When Palestine cries, where are we?

The end of Ramazan is usually a moment of joy and celebration when we exchange greetings and gifts. But, this year, it is impossible to celebrate when mothers in the besieged strip in the Middle East are burying their little angels, and there are children without families to care for them.

Food, energy, water, information, and border control have been weaponized like never before to inflict maximum harm, affecting not just the present generation but future generations with stunting, massive trauma and dispossession. When Palestine cries, where are we?

With figures rising by the minute, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, over 75,000 permanently maimed and disabled with many more buried in mass graves and decaying under the rubble.

According to UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillipe Lazzarini, “[It] is [essentially] a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and future”. British-Egyptian paediatrician and neurologist Dr Omer Abedl Mannan says that children are suffering “a very cruel, slow death” by starvation. “[T]he swift plunge into famine and the human suffering and anguish in Gaza is unprecedented.”

Hospitals have been bombed to ensure there is not even basic pain management support. Those managing to survive are suffering “relentless mental harm”, according Save the Children, with over one million children needing immediate mental health support as well as food and safe shelters.

“Gaza is the only city in history where the percentage of children and women killed is 68 per cent. If we add to that the percentage of elderly men, the results are horrific” notes historian Saleh Abdel Jawad. On average 100 children and 250 Palestinians are killed each day, the highest kill rate since the Rwanda genocide. Many are held in administrative detention are subjected to torture, sexual violence and mass executions.

A record number of journalists, medics and humanitarian workers have also been killed. Western hypocrisy is simply of another order. Despite clear international law obligations, major Western powers led by the US, EU and UK have ensured complete and unwavering diplomatic, political and media cover, and military support for the genocide to expand their Zionist settler-colony.

There is simply no empathy for Palestinians in these circles of white officials. The sad fact is that Muslim-majority countries have also let this grotesque massacre of Palestinians happen either by their active ‘normalization’ including military collaboration and continuing trade or complicit silence. This is in stark contrast to the concrete actions taken by countries such as South Africa, Ireland, Spain and Belgium and othe r Latin American countries to end the genocide and hold the entity accountable.

Both the normalization of violence against Palestinians by the West and Muslim leaders’ complicity attempt to erase Palestinian suffering and injustice from the public conscience. It requires censoring public concern. Moroccan authorities recently imprisoned Abdul Rahman Zankad for criticizing normalization.

This environment fosters a numbness that Turkish writer Elif Shafak describes as the moment we become indifferent, desensitized or disconnected from each other, when we stop feeling or caring and when we allow the other to be dehumanized. This erodes empathy and compassion for human suffering.

Thankfully, in Western cities, massive public protests that include Jewish communities are challenging their governments’ policies while much of the Middle East is indifferent to their governments’ trading, thereby supporting the genocidal occupiers and their allies.

Enforced numbness has embarrassingly turned Pakistan into a sleeping giant – the fifth most populous country with a large army, nuclear power and significant resources. More has been done by a small country like the Maldives to support Palestine.

We must remember Jinnah’s principled stance against the Balfour Declaration that strongly rejects the theft of Palestinian lands as an illegitimate land grab and insists on the equality and right to a dignified life for Palestinians in their ancestral lands. It is still a morally and legally sound commitment.

Any silence would be not just complicity but also an attempt to erase our history, identity, relationship with Palestinians, and our sense of justice and solidarity.

We could have joined the legal actions against Zionist occupation and its allies at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. But sadly, nothing.

In the UK, more than 1,100 lawyers, former judges, legal academics and intelligence officials have written an open letter calling on their government to ensure compliance with international obligations. It is deeply disappointing that our legal professionals and academics, retired judges, bureaucrats and generals lack the moral courage and integrity to stand up for Palestine and international law.

While the legal profession has passed resolutions, the Pakistan Bar Council must announce legal teams to support efforts to prosecute those aiding and abetting genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It can confer with foreign lawyers who have voluntarily initiated legal actions. We must make a stand for rule of law and humanity and be counted in the defence of what is right.

The media needs to do a lot more to educate and inform people about the history of Palestine, the occupation, Jinnah’s principled stands, and our role and responsibility towards Palestine. In solidarity with the many martyred journalists, we must insist on speaking truth to power, come what may.

Barring a few exceptions such as the Save Gaza Campaign, our traditional and donor-supported civil society has failed abysmally to champion democracy, human rights and international humanitarian law when it mattered most.

The civil society needs to join local and global civil society efforts to support resistance both at home and abroad.

The lack of action by the Muslim leadership towards the Gaza genocide has strengthened the case for more representative institutions and stronger democracy in the Muslim world and multi-lateral organizations such as the OIC to better reflect public aspirations. As Palestinians bravely resist an existential crisis at home, their unprecedented sacrifices are winning the legal and political battles globally.

Protests in Western capitals are shifting the politics in Palestine’s favour. But to clinch justice for Palestine, it is for us – Muslims – to first win the principled case for Palestine by ensuring our governments and leaders stand firm for a dignified and just peace and insist on accountability for Israel’s conduct.

Our obligations are clear: “[H]old firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided” (Al-Imran 3:103) and “[S]tand firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves …” (Al Nisa 4:135). When Palestine cries, where are we?

The writer is a former secretary, Law & Justice Commission of Pakistan.