Former UNRWA spokesman, Chris Gunnes, has said that what is “shocking” about the situation in the besieged Gaza Strip is that it is the “first genocide” being livestreamed on television.
“What is truly shocking about this is that it’s the first genocide in the history of humanity that is livestreamed on television,” Gunnes told the Anadolu news agency in an interview aired on Thursday.
He went on to say that it is “all the more shocking” because “two of the main backers … of the plausible genocide, to use the phrase of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)” are the United States of America and Britain.
The USA, Gunnes explained, gives Israel $4 billion in military aid every year, while Britain provides Israel with logistical and other forms of military support.
“And yet it is those two countries who have led the defunding of UNRWA,” he stressed.
“So not only are they supporting the genocide, they are depriving the organization which deals with the impact of that genocide.”
The official urged the decision to cut funding for the agency to be reversed, and called on Türkiye to exert economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Israel to end its military assault on the enclave, reports Anadolu.
Apartheid South Africa Boycott
Gunnes criticized the claim that boycotting Israel is “anti-Semitic” saying “nobody said it was racist to oppose peacefully by using peaceful economic measures” in the opposition to apartheid South Africa.
“Apartheid was eventually overthrown, in part because of the economic boycott of the racist policies of South Africa,” the former official said.
He emphasized that “there has to be some peaceful way of changing the situation and I think a blockade, a peaceful economic blockade, is one of the many handles that need to be pulled, including international law, and also the cutting of military support for Israel.”
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According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 28,775 Palestinians have been killed, and 68,552 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Gunnes questioned whether anyone would have “blamed Jewish people in Auschwitz for trying to break out.”
“I’m not saying that Gaza is like Auschwitz, though there are Israeli officials who said that they should try and turn Gaza into Auschwitz,” he added.
Gunnes said the situation is “immoral, it’s a violation of international humanitarian law, I think it’s a violation of the provisional measures which the ICJ has imposed.”
ICJ Emergency Measures
Last month, the ICJ ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide in its ongoing war in Gaza, following a case filed by South Africa against Israel accusing it of failing to fulfil its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The South African government on Tuesday made an urgent request to the ICJ to consider whether the decision announced by Israel to extend its military operations in Rafah, “which is the last refuge for surviving people in Gaza, requires that the court uses its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded in Gaza are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
(PC, Anadolu)
And yet, even though Israel’s genocide against Gaza is being shown to the world on television, the Zionist-controlled extremely fake western mainstream news media (such as CNN, Fox, BBC, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post) attempts in every possible way to minimize Israel’s massive atrocities as well as cover up so many details, in order to make Israel appear to be the victim and make Gaza appear to be the victimizer.