Israel’s humanitarian gimmicks and settler-colonial detachment

While continuing its genocide in Gaza, Israel still wants to play its faux humanitarian concern card. An article published by AP yesterday, which made its way to the Times of Israel albeit with some details regarding the kill toll edited out, is one recent futile attempt by Israel to maintain a thin veneer of human compassion. It still failed, though. The original article already dilutes the context as it calls Israel’s genocide its “campaign in Gaza”. However, Israeli media using the humanitarian aspect to highlight the occupation state’s own atrocities is another of the lows to add to the repertoire.

In November, the UN stated that almost 70 per cent of those killed by Israel in Gaza were women and children. Israel, of course rejected the report. However, Israeli media deemed it suitable to republish a slightly edited version of an article that deals with some humanitarian ramifications experienced by Palestinian women in Gaza. And while the article discusses only a few snippets, such as menstruation, hygiene and lack of privacy, the exploitation is rife. If Israeli media really cared about the suffering of Palestinian women, it would have criticised the genocide since it started, instead of relying on a feature published by an international news organisation to portray a non-existent concern.

Wouldn’t it have been better for Israeli media to discuss the overall siege on Gaza, as a narrative from within? The humanitarian consequences for Palestinian women are all premeditated consequences. The Israeli government’s intention was not merely to create hardships but to create the conditions for killing on an industrial scale. What sense is there in republishing an article that deals with humanitarian consequences when there is no criticism of genocide? A settler-colonial genocidal state cannot be genocidal and humanitarian at the same time. Likewise, Israeli media that has thrown its support behind the genocide cannot claim humanitarian concern by simply republishing an article about women who are not only facing deprivation but also risk being exterminated.

The level of detachment in republishing such an article is hard to comprehend.

Was the Times of Israel thinking about the inherent hypocrisy or was this just another exercise in attempting to portray Israel as having concern for the ongoing damage it has done in Gaza? Within Israel, the article would have had little to no resonance, so why not portray feigned concern for its international readership? After all, despite being a minority in terms of public opinion, there are still those who fluctuate between Israel’s security narrative and not wanting the genocide to continue. Perhaps this was the sought target audience (Israeli media, after all, attempted to walk two parallel lines with this article, even as the genocidal entity continues to kill Palestinian women on a daily basis): the women still living since the article was penned and for whom, we are to presume, Israel has a sliver of sympathy.

The bottom line is that Israel knew exactly what it was going to create through genocide.

Gaza will not go back to what it was before, but neither will Israel. And neither the occupation state nor its compliant media will find enough sympathisers in the international arena to pull off its humanitarian gimmicks.

Israel’s humanitarian gimmicks and settler-colonial detachment