and children of Gaza at the behest of the current Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu.



In the recent Gaza holocaust, the people of the world witnessed live imagery of Palestinian children being blown to bits by Israeli bombs.  They also saw unadulterated images of victims in schools and hospitals specifically and deliberately targeted by the Israelis to strike terror into the heart of the resistance.



Perhaps the conscience of the world was not aroused because most of the victims had no faces or identities.  No major networks devoted any significant airtime to bring to life the memory of those who were victims of Israeli genocide.  Remarkably, the situation is reversed when the victim is an Israeli.  His whole history is brought into the living rooms of viewers the world over, and his dilemma is massaged into their consciousness by a very effective spin machine.



But there are some journalists whose conscience and integrity rise above Israeli arm-twisting and lobbying.  Joe Catron writing in the Electronic Intifada relates a first-hand account of Issam Jouda, a Gaza father who lost his wife and four children in northern Gaza in an Israeli airstrike.  Relating those awful moments when the Israelis attacked, Issam said: “At 4:00 pm, I was inside the house.  All the rest of my family were sitting in the front hall. My wife was standing with the boys. They were playing as they were accustomed to do.  Suddenly, I heard a massive explosion.  I saw a huge mass of dust in the area and shrapnel scattered all over the hall.”

 

His 11-year-old grabbed him screaming and wanting to know where her mother and siblings were amidst all the rubble. After a feverish search, he found them lying “with shrapnel everywhere and a pool of blood around them. It’s like they were swimming in it. There were six of them, five killed.  I heard the voice of my son saying, ‘Dad.’ The others were scattered everywhere. You couldn’t distinguish between them because of the heavy shrapnel wounds in their faces.



“The voice was (my son) Thaer. I carried him and left the house quickly. I felt my body cut from the shrapnel as I carried him. Then our neighbors took him and the rest of our family to Al-Awda hospital.”  At the hospital, Issam said: “In another bed, I saw my little boy, Usama. He was smiling in his sleep. I tried to hug and kiss him. There was no response. I tried to convince myself that he had returned my smile. And I refused to listen to anybody saying that he was dead.”



In another bed, he recalled: “I saw my wife covered by a sheet. I removed it quickly, and saw that she was also dead.”  As Joe Catron tells us, Issam’s three other children were transferred to another hospital. By the time he arrived to identify them, he said: “You could not recognize the features of their faces and heads.”



Issams’ final words before breaking down in uncontrollable grief: “The international community must punish the Israeli war criminals and end the occupation as soon as possible.”



More than 3,500 civilians lost their lives, a sizable portion of which were women and children. Some 17,000 Gazans were injured and more than 100,000 left homeless.  Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights aptly termed Israel’s planned ethnic cleansing and massacres of Palestinians “incremental genocide.”



The question then for the ICC is this:  When will it hold the Israelis accountable for such continued barbarity?

 

-– The author can be reached at talmaeena@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @talmaeena