Fake democracies

Dear reader,

The hard-negotiated truce between Hamas and Israel went into effect at 7 a.m. this morning, with the first prisoner swap set to take place at 4 p.m.

Meanwhile, in its quest to « eradicate Hamas, » Israel has killed nearly 15,000 Palestinians in the space of 48 days. An estimated 74 percent of them are women and children, according to figures from UNRWA. Is that what collateral damage looks like ?

And, closer to home, Israel killed two more journalists in south Lebanon this week.

That brings the count up to three journalists so far in Lebanon who have been killed while simply doing their jobs. And 50 Gazan journalists lost their lives, according to Reporters Without Borders, 11 of them in the course of their work.

Is that still what collateral damage looks like ?

We’ve always known that wars had huge costs on civilians.

That’s why we put in place rules to limit collateral damages.

And we decided to abide by them, because after WWII, we decided that enough was enough.

Yet, nearly 75 years after the Geneva Conventions, one cannot help but wonder: what are these rules good for, if they are being constantly ignored and crushed by a myriad of different parties, among them the self-proclaimed « only democracy » in the Middle East ?

Speaking of democracy, it’s been known for quite a while that Lebanon is not a democracy, but a mafia/failed state. Our caricature of an Independence Day, which came and went largely unnoticed, is a reminder of that.

L’Orient Today