Sir, – Mainstream western media sites have in the last week been quite rightly preoccupied with the fourth anniversary of the start of the invasion of Ukraine, and the terrible and pointless loss of life of Ukrainian soldiers and 15,000 civilians.
Russian president Vladimir Putin proceeds also to heartlessly use his own people as cannon fodder for his own ends.
But western media interest in the essentially continuing war in Gaza during the “ceasefire” seems to have fallen off a cliff.
Perhaps this reflects a turning of public attention away from Gaza, as if the war has ended, and on to the political scandals generated every day by US president Donald Trump’s ridiculous antics, the ripples caused by the release of the Epstein files and the sinking of so many reputations on both sides of the Atlantic.
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But the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank continues unabated.
The Bondi Beach attack and the death of 15 innocent people at the hands of Islamist terrorists in Australia caused appropriate horror around the globe. But the death of 618 (bringing the total to more than 73,000) Palestinians in Gaza since the start of last October’s ceasefire raises little interest. Are we that empathy-fatigued about Gaza?
The EU as a body has been disgracefully passive at best, and some EU member states have been at worst complicit with Israel throughout the war.
The US policy towards Israel and Palestine is bizarre, as evidenced by the Board of Peace and the appointment of Mike Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel/Palestine.
All this has granted Binyamin Netanyahu’s administration impunity to continue to commit war crimes in Gaza and continue the internationally illegal annexation of land in the West Bank.
This week the foreign ministers of 19 countries issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s move to extend its “de facto annexation” of the West Bank by dispossessing Palestinians of their land. This further cancels the hopes for a two-state solution.
Powerful western nations have either done nothing or have actively done harm to these hopes for a two-state solution. – Yours, etc,
CYNTHIA CARROLL,
Newport,
Co Tipperary.
