The Massacre of the Innocents in Gaza

by Michael Carberry  

The Massacre of the Innocents by Cornelis van Haarlem, 1590 

On 28 December each year Western Christian communities  around the world mark the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating the horrific events recounted in the Gospel of St Mathew (Ch 2 vv 16-17) when, having learned of the birth of Jesus Christ,  Herod the Great, King of Judea (modern day Israel/Palestine) ordered the killing of all babies under the age of two years in Bethlehem and the surrounding district. Herod had been told of the prophecy that from among these children would arise a leader who would usurp his kingdom.  Mathew gives no indication of the number of infants murdered nor is there any independent confirmation of the event, but, whatever the historical veracity of the details, the incident is certainly consistent with Herod’s psychopathic personality and his record of bloodthirsty homicide, including most of his own family.  The massacre has been portrayed by many artists over the centuries and, still today any normal human being feels a natural repugnance at the murder of innocent babies for political reasons.

We may be tempted to say “Oh but that was a very long time ago in a much less civilised era”, but the suffering of the children involved and the anguish of the mothers witnessing their babies slaughtered before their eyes was no less then than it is now.  In the two thousand years since little has changed and such atrocities continue to be perpetrated.  Both the First and Second World Wars saw large numbers of children brutally killed, maimed or starved to death, most horrifically during the Holocaust when among the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were perhaps as many as 1.5 million children.  Young children were gassed immediately upon arrival in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau; older ones who were not killed at once simply did not have the resilience to endure the starvation and mal-treatment which followed.

In an effort to prevent such appalling atrocities reoccurring, the international community came together to develop a corpus of international humanitarian law to protect the lives and welfare of vulnerable populations, particularly children, through agreements like the Geneva Convention, and institutions to enforce these laws such as the International Criminal Court. It was in the light of the Holocaust that the United Nations approved the Genocide Convention in December 1948 which came into force on 12 January 1951. The preamble to the Convention states that “genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world,” The United States and Israel were both early signatories to the Convention, Israel doing so on 17August 1949 just one year and three months after the Proclamation of the State of Israel and ratifying it on 4 March 1950. The International Criminal Court took much longer to set up but was finally established by the Rome Statute of 17 July1998. But the effectiveness of such international conventions depends on the wiliness of signatory states to implement and respect the commitments they have made.  That in turn often depends on the nature of the government in power in the states concerned.

When Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7^th 2023 there was an instinctive outpouring of revulsion at the brutality of the atrocity, sympathy for the victims which included infants and young children, and a recognition that Israel would have to respond.  Despite the ferocity of the immediate Israeli response, which quickly resulted in the deaths or maiming of far more innocent victims than the Hamas attacks, many people, including British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, were prepared to defend the Israeli actions on the ground that Israel had a “right to defend itself”.   But as the violence continued, with no real willingness on the part of the Israelis to reach a settlement, international concern grew. 

When I first wrote about this issue in February (What does the Holocaust teach us?) I was concerned that many people did not seem to recognize the enormity of what was happening in Gaza (and also the occupied West Bank).   That is no longer the case. After a year and nine months with more than sixty-one thousand people confirmed killed including over seventeen thousand children (but with thousands of bodies still buried under the rubble the real number may well exceed seventy thousand); the harrowing tales of surgeons trying to treat children with limbs blown off without proper facilities or drugs or medical supplies;  the shooting by IDF soldiers of starving parents rushing to try and salvage a few crumbs from the meagre aid provided because they were perceived as “threatening”, all while the Israeli IDF continues to bombard hospitals, schools and residential areas, only the most culpably ignorant could be unaware of the atrocities being committed by the Israeli forces on an almost daily basis.

On January 15 data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the World Health Organization and the Palestinian government revealed that, Israeli attacks had damaged:

·       Almost all of Gaza’s homes

·       80 percent of commercial facilities

·       88 percent of school buildings

·       Healthcare facilities - 50 percent of hospitals are partially functional

·       68 percent of road networks

·       68 percent of cropland

And the situation has steadily worsened in the six months since then. The Israeli government and military persistently claim they are targeting “Hamas terrorists.”  But the numbers killed by the IDF grossly exceed the entire numerical strength of Hamas before the conflict began. Because of the high fertility rates among Gazan families, the majority of the population are very young. It’s estimated that 65% of those killed and injured have been women and children.

The bulk of Palestinian territory has been under illegal occupation by Israel since 1967 and Gaza itself has been completely blockaded by land, sea and air since Hamas took over its administration in 2007, creating a vast open-air prison. The blockade constitutes an act of war and a collective punishment against the Palestinian people which has been condemned by the UN and international human rights organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.  Any act of resistance against the illegal occupation has been punished by harsh Israeli reprisals, including bulldozing of homes (contrary to international law) and the imprisonment indefinitely and without charge of thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, for as little as throwing stones or waving Palestinian flags.

