THIS is with reference to the report ‘Israeli troops kill another 37 Palestinians in Gaza’ (Aug 10), which also stated that 30 of them were targeted while collecting aid, and that British police had arrested 365 people in London for backing Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian group banned by the British government. As if all this was not bad enough, the report added that a legal challenge to the government decision would be heard later this year, and not sooner.

While the Zionist government in Israel is crossing all limits, decent people across the world having a concern for human rights and humanity have been protesting against the ongoing genocide that has already killed well over 60,000 Palestinian men, women and children, and has left another over 150,000 wounded. Besides, the carnage has reduced nearly the whole of Gaza to rubble, making the entire population homeless.

The news of 365 protesters arrested by British police took me back down the memory lane when I had spent nearly a decade in England around 50 years ago. In case of such a protest during those days, the casualties would have been about two dozen policemen injured, a few protesters wounded lightly and maybe five or six protesters detained, but released later without charges.

While nearly all the colonial powers did the worst of things in their colonies, at least in their homelands they had managed to keep things nice and decent, with the public having been given liberty to vent out its feelings. But even these pretences have now been done away with, and governments have become authoritarian and dictatorial even in their own countries and towards their own people.

The abject cruelty of these Western governments can be judged from the fact that despite Israel’s continuation of utmost brutality in complete defiance of the global opinion, the support from governments in major countries has not seen any decline. The reaction of the United States, the so-called leader of the equally so-called free world, is indicative of Western apathy.

Donald Trump, reacting to Israel’s declaration of intent to take over the whole of Gaza, simply said that it was up to Israel to make the decision. The man has the audacity to suggest to other states in the Middle East to ‘reward’ Israel for all this by ‘normalising’ diplomatic ties with the Zionist sttate. What an utter farce!

S.R.H. Hashmi
Karachi

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2025