The world needs to know the horrendous dimensions of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, and of the gross Apartheid Israeli maltreatment of 5.2 million Occupied Palestinians and in particular of the 2 million inmates of the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp. A numbers-based summary of these ongoing atrocities will strengthen global Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the intolerable obscenity of Apartheid Israel and its racist supporters.
(A). Background of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide.
Gaza per se dates back over 3,000 years and “Palestine” and related terms (e.g. “Falastina”) come from the Philistine inhabitants of circa 1,200 BCE.
In 1880 90% of the Palestinian population were Muslims and about 10% were Christians, and there were about 25,000 Jews (about 50% immigrants).
The ongoing Palestinian Genocide has been associated with 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the British invasion of the Middle East in 1914 for oil and imperial hegemony – in contrast, 4,000 Zionists killed by Palestinians since 1920. Christians are only 1% of the Palestine population today.
The 1916 Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the formerly Ottoman-ruled Middle East between the UK and France. War-related WW1 Palestinian Famine (0.1 million deaths).
Australian Light Horse Charge at Beersheba (31 October 1917) was pivotal to the defeat of the Turks. The UK Balfour Declaration giving Semitic Palestine to the non-Semitic and genocidally racist Zionists was issued 2 days later (2 November 1917) in a quid pro quo connected with getting Zionist Jewish Communists to try to keep Russia in the war against Germany.
10 December 1918 Surafend Massacre of about 100 Palestinian men and boys by Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers.
Overt Jewish immigration was stopped by the British 1939 White Paper designed to pacify British Muslim subjects during WW2. Circa 1944 the British War Cabinet secretly decided to Partition both Palestine and India, supporting European Zionists and Indian Muslims, respectively. Racist mass murderer and pro-Zionist Churchill hated Indians (“They are a beastly people with a beastly religion”), hated Indigenous Palestinians, Indigenous Americans and Indigenous Australians ( “I do not apologize for the takeover of the region by the Jews from the Palestinians in the same way I don’t apologize for the takeover of America by the whites from the Red Indians or the takeover of Australia from the blacks [i.e. Australian aborigines]. It is natural for a superior race to dominate an inferior one”), and hid the WW2 Bengali Holocaust for which he was responsible ( 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death for strategic reasons by the British with Australian complicity).
1948, Deir Yassin Massacre (107 killed, village razed); the Nakba or Catastrophe (800,000 Palestinians expelled, 500 villages emptied); Zionists seized 78% of Palestine for their settler colonial state.
1966, Palestinians in Israel given Israeli citizenship, albeit qualified under race-based laws (presently over 60 such laws).
1967, a now nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel attacked all its neighbours and seized territory from all of them, including the Sinai (Egypt), Shebaa Farms (Lebanon), the Golan Heights (Syria) and 100% of Palestine; 400,000 Arabs expelled in the Naksa (Setback). US Alliance-backed Apartheid Israel presently has 90-400 nuclear weapons as well as biological weapons, chemical weapons and delivery systems.
30 March 1976, First Land Day protesting Israeli land theft (6 Palestinians killed, 100 wounded and hundreds arrested).
1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacre (3,500 Palestinians killed by Lebanese Phalangists in Israeli-occupied West Beirut.
2002, West Bank Massacres, notably in Jenin, with 497 Palestinians killed, 1,447 wounded, and 7,000 imprisoned (30 Israelis killed, 127 wounded).
2018 Apartheid Israeli nation state law passed that officially makes Palestinian Israelis Third Class citizens (presently subject to over 60 race-based laws).
2020 Apartheid Israeli parliament rejects equality for all Israeli citizens.
2021, over 90% of Palestine ethnically cleansed of Indigenous Palestinians; Tom Pickering, former US Ambassador to Israel and the UN, says Israel would concede only 4.4% of Palestine for a Palestinians State in a “2-state solution”, and predicts future complete Palestinian removal from the West Bank and Gaza to elsewhere in the world (a “no state solution”).
Apartheid Israel rules all of a 90% ethnically cleansed Palestine (plus ethnically cleansed parts of Syria and Lebanon) and of its 14.4 million Subjects, 6.8 million (47.2%) are Jewish Israelis, 0.4 million (2.8%) are non-Jews and non-Arabs, 2.0 million (13.9%) are Palestinian Israelis, and 5.2 million (36.1%) are Occupied Palestinians with zero human rights. Despite a century of a Palestinian Genocide involving killing, deprivation and repeated mass expulsions, 7.2 million Indigenous Palestinians still represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel in Palestine, but over 72% of the Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Apartheid Israel are excluded from voting for the government ruling them i.e. are subject to egregious Apartheid.
