West's contempt for Palestinians will not be forgotten: The Guardian
6 Min Read
A piece by Owen Jones highlights the horrible crimes committed by the occupation in assistance of the West, and the latter's contempt toward Palestinians.
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Demonstrators rally during the March on Washington for Gaza at Freedom Plaza in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024. (AP)
In a piece titled "The West’s complete contempt for the lives of Palestinians will not be forgotten" published by The Guardian, Owen Jones discusses how Western politicians and media are neglectful of the Palestinian suffering and genocide ever since the Nakba, providing his statement with evidence and listing the horrible crimes committed by the occupation. In more than one way, Owen's message honors the Palestinian's right to rage, not only triggered by the horrible crimes being done to them but also by the continuous lack of acknowledgment of those crimes alongside the contempt felt towards them.
Jones begins his statement with a question," What is the value of a Palestinian life? " then proceeding to state that Joe Biden answered it last week in his statement on the 100th day of the Israeli war on Gaza in which he showed extreme empathy toward the IOF " war hostages taken by the Palestinian Resistance," while completely neglecting the lives of Palestinians, with no mention of the genocide and perpetual war crimes committed by the occupation against Palestinians.
In his piece, Owen states that not only do politicians show no sign of care for Palestinians, but media outlets do so as well. He believes it is more than just a lack of care, it is "contempt for Palestinian life," adding that the repercussions of the latter are being felt now and they should be ready for what is to come. He stressed the fact that the "world’s powerful nations had brazenly shrugged off three-quarters of a million Palestinians being driven from their homes 76 years ago, accompanied by an estimated 15,000 suffering violent deaths," labeling it as the initial trigger for the Palestinians' reaction today.
He further criticized how the Resistance fighting back on October 7 is being used as an excuse for genocide, emphasizing that before the initiation of Operation al-Aqsa Flood, 234 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank alone, more than three dozen of them children.
Owen states that the US and its allies, as well as tools, do not view Palestinians as humans, for if they did, then the decades of occupation, siege, illegal colonization, apartheid, violent repression, and mass slaughter would have ceased.
There is more than enough evidence to justify Palestinian rage
He further emphasized why Palestinian rage is expected and valid by listing some of the horrible crimes being done to them by the occupation daily, from the "10,000 children suffering violent deaths, or the 10 kids having one or both legs amputated each day, often without anesthetic," to "5,500 pregnant women giving birth each month – many having caesareans without anesthetic – or newborns dying of hypothermia and diarrhea."
He predicted that, within a year, "a quarter of Gaza’s population could die because of Israel’s destruction of the healthcare system alone." He expressed severe devastation regards the hundreds of lives lost belonging to aid workers, journalists, and medics being slaughtered along with multiple relatives or families by Israeli missiles while Western society remains silent on those crimes.
"The devaluing of Palestinian life is not a supposition, it is a statistical fact," Owen stated, then proceeding to reference a new study of coverage in major US newspapers which stated that for every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times – or at a rate 16 times more per death than that of Palestinians."
Jones also referenced an analysis of BBC coverage by data specialists Dana Najjar and Jan Lietava, who found that humanizing terms such as “mother” or “husband” were used far less often to describe Palestinians, while emotive terms such as “massacre” or “slaughter’” were almost only ever applied to Israeli "victims".
Imperialism breeds genocide and racism
The piece in The Guardian criticized the human rights and international law's Western facade. Then proceeded to mention how imperialist countries became rich at the expense of the rest of the world. Owen stated that "centuries of often genocidal colonization bred lasting cynicism, as did more recent bloodbaths such as the Iraq war, or active support for pliable tyrannies across multiple continents."
"After the West armed and backed Israel as it imposed mass death on Gaza through bombs, bullets, hunger, thirst, and the destruction of medical facilities, nobody other than the terminally gullible will listen to such claims ever again," he said.
Owen also addresses how younger generations in countries such as the US and Britain have grown up being less racist, specifically towards Palestinians, due to more social media coverage of Israeli crimes. He reported that Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, while laying out South Africa’s case against "Israel" in the International Court of Justice, described it as “the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their destruction in real-time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.”
Owen uses this argument to further show how the lack of pro-Palestine statements by US politicians has a huge impact and negative effect on upcoming and current generations.
He ends his piece by saying "We have seen how the refusal to treat Palestinians as human beings made today’s nightmare inevitable. We can see how the moral claims used to justify Western global dominance are permanently shredded. But little thought has been given to how political and media elites in Western nations have torched their moral authority, leaving it to fester alongside thousands of unidentified Palestinian corpses buried under the rubble," adding that they will have to deal with the sprout of the seeds that they are planting.
