Two years ago, I was just a few hours’ drive from the scene of the most horrendous genocide committed in the last century. It was in June of 2023 that I landed in Warsaw, Poland, to cover an international conference.
I had contemplated a visit to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camps as it was only about 300km from the Polish capital.
Here, 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, were exterminated in its gas chambers. During the course of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime murdered over six million Jews.
However, due to the tight schedule of the conference, I was ultimately unable to squeeze a visit to site, which had been preserved as a memorial and museum. Despite missing this opportunity, I had come within touching distance of the same genocide a decade earlier.
In May 2012, my wife and I attended our daughter’s graduation ceremony in the American South. We then flew to Washington, DC, to explore the seat of US power, and to visit the numerous museums there.
It was there that I encountered traces of this genocide during an emotional visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Of all the sobering exhibits there, one particularly stood out for me. It was a large room filled with thousands of shoes belonging to the holocaust victims. There were men’s shoes, ladies’ shoes and, most poignantly, shoes belonging to babies and children.
We could not enter the room or touch the footwear of the victims. However, after nearly 70 years, the stale smell of old leather still hung in the air, providing a faint but lingering connection to one of the darkest episodes of human history.
To this day, the stale leather smell wafts in the air each time I think of the Holocaust, and all the genocides that have unfortunately been perpetrated since — the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Rwanda, and now Gaza.
The biggest irony
To me, the on-going Gaza genocide is perhaps the biggest irony of all.
The regime that represents victims of a genocide some 80 years ago has gleefully taken on the mantle of the Nazis, becoming perpetrators of a modern-day genocide being streamed in real-time.
The smell of genocide emanating from the Jewish Holocaust has now become a putrid stench of death for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians believed to have been killed.
A full accounting of the dead will probably only be known when the last victim is recovered from ruins of a destroyed Gaza.
Israel’s murderous rampage started almost immediately after the Oct 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 Israelis.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited “self-defence” in launching the campaign against Hamas. However, that justification has proven hollow. Self-defence does not entitle you to commit a genocide.
The cumulative power of the 70,000 tonnes of bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza amount to six or more times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, according to military analyst and University of Bradford professor Paul Rogers.
The scale of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing surpasses even the Allied carpet-bombing of Dresden, Cologne, and Hamburg in World War II. The bombardment of the narrow Gaza Strip is said to be the greatest destruction of any urban area in modern history.
Clear genocidal intent
In the wake of Hamas’ Oct 7 attack, Israel’s leadership openly signalled its genocidal intent and desire to establish a Greater Israel.
For the Zionist regime, the Hamas attack was a God-sent opportunity to execute its “Final Solution” to completely rid the land of Palestinians. That could well explain why the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were so painfully slow to respond to the Hamas incursion.
Then Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant sought to dehumanise the Palestinians by labelling them as “human animals”, ordering a complete siege of the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu described the Palestinians as the people of Amalek, the biblical enemy of Israel that God instructed to be totally annihilated — men, women, children, babies and animals. That is exactly what Israel has been attempting to do since Oct 7, 2023.
There is a plethora of videos and photos of Palestinian men, women and children shot or blown to bits by the IDF, as well as of starving children, on Telegram and other social media channels, if you have the stomach for it. The evidence is indisputable and damning.
After two years of wanton destruction and killing, even some groups in Israel are beginning to admit their nation is committing a genocide.
B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights, openly proclaimed it as “Our Genocide” in its recent report.
“Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza, acting in a systematic way to destroy Palestinian society through mass killing, and creating catastrophic conditions that prevent its continued existence in Gaza.
“Israel is promoting ethnic cleansing and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, with two million people starved, displaced, bombed and left by the world to die. The genocide must be stopped,” it said.
A United Nations commission of inquiry stated on Sept 16 that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said Israel committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.
Israel falls into Hamas’ trap
It has been suggested that Hamas’ leaders laid a trap for Israel — the bait being a Hamas attack inside of Israel. The aim of any such attacks was never to defeat Israel militarily as that would be impossible.
However, they knew Netanyahu’s government would respond with overwhelming force and brutality. They bet the savagery to be unleashed would eventually turn the tide of global opinion against Israel, while revitalising support for Palestinian statehood.
In effect, the Hamas leaders gave Israel the rope to hang itself. Though Hamas knew the people of Gaza would pay a very heavy price, even they could not have anticipated the Palestinians would become victims of a genocide, along with the utter destruction of Gaza.
On the second anniversary of the Oct 7 Hamas attack, there is a rising outcry among the citizens of Western nations against the horror wrought by Israel against the Palestinian population.
However, this growing outrage is not shared by the ruling elites of the US and its western allies, who continue to support Israel to the hilt, no matter what atrocities they commit.
Worryingly for Israel, support from ordinary Americans is waning fast. US political magazine Politico published an article on Sept 29 with the damning headline “An entire generation of Americans is turning on Israel”.
It said young people — on the left and right — are growing increasingly sceptical of Israel. It noted that more than half of American adults (53%) now have an unfavourable opinion of Israel and only 32% have confidence in Netanyahu, according to a recent Pew Research poll.
For me personally, whatever sympathy and support I once had for Israel because of the Holocaust has completely dissipated in the wake of the Gaza genocide.
After two years of genocide, it is increasingly clear that Israel has lost. Like Nazi Germany, Israel’s reputation is in tatters. The Gaza genocide has put an indelible stain on the nation of Israel that will not be erased for generations to come, if ever.
It is now overwhelmingly recognised globally for what it really is — a hideous apartheid state, a genocidal state, and an international pariah.
The onus now is on world leaders to ensure the Netanyahu regime is brought to justice for their war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, I will not be holding my breath for this.
Slaughter of journalists
Finally, I wish to end by condemning Israel for killing hundreds of journalists, mainly Palestinians, since the start of the Gaza conflict.
In a press release on Sept 4, the UN Human Rights Office said at least 248 journalists have been killed in Gaza, more than in any other conflict in modern times.
It quoted UN experts as saying “states must stop Israel before all journalists in Gaza are silenced”.
“On the one hand, Israel continues to deny access to any international media and on the other, it kills with impunity local journalists who are the world’s only professional lens into the agony of genocide and famine unfolding in Gaza,” said the UN experts.
I believe journalists in Malaysia and around the world will echo this condemnation, and mourn the loss of our fellow journalists.
We salute and join in solidarity with the diminishing number of journalists and media workers bravely reporting the Gaza genocide and documenting Israel’s litany of crimes.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.