(B). Geography and Demographics of Gaza.
Area 360 square kilometres.
Population 2.0 million (5.2 million Occupied Palestinians in Gaza plus the West Bank).
Population density 5,556 people per square kilometre.
Gaza is the 3rd most densely populated entity in the world.
0-14 years: 42.53% (male 418,751/female 397,013).
15-24 years: 21.67% (male 210,240/female 205,385).
25-54 years: 29.47% (male 275,976/female 289,277).
55-64 years: 3.66% (male 36,409/female 33,731).
65 years and over: 2.68% (male 27,248/female 24,191) (2020 estimates).
About 50% are children and about 75% women and children.
(C). Administration of Gaza.
In 2006 the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) won a majority in the democratic Palestinian Legislative Council elections held under Israeli guns – Hamas won a plurality of 42.9% of the total vote and 74 out of 132 total seats (56%). The Hamas representatives were variously killed, imprisoned or exiled to the Gaza Concentration Camp or elsewhere by the genocidally racist, nuclear terrorist, state terrorist and neo-Nazi Israelis who, together with their pro-Apartheid US Alliance backers, declared Hamas to be a terrorist organization.
Land borders are hermetically sealed by Apartheid Israel and Israeli-beholden Egypt; air, sea and land are violently controlled by Israeli drones, warplanes, navy and army.
Maritime rights are illegally appropriated by serial war criminal Apartheid Israel.
A wide range of decent people from scholars and human rights activists to religious and political leaders have referred to Gaza as ”an open air prison” ,“the Gaza Concentration Camp”, and indeed as the world’s biggest open air prison and concentration camp.
5.2 million Occupied Palestinians, 50% children and 75% women and children, are highly abusively and indefinitely confined to the Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) or to West Bank ghettoes (3.2 million) without charge or trial but for the asserted “crime” of being Indigenous Palestinians living on part of the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for thousands of years.
“Coronavirus closure” is applied by Apartheid Israel on top of other draconian restrictions on movement in and out of Gaza.
(D). Employment in Gaza.
Unemployment rate 43.1% .
Total employed people 280,000 (end 2019) , 222,000 (end 2020).
Average monthly wage $207 versus $323 (West Bank).
Public sector workers (39.2%) earn $29 per day.
Private sector workers (60.8%) earn $11 per day.
Women unemployment rate 65% (3rd quarter 2020), 60.4% (4th quarter 2020).
Women workforce participation rate 18.7% (beginning 2020), 12.4% (end 2020).
Youth (under 30) unemployment rate 65.5% (end 2020).
(E). War criminal Israeli collective punishment of Gaza by mass murder.
2006 Gaza Massacre – 400 Palestinians killed, 1,000 wounded (11 Israelis killed, 82 wounded).
2008-2009 Gaza Massacre – 1,400 Palestinians killed, 5,300 wounded, 51,000 homeless, huge infrastructure damage (13 Israelis killed, 518 wounded).
2014 Gaza Massacre – 2,300 Palestinians killed, 11,000 wounded, 7,000 homes destroyed (73 Israelis killed and 556 wounded).
2018-2019 Great March of Return Gaza Massacre – 223 killed, 9,200 wounded (0 Israelis killed, 11 wounded).
2021 Gaza Massacre – 256 Palestinians killed, 2,000 wounded (13 Israelis killed, 217 wounded).
In the last 2 decades Gaza rockets have killed about 40 Israelis but Israeli reprisals have killed over 4,600 Gazans, an over 100-fold disproportionality.
In the last 2 decades Israelis have murdered about 2,600 Israelis but Apartheid Israel has not killed 100 x 2,600 = 260,000 Israelis in response.
On average in the last 20 years, Apartheid Israel has violently killed about 500 Occupied Palestinians each year (10,000 in total) and killed a further 4,000 Occupied Palestinians annually through imposed deprivation (80,000 in total)
“Coronavirus closure” is presently applied to Gaza by Apartheid Israel on top of other draconian restrictions by way of collective punishment.
(F). Fourth Geneva Convention, GDP, infant mortality, avoidable mortality, health, trauma, food, water, electricity, and homelessness in Gaza.
Apartheid Israel grossly violates Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War) that unequivocally demand that an Occupier must supply life-sustaining food and medical services to its Conquered Subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”.
Apartheid Israel violates 15 International Law Conventions, most notably the Fourth Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention.
GDP per capita $1,500 for Gaza ($3,240 for Occupied Palestine and $46,400 for Apartheid Israel).
Poverty kills: annual under-5 infant deaths 1,100 in Gaza (2,800 for Occupied Palestinians, 500 for Apartheid Israel).
