It seems that the war government of Benjamin Netanyahu is bent on fighting its Armageddon battle against its perceived ‘forces of evil’ defined as ‘Hamas’ and ‘Hezbollah’ whom it perceives as ‘savages’ to be destroyed at any cost.

To achieve this higher goal, war criminals such as Netanyahu and his ministers can ‘justify’ the killing of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, levelling down cities, bombarding schools and hospitals, causing widespread famine and disease, forcing thousands to flee their homes; in short, bringing about complete annihilation of life.

This dangerous and distorted logic was behind most of the catastrophes in human history, the most recent of which was the heinous crime of the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany against the Jews in a most ferocious ethnic cleansing campaign for which the Nazi perpetrators used the infamous euphemism “final solution”.

Modern-day Israel should have learned the historical lesson of that tragedy which undoubtedly left an indelible impression on the Jewish conscience as liberal and humanitarian Jewish intellectuals recognise and acknowledge that it should never be repeated against any ethnic or religious group on any scale and under no justification whatsoever.

Unfortunately, Netanyahu and his war government have learned nothing from the lessons of history. A government whose hands are smeared with the blood of thousands of children, the highest in any war since World War II, and that uses  starvation systematically against an entire population, cannot have any claims to legitimate self defence or any shred of moral superiority. It is a government that strives on war and destruction. For more than a year it has been relentlessly fighting in Gaza, reducing schools, hospitals and refugee camps to rubble.

The war on Gaza can only be described as a war of total destruction, genocidal, barbaric and criminal in nature. As if the war on Gaza was not enough, this criminal, bloodthirsty government has waged another war on Lebanon, ferociously claiming the lives of thousands of civilians, under the justification that its ultimate goal is to destroy Hezbollah.

Ironically, Israel has set as its ultimate goal for the war on Gaza the destruction of Hamas and the return of the hostages. Neither goal has been really achieved after more than one year of carnage. This new war adventure against Lebanon has the potential to drag on for months, claiming the lives of many thousands of innocent people, and one hopes that the recently agreed to ceasefire will remain in place and lead to an end of hostilities between the two sides.

The time has now come for the Jewish conscience to redeem itself- Saadun Suayeh

The dangerous and distorted logic of the Israeli government will only lead the whole region to more destruction and loss of many thousands of lives. As for the defeat of movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, it is not attainable, as I argued in previous articles. Resistance movements by their very nature cannot be truly defeated as they are not state actors. They do not have armies that can be overwhelmed by sheer force like what happened in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Israel can bring total destruction to Gaza, as it has almost already done, but the flame of resistance cannot be extinguished, even if it liquidates all the leaders of Hamas and other resistance movements. New generations of fighters will be resurrected from the ashes. The US learned this lesson in Vietnam. Russia learned it in Afghanistan. France learned it in Algeria. Like the old man in Hemingway’s masterpiece The Old Man and the Sea, resistance can be destroyed but its spirit never defeated.

One would have thought that the US, a country with one of the finest constitutions in the world drafted by the founding fathers to uphold and defend human rights and dignity, could exert pressure on Israel to end its genocidal war and seriously work towards a settlement with the Palestinians. Instead, the US has provided Israel with unlimited support, brandishing its ever-present veto to prevent the UN Security Council from taking any resolution to stop the massacre in Gaza and the war on Lebanon. This is truly sad, irresponsible and disappointing.

A glimmer of hope in the accountability of our collective human conscience for crimes committed against humanity came from the ICC last week, whose prosecutor had the legal and moral courage to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defence minister and a Hamas member.

Regardless of whether such arrest warrants could be implemented, the decision is historically significant in that it put an end to the fallacy that Israeli politicians could commit atrocities with impunity and feel morally superior to their ‘enemies’ whom they consider ‘subhuman’.

The time has now come for the Jewish conscience to redeem itself and liberate Israel for ever from its Masada complex.

Saadun Suayeh is a former ambassador of Libya to Malta.