While the genocide in Gaza surpasses all known levels of obscenity, several countries have announced their recognition of the Palestinian state: France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal, and—perhaps—Germany, lost in a rhetoric about guilt for the Holocaust that paradoxically ends up offending the memory of the victims. They have announced that they will do so in September, taking advantage of the UN General Assembly.
The Palestinians don't have that much time. What has been unleashed in Palestine, and most intensely in Gaza, is the ignominy of wars of extermination. Israeli soldiers are having fun (they are having fun) taking aim at children, women, and men, who are crowding, crawling, or fighting, depending on how much strength they have left, in the hunger lines. The screams and cries of despair of those dying of hunger are heard in the air, polluted by the devastation of streets and buildings, the putrefaction of bodies, and the pollution of water and air. It is the collapse of the idea of humanity with which most Western citizens grew up. Comparisons between Gaza and the Holocaust may be historically questionable, but from a moral perspective, which is the one that certifies us as humans capable of living in society, it is perfectly legitimate. What should never happen again is happening, and it is happening live on social media and in the media.
In political terms, the martyrdom of Gaza is the confrontation between a far-right government and the community and international law. Arguments about the need to stop Hamas and Israel's right to defend itself, which may have had relative force after the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, are now unacceptable and have turned into toxic sarcasm. However, the EU and international organizations' capacity to respond is limited and collides everywhere with their own impotence. Basically, as long as Israel has US support, it will continue with the catastrophe and the massacre. It is a display of impunity, the act of revenge of a far-right and religious fanaticism that have hatched the egg of victimhood until a bloodthirsty fascism has been born.
The United States is presided over by Donald Trump, a 79-year-old man (he used to call Biden old when he wasn't that old yet) who delights in making capricious decisions and communicating them extravagantly. "I can shoot a gun in the middle of Fifth Avenue and kill someone and nothing will happen to me," he once said during his first term. He, too, is experiencing his own personal revenge against all those who mocked him, those who said he would never be president because he wasn't fit to be. Netanyahu and Trump, and their governments made up of people as cynical, obfuscated, and dangerous as they are, are together enjoying the sweet moment of their arm wrestling with the rest of the world. And they are winning because no one can or knows how to stop them from doing whatever they want.
