GAZA — After a recent widely-reported debate the celebrated Oxford Union of famed Oxford University overwhelmingly voted 278 to 59 for the proposition that “This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide”. Genocide is defined by the UN Genocide Convention as acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, and it is expertly estimated that 273,000 Gazans were killed in the first year of the present Gaza Massacre and Gaza Genocide.
The fame of the Oxford Union is such that the Oxford Union debate on Apartheid Israel was widely reported, with TRT World reporting: “The Oxford Union, one of the world’s most prestigious debating societies, voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to declare Israel an “apartheid state responsible for genocide,” with 278 votes in favour and 59 against. The motion sparked a heated debate marked by passionate speeches, interruptions, and accusations from both sides. The debate, framed around the proposition “This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide,” featured prominent speakers, including Palestinian American writer Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian poet Mohammed el Kurd, and anti-Zionist Israeli writer Miko Peled. They argued in favour of the motion, while opposition speakers included UK Lawyers for Israel legal director Natasha Hausdorff, Arab-Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad, and Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas leader who provided information to Israel’s Shin Bet for 10 years before fleeing to the United States” [1].
The Oxford Union debate centred on the terms “apartheid “ and “genocide”. “Apartheid” is defined as follows by Article 2 of the International Convention for the Suppression and Prevention of the Crime of Apartheid (1976): “For the purpose of the present Convention, the term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
(a) Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person: (i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups; (ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; (iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
(b) Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
(c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
(d) Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group orgroups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
(e) Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
(f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid” [2].
The Apartheid Convention [2] is heavily informed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) [3], the Fourth Geneva Convention (the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War) [4] and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [5].
Article 3 of the UDHR states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” [3], but this is grossly violated by the present mass killing, injuring and traumatizing of Apartheid Israel’s Indigenous Palestinian Subjects in the Gaza Concentration Camp.
Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War) demand that an Occupier is inescapably obliged to provide its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical services “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [4]. However this was egregiously violated by 16 years of deadly Jewish Israeli blockade of the Gaza Concentration Camp (Occupied Indigenous Palestinian infant mortality 3 times higher than for Occupier Israelis) and the immediate imposition of a siege on Gaza on 7 October 2023 and substantial exclusion of Gazans from life-sustaining water, food, shelter, sanitation, clothing, electricity, fuel, medicine and medical care.
Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [5]. Genocidal Zionist “intent” is established by (a) over a century of horrific and explicit genocidal assertions by Zionists (for a detailed compendium see [6] ) and (b) the sustained and worsening century-long Palestinian Genocide associated (as of 2024) with 2.5 million Palestinian deaths from violence (0.1 million) and imposed deprivation (2.4 million) [7].
Egregious apartheid is variously suffered by the 15 million mostly impoverished and subjugated Indigenous Palestinians that include 7 million Exiled Palestinians (excluded on pain of death from the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 4,000 years), 5.6 million Occupied Palestinians (highly abusively confined without human rights under a brutal, 57-year military occupation to ever-dwindling West Bank ghettos or “Bantustans” (3.3 million) or to the bombed, blockaded and now devastated and murderously besieged Gaza Concentration Camp (pre-war population 2.3 million) and unable to vote for the government ruling them); and 2.1 million Israeli Palestinians (able to vote for approved candidates in elections for the government ruling them, albeit as Third Class citizens under 65 Nazi-style and race-based discriminatory laws) [8]. Pre-7 October 2023 about 7.7 million Indigenous Palestinians were 51% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel, but with 73% (the Occupied Palestinians) excluded from voting for the government ruling them; however mass murder of 335,500 Gazans (by the end of 2024) has reduced this to 50%. Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel is a democracy by genocide and race-based exclusion. Pre-7 October 2023 the GDP per capita was $55,500 for Apartheid Israel, a deadly $3,500 for Occupied Palestinians, and an even deadlier $1,000 for Gaza [8]. What is the GDP in a Gaza reduced to rubble and people reduced in possessions to the clothes they are wearing? Poverty and deprivation kill, and when deliberately applied to innocent children is evil child abuse.
