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Gaza: ‘A stain on the consciousness of humanity’
Chris Gunness, a former spokesman for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, denounced Israel’s continuing “slaughter” in Gaza, and countries around the world for failing to stop it.
“In the last year, we have seen Gaza transform from the world’s largest open-air prison to the world’s largest concentration camp,” Gunness told Al Jazeera.
“Today, Gaza has been transformed into an industrial-scale slaughterhouse. And I use the word ‘slaughter’ advisedly because frankly animals in most abattoirs around the world are killed more humanely than the women and children of Gaza.
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“The First Live-Streamed Genocide”: Al Jazeera Exposes War Crimes Filmed by Israeli Troops Themselves
Democracy Now, October 09, 2024
A new documentary from Al Jazeera looks at evidence of war crimes in Gaza in the form of social media posted by Israeli soldiers recording and celebrating their own attacks on Palestinians.
Susan Abulhawa
“The West cannot hide. They cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know. This has been described as the first live-streamed genocide in history. And I believe that to be true.”
Youmna Elsayed
“Israeli soldiers in Gaza taking these videos and posting them on different social media platforms. […] They’ve had all the courage to do that because they know that they are not even going to be condemned by posting these videos. They are showing off how much they dehumanize Palestinians, how much they kill. They destroy their properties. They completely torture them and dehumanize them in different ways, whether they’re children, they’re men, they’re women. They brag about it, and they’re very proud of their doings.”
Richard Sanders
“The essential point of the whole film is no one can hide. The Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they were doing it. The film is rooted in these soldiers’ videos, of which there are thousands and thousands. And we didn’t pick particularly damaging examples. They’re all like that. I mean, one thing that’s very striking is, what you don’t see in these videos is combat, or very rarely. There’s very little combat. Every now and then you see soldiers expending an enormous amount of ammunition, but they’re frequently standing up, and there’s clearly no incoming. So, that’s what you would think soldiers would want to post online, but they don’t.”
“Now, it’s not only soldiers’ videos, of course, we have in the film. There is Israeli media, Israeli politicians and Israeli social media. In the West, there is sometimes this rhetoric — even when people aren’t overtly supportive of the Israelis, there is this rhetoric of “it’s complicated,” “it’s nuanced,” “it’s difficult.”
“And what we’re really saying in this film is listen to Israelis. Listen to Israelis. They don’t think it’s complicated. They don’t think it’s nuanced. Their rhetoric is often overtly genocidal. It’s certainly frequently all about ethnic cleansing. They couldn’t have been clearer about what they were doing. And if we are ignorant, we’re willfully ignorant.”
Nermeen Shaikh
“So, Richard Sanders, how do you interpret the fact that these videos were made and posted so liberally by Israeli soldiers themselves? To what extent did they think they were totally immune from any kind of repercussions as a consequence of what they were doing, which, you know, if you see those clips that you show in the documentary, are so obviously war crimes? In fact, the international legal expert whom you spoke to said that it’s very uncommon to have clips like this. He said “a treasure trove which you very seldom come across … something which I think prosecutors will be licking their lips at.”
Richard Sanders
“They clearly felt this would be popular in Israel. They were competing for clicks, you know. And they were right. These videos were popular. You know, they were using some of the photos they took of themselves on dating apps. And yes, as you say, it speaks to an astonishing sense of impunity. I mean, the clip you’ve played there, where you actually see unarmed men being shot, that’s fairly unusual, but even so, that was put on YouTube by the people who did it.”
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