The taking of hostages was a deliberate strategy by Hamas to achieve a bargaining chip which might help release these Palestinian prisoners.   The first cease-fire from 24 to 30 November 2023. which led to the release of 50 Israeli hostages, 19 non-Israelis and some 180 Palestinians (mostly women and children held in “administrative detention”) showed the way to release all the hostages and find a peaceful solution to the conflict. Instead, under pressure from the ultra-nationalists in his government, Netanyahu preferred to abandon the remaining hostages, resume the military campaign and unleash a cataclysm against the people of Gaza. 

No one denies or would try to play down the appalling atrocities committed by the Hamas terrorists on October 7^th 2023.  But one atrocity never justifies another and the scale of the atrocities being committed by the IDF on the orders of the Israeli government has long since eclipsed those by Hamas. As the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, made clear in reports published in March 2024 and earlier this month this is a campaign of genocide. While many pro-Israeli and far-right groups, including the Trump administration, have criticised Albanese’s comments as “antisemitic”, it is notable that the former UK Supreme Court Judge, Lord Jonathan Sumption,  noted for his conservative views and certainly no “lefty lawyer”, has been categorical that the actions of the IDF in Gaza in attacking, schools, hospitals, and aid distribution centres constitute clear and repeated violations of international humanitarian law amounting, on the evidence available, to genocide.

Israel pretends to be a civilized democracy but it is not.   For almost 60 years it has been illegally occupying the bulk of the territory of its immediate neighbour, driving out the legitimate occupants and seizing their land for illegal settlements.   As well as having been indicted domestically for charges of corruption, Benyamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Galant have both been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Charges against other leading members of the government or military may follow.  Israel has become a rogue state headed by a criminal cabal.

It was the British conservative philosopher, Edmund Burke, who said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.  As Francesca Albanese observed in presenting her report, the carnage in Gaza could be stopped if Western governments agreed to cease providing military and diplomatic support to Israel and took collective action to end the blockade and flood Gaza with the aid required to save lives and protect the innocent.  Instead, they wring their hands or, worse still, like Donald Trump, actively support Israel, welcoming Netanyahu to the White House to discuss plans for the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland to create lebensraum for Israeli settlers or space for Trump’s real estate developments. 

The tragedy unfolding in Gasa is fourfold:  First, for the Gazan people, who have suffered appallingly with families torn apart, thousands of innocent civilians killed and maimed, and the economy destroyed. Secondly for the Israeli citizens, especially the hostage families, who find themselves living in a pariah state and forced to participate in a war which most of them do not want, and many actively oppose. Thirdly, the Jewish communities around the world facing increasing antisemitism as a direct consequence of the actions of the Israeli government.  And finally, for Humanity in general. We have failed to learn the lesson of history - political problems can never be solved by warfare - and have become increasingly inured to barbarity, lies, and a contempt for international law or respect for humanitarian principles.

In, The Story of the Jews, the Jewish historian, Simon Schama, relates how in pre-Islamic times Jews and Arabs lived intermingled throughout the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt.  They were both semitic peoples who speak closely-related languages; indeed there were at that time many Arab Jews.   Like Christianity, Islam derived its monotheism and much of its ethics and practices (e.g. circumcision) from Judaism.  Even after the rise of Islam, Jews were often accorded special treatment as “people of the book” and despite occasional purges by fundamentalist puritans, like the Almohads in Umayyad Spain, the two peoples mostly co-existed peacefully - a situation which largely continued until modern times.  It was from Christian Europe that Jews experienced the most vicious antisemitism and the most appalling atrocities – not least in medieval England. What changed everything in the relationship between Arabs and Jews was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 - a state carved out from land taken from the Arab  Palestinians who had lived there for two thousand years - and the depredations and illegal annexations, which have gone on to this day.   There is no reason why Jews and Arabs cannot co-exist peacefully if there is a political will to find a solution which seeks to address the concerns of both peoples.   But there can be no prospect of a peaceful solution so long as there is an Israeli government which refuses to recognise the right of Palestinian self-determination and is backed by ultra-nationalists and religious fundamentalists intent on expelling the rightful owners of the land of Palestine to re-create by force of arms a biblical state which disappeared over two thousand years ago.  Meanwhile innocent children continue to be slaughtered on an almost daily basis.

Two thousand years after the massacre of the innocents recorded in the Gospel account, much of the world still remembers and is repelled by the callous brutality of that act.  Likewise, the atrocities being daily perpetrated by the IDF in Gaza on the orders of Netanyahu and his cronies will never be forgotten.  These crimes will remain as a blot on the reputation of the State of Israel and on the conscience of Humanity for generations to come.