Israel’s “dangerous blindness” and an unrecogisable Gaza
JVL Introduction
A rare access into Gaza for Jean-Pierre Filiu, one of the few historians who has written about Gaza. He describes an unrecognisable Gaza and is disorientated not only by being unable to get his physical bearings but also the breakdown of Gazan solidarity as hunger has forced so many people to prioritise their immediate family. The spirit does, however, live on; children spare some of their tiny food rations with hungry cats and people dress up as clowns to try to bring smiles to the faces of children.
Meanwhile there is the near constant noise of drones and the stress that must cause and the bombing of “safe places” even as Palestinians, already in one of the the most densely populated places on earth, are forced into smaller and smaller enclaves – and then bombed anyway.
As we, rightly, highlight the repression of protest in the UK and elsewhere, this is one clear illustratio of why the protests must continue. It is a hard but necessary read.
LL
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Sat 5 Jul 2025. Read the original here.
'Now I Understand Why Israel Is Denying Journalists Access to the Appalling Scene in Gaza'
One of the only historians studying the Gaza Strip, Jean-Pierre Filiu, spent a month in the killing fields there, and documented everything
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Possibly one of the greatest war crimes in the 20 and 21st Centuries. Beyond description, beyond imagination, the word ‘Gazafication’ defining a new type of war crime plunging the depths of cruelty, sadism and depravity -Israeli brand.
All its perpetrators from the whole of the IDF, the pilots who drop the bombs from F-35s, whose spare parts and servicing supplied by the UK, the soldiers who operate the quadcopters and drones that kill pointedly and at will, the whole of the Israeli government and its military, the arms suppliers and manufacturers, the IT specialists and corporations supplying the know and all the heads of the Western governments that supply the arms and trade link, particularly the US, UK, Germany and France, and even India, should all be tried by the ICC in one gigantic Nuremberg of this ‘genocaust’, a combination of genocide and holocaust. Th countries of the South and those like Ireland and Spain should be the Jurists. The Arab countries will supply the trillions to finance this while Israel, the US, UK, Germany and France should pay for the reconstruction and restitution.
Agree generally with your thinking but it’s impractical to ask the ICC to try all the defendants. There will be thousands of them!
The only practical way of delivering timely justice will be for many nations’ police forces and law courts to investigate the alleged crimes and try the defendants.
This approach also has the benefits of making it much more difficult for the Israeli and US governments to interfere with the legal processes – and for any court to award sentences out of line with those awarded by other nations’ courts.