Famed Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa [9] participated in the Oxford Union Debate [1] and estimated 300,000 Palestinians killed in the first year of the Gaza Massacre:“If Palestinians had killed an estimated 300,000 Jews in one year, targeted their journalists, their thinkers, their healthcare workers, their athletes, their artists, bombed every Israeli hospital, university, library, museum, cultural center, synagogue, and simultaneously set up an observation platform where people came watch their slaughter as if a tourist attraction; … if the world were watching the live streamed systematic annihilation of Jews in real time, there would be no debating whether that constituted terrorism or genocide” [10, 11].
Susan Abulhawa attempted to estimate the number of people killed in Gaza using available UN and Palestinian information (27 June 2024): “Based on these estimates, both conservative and data-driven, respectively, the actual figures are likely as follows: 377,280 buildings destroyed completely or partially; 95,040-97,680 martyred; 221,760 injured; 24,750 dead or dying from starvation; 42,000 missing (presumed dead, kidnapped by Israel’s occupying forces or possibly trafficked). The following ranges represent conservative estimate or lower range of data-driven population estimates:17,050-94,049 with chronic illnesses dead from lack of medication; 14,408-255,985 dead from epidemics resulting from Israel’s assault. This means the actual number of dead is closer to 194,768-511,824 people, with 221,760 injured. And counting” [12].
Susan Abulhawa (18 October 2024): “The near-total degradation of an entire high-functioning society in months is impossible to comprehend. The lack of adequate sustenance and sanitation, coupled with unceasing terror, the spread of disease (from hepatitis and polio to mysterious and painful pediatric skin pustules), testing of new weaponry, and an AI-guided death industry has made Gaza the most macabre experiment of empire. I conducted a brief study to estimate the true death toll in Gaza because I knew the capacity to keep count had been decimated. My study, published by Electronic Intifada, found the true death toll to be between 190,000 and 500,000. It includes martyrs from direct fire, as well as those with chronic illnesses who died from lack of access to medications; the dead or dying from starvation and dehydration; those missing; and those dead from the spread of rampant communicable diseases borne of Israel’s destruction of sanitation and water treatment facilities. As is frequently the case when Palestinians speak, my article was met with scepticism and dismissal. But 10 days after its publication, The Lancet, a venerated peer-reviewed medical journal, published a “conservative” number of “up to 186,000 or even more deaths” killed, corroborating the lower end of my estimated range, which I believe is still a gross underestimation” [13].
Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf in The Lancet article alluded to by Susan Abulhawa [13] (10 July 2024): “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip” [14].
Mainstream media and other sources report violent deaths and ignore huge avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation (see my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” [15]). Western Mainstream media, and even well-intentioned and pro-Palestinian human rights sources and activists report only about 40,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza and evidently ignore what must be huge avoidable deaths (excess deaths) from imposed deprivation. I have been researching avoidable deaths from deprivation for 3 decades with my findings reported in hundreds of articles [16-20] and 9 huge books (this including massively updated revised editions) [15, 21-25]. In short, whether a child dies from bashing, bullets and bombs or dies from imposed deprivation the death is just a permanent and the perpetrator just as guilty. Avoidable deaths can be determined from UN demographic data as the difference between actual deaths in a country and deaths expected for a peaceful, decently run country with the same demographics (population and age distribution). In impoverished countries under-5 infant mortality is about 70% of the total avoidable mortality, this permitting rapid assessment of avoidable mortality (this otherwise involving a very laborious analysis of UN demographic data (see [15]). Usefully, the 2007 and 2021 editions of “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” also contain succinct, avoidable mortality-related histories of every country [15].
