ENOUGH OF BARBARISM IN THE GAZA STRIP

Fernando Alcoforado*

Today, once again, the Israeli army is murdering 112 Palestinians who were queuing up to receive food from humanitarian aid. This murder adds to the 28,700 Palestinians killed and almost 69,000 others injured to date. Under the argument of trying to annihilate Hamas in response to the terrorist action of October 7, 2023, the Israeli government under the command of Benjamin Netanyahu is committing an unspeakable war crime against the Palestinian people with the policy of continuous and cowardly bombing of its urban and isolation centers for this population in Gaza, which functions as a ghetto similar to, for example, the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland implemented by Nazi Germany against the Jews. Those in power in Israel are continuing the policy put into practice by Ben Gurion, a Polish Jew, Israel’s first head of government from 1948 to 1963, who stated that “after Israel became a powerful force as a result of the creation of the state , we will abolish partition and expand throughout Palestine. (…) The state will be only a stage in the realization of Zionism and its task is to prepare the basis for our expansion throughout Palestine.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government continued Ben Gurion’s policy by militarily occupying the Gaza Strip after having occupied the West Bank with its policy of Jewish settlements to the point of making the Palestinian Authority unviable. There is no doubt that Palestinians have been kept in an apartheid regime by Israel for many years. For years, the living conditions imposed by the Israeli government on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been increasingly worse and the number of Israeli bombings in the region has been countless. This is in addition to the difficulty in accessing the population of the Gaza Strip to the basics in the region, such as food, medicine, electricity and drinking water. In the case of the West Bank, there is a progressive occupation of the territory by Israelis. In recent decades, the West Bank has been occupied by Israeli settlements that force the migration of the Palestinian population, becoming the target of violence committed by Israeli military forces. There are reports of pogroms against Palestinians, and many international reports indicate that they are treated as “second class” citizens, being openly discriminated against. Israeli prisons are full of Palestinians who react against the tyranny imposed by the Israeli government on the Palestinian people.

The carnage that we see today in the Gaza Strip is nothing new, because it has already occurred countless times in the past throughout Palestine, although this time, the horror of the Israeli government’s crimes against humanity reaches new and shameful records . Currently, around 1.9 million Palestinians are homeless as a result of the war that began on October 7, 2023. This number is equivalent to more than 80% of the total population of the Gaza Strip who have been displaced since the start of the war between the government of Israel and Hamas, according to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). With this mass murder of Palestinians occurring today, Israel is moving further and further away from the possibility of being accepted as a regular, permanent state in this region because to integrate and survive, Israel depends on being accepted by the people who live in Palestine and in the Arab world. Israel will only be accepted by the people living in Palestine and the Arab world if the Netanyahu government is replaced by a democratic government capable of dialoguing with the region’s rulers.

The time has come for Jews who love peace and justice in Israel and around the world to act urgently to remove from power Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies responsible for the mass murders carried out in the Gaza Strip and also in the West Bank. Only in this way will it be possible to put an end to the killings taking place in the Gaza Strip and begin a process that contributes to the celebration of peace between Jews and Palestinians. This is also a way for Jews in Israel and around the world to demonstrate that they do not condone the acts carried out by the Netanyahu government and to prevent the spread of anti-Semitism that is spreading among Arab peoples and throughout the world. Anti-Semitism is growing in the world due, in large part, to the warmongering, racist and fascist stance taken by the government of the State of Israel towards the Palestinians since its creation in 1948. Jews who love peace and justice need to prevent the government of Israel from continue practicing the barbarism to which the Palestinian population is subjected, which reached its highest level during the contemporary era, fighting for its end in defense of the values of civilization. Enough of the barbarism in the Gaza Strip.

​​* Fernando Alcoforado, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, of the SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science and of IPB- Polytechnic Institute of Bahia, engineer from the UFBA Polytechnic School and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, college professor (Engineering, Economy and Administration) and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning, urban planning and energy systems, was Advisor to the Vice President of Engineering and Technology at LIGHT S.A. Electric power distribution company from Rio de Janeiro, Strategic Planning Coordinator of CEPED- Bahia Research and Development Center, Undersecretary of Energy of the State of Bahia, Secretary of Planning of Salvador, is the author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017),  Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019), A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021), A escalada da ciência e da tecnologia e sua contribuição ao progresso e à sobrevivência da humanidade (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2022), a chapter in the book Flood Handbook (CRC Press,  Boca Raton, Florida United States, 2022), How to protect human beings from threats to their existence and avoid the extinction of humanity (Generis Publishing, Europe, Republic of Moldova, Chișinău, 2023) and A revolução da educação necessária ao Brasil na era contemporânea (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2023).