TEHRAN - Israel’s atrocities in Gaza have shocked the world to the extent that protestors around the world carry placards demanding an immediate end to the “genocide” against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Israel’s actions in Gaza are a shame for humanity and history. It has started a war against Hamas in response to the October 7 attack but it is punishing the entire population in the Gaza Strip.

It has just dropped over 30,000 tons of bombs on the people, so far butchering over 13,000 Gazans, including 5,600 children and 3,550 women. 

Amid such barbaric acts, it is heart-wrenching to imagine that 2.3 million population have been denied water, food, medicine, fuel, and other essential things.

While people are grieving for their dear ones mutilated in aerial bombardments or caught under rubble, they don’t have access to food and water or find a safe place to sleep.

According to Richard Falk, an emeritus professor of international law from Princeton University, says the agonies of the Gazans are “a nightmare beyond even Kafka’s darkest imagining.”

The grief-stricken people are not even safe in hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, and UN offices. Even when they are fleeing their houses they are being bombarded and ambulances carrying the injured become targets.

Even if great poets like William Shakespeare and Hafiz-e Shirazi were alive today they could not fully describe the sorrows of the Gazans.

There is no limit to the extremism of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been rightly called “crime minister”, and his ultraright cabinet.

Israel’s response to the October 7 attack by Hamas has lost meaning in terms of proportionality, international law, and international human rights laws.

Certain Western governments, including the United States, Britain, and Germany, have called Israel’s actions in Gaza “self-defense”. But what the Israeli army is doing is an ethnic cleansing, war crime, and crime against humanity.

The support of these self-proclaimed upholders of human rights for the criminal regime of Netanyahu is disgraceful. It is for this reason that Craig Mokhiber from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on October 28 said the U.S., Britain, and much of Europe are “wholly complicit in the horrific assault” in the crimes in Gaza and described the completely besieged enclave as a “textbook case of genocide” and resigned his post.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has said that "Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity."

"Old people, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities are just being deprived of their basic human dignity, and this is a total disgrace," Lazzarini said, according to Newsweek.

Most probably, for the West the lives of Palestinians are trivial. Such ideology is derived from a sense of supremacy and racism that still exists in the “blood” of certain Western rulers and Israeli officials whose parents or grandparents moved from Europe to Palestine and stole the lands of their native inhabitants.

The remarks of Yoav Gallant, the Israeli war minister, who said “we are fighting against human animals” originate from such a dangerous mindset.

Professor Falk says the words of Gallant “will be long remembered in the annals of genocidal rhetoric.”

The West is not just responsible for the ongoing tragedy in Gaza; it is also complicit in other tragedies with lesser degrees in the occupied territories throughout all these long years. It is because of these blind and senseless supports that Israel has turned into a spoiled child and killed every opportunity for peace.

The West is also indirectly responsible for those killed in the October 7 attacks in Israel. If Israel had faced pressure and sanctions or its criminal rulers had put on trial in the International Court of Justice today the world would not have seen such heart-wrenching scenes in Gaza.

The horrible events in Gaza have opened a new dark chapter in human history which once again made the West in general and criminal rulers in Israel greatly shameful in human history.