I used this methodology to estimate deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the 2003-2011 Iraq War (2.7 million) and in the 2001-2021 Afghan War (6.8 million). Violent deaths in Iraq (1.5 million) were estimated from expert epidemiological surveys [26] and violent deaths in Afghanistan (1 million) were assessed on the basis that the Afghan War was 4 times less violent than the Iraq War [27, 28]. The estimated deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the Iraq plus Afghan wars totalled 9.5 million, this being similar to the estimate of over 4.7 million deaths made by the team of 35 expert scholars of the Costs of War project of the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at prestigiousBrown University [29]. However in stark contrast, Establishment-perverted Mainstream media typically under-estimate Iraq War deaths at about 300,000 [30]. Indeed on the occasion of the withdrawal of most US forces from Iraq, the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC, Australia’s equivalent of the Establishment-beholden UK BBC) estimated “tens of thousands” of Iraq deaths [31]. Similarly one notes that there are now 5 million orphans in Iraq [32] – this implies 10 million dead parents if 1 child per family and 2.5 million dead parents if 4 children per family, noting that most of the dead in modern wars are children [15].
EuroMed Human Rights Monitor reported 29,000 Gaza deaths on 27 December 2023 (i.e. after 2 months of killing)[25], whereas Amnesty International estimated 42,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza by 7 October 2024 (i.e. after 12 months of killing and a worsening humanitarian catastrophe of massive deadly deprivation, disease, and famine with substantial lack of water, food, shelter, sanitation, electricity, fuel, winter clothing, medicine and medical care): “By 7 October 2024, the Gaza-based Ministry of Health had recorded 42,010 Palestinian fatalities in Gaza, the vast majority of which were of Palestinians killed during Israel’s offensive, and 97,590 other Palestinians injured since 7 October 2023. The actual toll of those killed during the offensive may be higher and will only become apparent once the conflict is over, including when rescue teams are able to count the dead and retrieve missing bodies from under the rubble. The armed conflict in Gaza has seen some of the highest known death tolls among children (13,319 by 7 October 2024), journalists, as well as health and humanitarian workers of any recent conflict in the world” [33]. The destruction of most of Gaza has evidently greatly impaired the ability to accurately assess the number of deaths. Zionazi Apartheid Israel in Gaza is a world leader on a per capita basis for annual killing of children, journalists, health workers and prisoners.
However a recent Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor report is useful for assessing the number of violent deaths in 1 year, including the proportion of deaths of children, women and men (6 October 2024): “Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army, including around 42,000 recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the majority being women and children. In addition, approximately 100,000 have been injured, with thousands of bodies still lying under the rubble and in the streets, unreachable by rescue and medical teams. An estimated 10 per cent of Gaza’s population has been killed, injured, reported missing, or detained as a result of Israeli military assaults. Of the 50,292 Palestinians killed—including those still buried under the debris—33 per cent were children [16,596 children], and 21 per cent were women [10,561 women and hence 23,134 or 46% men]. Thousands more have been forcibly detained, with 3,600 still languishing in various Israeli prisons and detention centres” [34].
Professor Devi Sridhar (an eminent American public health researcher and chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh [35]) (5 September 2024): “The Lancet medical journal recently published an estimate of deaths in Gaza from several respected scientists, who outline their process of estimation (comparison with similar conflicts) and final numbers. They estimate that about 186,000 total deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza, which is roughly 7.9% of its population, by mid-June 2024. This high number is despite various ceasefire agreements over the past six months. If deaths continue at this rate – about 23,000 a month – there would be an additional 149,500 deaths by the end of the year, some six and half months from the initial mid-June estimate. Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total [i.e. by the end of 2024 and 14.75 months since 7 October 2023 ]” [36].
335,500 deaths in 14.75 months implies 335,500 x 12/ 14.75 = 272,949 deaths in the first year.
We can assume that 50,292 Gazans were killed violently in the first year [34], this yielding 272,949 -50,292 = 222, 657 non-violent deaths from imposed deprivation.
Of the 222,657 non-violent deaths, 70% (155,860) were of under-5 year old infants [15], with the remaining 66,797 being non-infant non-violent deaths.
We can assume the proportions of children, women and men deaths among the 66,797 non-infant non-violent deaths to be those set out in [34] i.e. 33% children (22,043), 21% women ( 14,027) and 46% men (30,727 (men).
Total non-violent deaths include 22,043 (non-infant children) + 155,860 (infant children) = 177,903 children, plus 14,047 women and 30,727 men.
We can assume (in the absence of other data) that the proportions of children, women and men deaths among the 50,292 violent deaths are those estimated in [34] i.e. 33% children (16,596) , 21% women (10,561) and 46% men (23,134).
Violent and non-violent Gaza deaths in the first year then total 194,499 (children), 24,588 (women) and 53,861 (men) for a total of 272,948 deaths in the first year.
Undercounting – the “truth” is what Zionists and the US Establishment say it is. US Establishment-beholden, Zionist-subverted, and Zionist-perverted Western Mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes continue to under-report about asserted 40,000 Gaza deaths. Even exemplary and pro-Palestinian human rights Amnesty International in its hard-hitting report “You feel like you are subhuman. Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza” (December 2024) reported 42,000 Gaza deaths [33].
Famed consumer advocate and activist Ralph Nader [37] has described what he calls the undercounting of Gaza deaths (September 2024): “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount. 40,000? It’s more like 300,000” [38-40]. In carefully researched articles [41-44] and Letters to Mainstream media (unpublished by the mendacious MSM but collated as a public record of MSM mendacity [19, 20]) I have reported the estimates of hundreds of thousands of Gaza deaths made by health experts published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet [14] and by eminent health expert Professor Devi Sridhar [36]. UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, has cited Professor Devi Sridhar in stating (6 September 2024): “[Without a ceasefire the IDF] could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years… The range of presumable direct and indirect deaths could be between 15% and 20% of the population already by the end of this year… Once the dust settles, I can’t imagine how the world will go on after having allowed that. Again” [45-47] (indeed, noting a pre-war Gaza population of 2.3 million, 335,500 x100/2,300,000 = 15%).
Genocide, ethnocide and cultural obliteration in Gaza and Palestine. Not content with genocide and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Palestinians from 90% of Palestine, the genocidal Zionazis have been eradicating the physical evidence of the over 4,000 years of Palestinian history.
Gaza was formerly one of the oldest and most important cities of the Arab World and dates back over 4,000 years to the Semitic Fertile Crescent that brought the alphabet, literature, mathematics, astronomy, agronomy and philosophy to the World [15, 48-52]. Indeed the first Egyptian record of Gaza was by Thutmose III in the 15th century BCE [50, 51] whereas there is zero non-Biblical reference to the asserted “Exodus from Egypt”, “the empire of David and Solomon” or the “total Exile from Palestine under the Romans” [53]. The “perfumes of Arabia” of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth fame [54] were deposited in the port of Gaza by the famed Nabataeans for transhipment to the Roman Empire and its imperial successors. Thus the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Frankincense and myrrh, highly prized in antiquity as fragrances, could only be obtained from trees growing in southern Arabia, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Arab merchants brought these goods to Roman markets by means of camel caravans along the Incense Route. The Incense Route originally commenced at Shabwah in Hadhramaut, the easternmost kingdom of South Arabia, and ended at Gaza, a port north of the Sinai Peninsula on the Mediterranean Sea. Both the camel caravan routes across the deserts of Arabia and the ports along the coast of South Arabia were part of a vast trade network covering most of the world then known to Greco-Roman geographers as Arabia Felix. South Arabian merchants utilized the Incense Route to transport not only frankincense and myrrh but also spices, gold, ivory, pearls, precious stones, and textiles—all of which arrived at the local ports from Africa, India, and the Far East. The geographer Strabo compared the immense traffic along the desert routes to that of an army. The Incense Route ran along the western edge of Arabia’s central desert about 100 miles inland from the Red Sea coast; Pliny the Elder stated that the journey consisted of sixty-five stages divided by halts for the camels. Both the Nabataeans and the South Arabians grew tremendously wealthy through the transport of goods destined for lands beyond the Arabian Peninsula” [55].
As detailed by the brilliant William Dalrymple [52], Gaza had a key role in the game-changing 11th -15th century transmission to Europe of Indian-Arab wisdom, especially and crucially in mathematics (2024): “Gerard and Ghalib were the most prolific and productive stars of the new translation movement, but they were not alone, nor were they the first. Other translations from the Arabic at this period were being made in many other places where Arab rule had given way to that of Crusading Christians: south Italy, Sicily and the various Crusader states of the Outremer that by the late eleventh century were now lining the Mediterranean coast from Antioch (now in south-east Turley) to Gaza (in Palestine). Together, these filled European libraries with a richness of learning impossible to even imagine a century earlier” (pages 232 and 270 [52]).
About 50% of about 900 archaeological sites in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged so far by Jewish Israeli bombing [56-58]. The northern third of Gaza is being turned into a completely bulldozed building site.
By way of example, Yousif Al-Daffaie (21 February 2024): “A reflection of Palestine’s history where multiple religions coexisted, the Great Omari Mosque has undergone multiple transformations throughout history. Built on the site of a pagan temple, this fifth-century church became a mosque in AD635. With a courtyard area of 1,190m², the mosque was the second-largest in Palestine and served as a daily destination for more than 3,000 worshippers. Situated near Palestine Square, it has played a crucial role in the everyday life of Gaza, as mosques in Middle Eastern cities foster social interactions, informal conversations and societal bonds. But this incubation of societal interactions came to an abrupt stop in December 2023, when the mosque was reduced to rubble” [57].
In the 1948 Nakba the Zionazis not only expelled 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians but in the process killed 15,000 Palestinians and destroyed 530 Palestinian villages and over 100 mosques. Thus, for example, the 1948 Tantura Massacre in which Zionist militia murdered about 200 Indigenous Palestinians in the seaside village of Tantura near Haifa – the village was bulldozed over the dead and is now a car park for beach goers [59]. The Jewish National Fund (which has a tax-deductible status in Zionazism-supporting, Zionist subverted, US lackey and racist White Australia) has been involved in physically erasing Palestinian buildings from Palestine.
Final comments and conclusions.
Meanwhile the Jewish Israeli-imposed bombing, shooting, killing, injuring, starving and traumatizing continues with impunity in the Gaza Concentration Camp while the World looks on. In peaceful south Melbourne a major synagogue has just been fire-bombed in an appalling act of arson (6 December 2024) [60]. In response to this outrage I sent the following Letter under the Subject heading “The World must stop the Genocide and Occupation NOW” to major Australian Mainstream media (it is very unlikely to be published but will be preserved for universal access here:[19] ):
LETTER. “Everybody utterly deplores the burning of the Melbourne synagogue, recalling the 1938 Kristallnacht atrocity in Nazi Germany that unleashed pogroms against Jews and launched the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed by violence and imposed deprivation, including many of my Jewish Hungarian relatives). Back in 2001 the Brisbane mosque of my Muslim in-laws was burned down due to post-9/11 Islamophobic hysteria. According to the Brown University Cost of War project Muslim deaths from violence and deprivation in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan totalled 4.7 million. Over 4 millennia culturally important Gaza was involved in the extraordinary advance of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, shipped the “perfumes of Arabia” to the Roman Empire, and played an important part in the transmission of Indian-Arabic learning to Europe in the 11th – 15th centuries CE (William Dalrymple). However 50% of Gaza’s archaeological sites have been damaged or destroyed including the Great Omari Mosque that dated to Roman times. In 1 year 273,000 Gazans have been killed (Professor Devi Sridhar, Edinburgh), 15% of the pre-war population, and including 195,000 children. The World must stop the Genocide and Occupation NOW. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. END LETTER.
In 2024 I published a huge book entitled “Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation and Palestinian Genocide” [25]. The sub-title summarizes what must be urgently done to free Palestine. However the easiest thing to achieve immediately is the World demanding that the Indigenous Palestinians be immediately granted full human rights i.e. all the human rights as set out in the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [3]. However genocidally racist, egregiously mendacious, endlessly thieving and Zionazi-run Apartheid Israel will simply not agree to this demand that is utterly unexceptional for decent Humanity – and as a result should be sanctioned as a racist and pariah apartheid state.
C. Countercurrents