Poverty kills: annual avoidable deaths from deprivation 1,500 in Gaza (3,900 for Occupied Palestinians and essentially zero for Apartheid Israel).
Apartheid Israel deliberately restricts Gaza imports to carefully estimated bare survivability needs.
Apartheid Israel stops many asserted “dual function” goods including critical medical supplies from getting into Gaza.
Economic growth has declined and gone negative in the last 25 years and unemployment has increased.
Occupied Palestinians in Gaza live in dire poverty.
Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): “At least 90 percent of Gaza residents are in need of mental health support and treatment because of the repeated military attacks and devastating humanitarian conditions in the Strip” .
Tens of thousands with life-changing permanent disabilities from Israel violence.
Hospitals, schools , power and water infrastructure bombed and barely functioning.
Electricity supplies intermittent and Gaza’s electricity is normally supplied by its sole diesel power plant (nominal rating 60-140 MW) plus 125 MW (from Israel) and 27 MW (from Egypt) for about 300 MW total (Apartheid Israel has 16,250 MW power capacity or 54 times more than Gaza).
Apartheid Israel controls water supply, notably that from the largely West Bank-based Mountain Aquifer with 9.1 million Israelis getting 87% of Mountain Aquifer water whereas 5.2 million Occupied Palestinians get a mere 13% . WHO minimum daily per capita water allocation is 100 litres, Israelis get 240-300 litres and West Bank Palestinians get 73 litres; Israelis have deliberately demolished 50 water extraction facilities in the West Bank. Israeli bombing has destroyed water and sewerage infrastructure in the Gaza Concentration Camp to the point that it is approaching unliveable conditions.
Homelessness – Israeli bombing in 1 week alone in 2021 made 58,000 Gazans homeless.
(G). Covid-19, Occupied Palestinians and Gaza.
Apartheid Israel leads the world in Covid-19 vaccination for its Israeli Subjects but refuses to vaccinate its 5.2 million Occupied Palestinian Subjects except for 5,000 front-line medical workers and 120,000 Occupied Palestinians who work in Israel or in illegal West Bank settlement as cheap “captive labour”.
Ventilators per million (/M) people are 504/M (Occupier US), 173/M (Occupier Australia) and 407/M (Occupier Apartheid Israel) versus 8/M (Occupied Afghanistan), 38/M (Occupied Palestine) and 13/M (Gaza Concentration Camp).
Gaza’s sole Covid-19 testing laboratory was damaged by Israeli bombing; Apartheid Israel blocked Russian Sputnik V vaccine entry to Gaza but 20,000 doses entered via Egypt; fewer than 2% of Gazans have been fully vaccinated; with an Apartheid Israeli-crippled hospital system, densely populated Gaza faces an Apartheid Israeli-imposed Covid-19 catastrophe.
As of early July 2021 many Occupied Palestinians had died (686 Covid-19 deaths per million of population; 3,565 deaths or about 1% of 314,000 cases) but notional extrapolation to a maximum of 5.2 million cases would indicate that Apartheid Israel has deliberate intent to kill about 50,000 Occupied Palestinians.
(H). Apartheid Israeli “intent to destroy” and ongoing Palestinian Genocide.
Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention defines “genocide “ as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
Genocide experts describe an ongoing Palestinian Genocide. Thus Professor Francis Boyle (University of Illinois) re the Palestinian Genocide (2013): “The Palestinians have been the victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, under which a government can be guilty of genocide even if it intends to destroy a mere “part” of the group”.
90% of Palestine has been ethnically cleansed of Indigenous Palestinians with Zionists adumbrating 95% and even ultimately 100% ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza.
Zionist leaders from Theodor Herzl to Benjamin Netanyahu have explicitly advocated removal of the Palestinians from Palestine.
Of 15 million Palestinians today, 8 million are forcibly Exiled from their homeland and 7 million Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Apartheid Israel live under threat of killing and expulsion.
Deaths in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million Palestinians killed by violence or imposed deprivation) are similar to deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million deaths from violence or imposed deprivation) or the “forgotten”, British-imposed and Australia-complicit WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million deaths from violence or imposed deprivation) (see “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/home ).
Conclusions.
I have a large, 2-sided and big- black-capital-letters-on-white placard that I take to public rallies in support of Palestinian Humans Rights. One side says WORLD: STOP PALESTINIAN GENOCIDE and the other says BOYCOTT APARTHEID ISRAEL. The Gaza Concentration Camp and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide shame Humanity and the pro-Apartheid US Alliance in particular. Decent Humanity must (a) inform everyone they can, and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters.