Mansoor’s Musings: Israel bent upon erasing Palestine from the map

By Mansoor Ladha on October 2, 2025.

“You who feel no pain at the suffering of others it is not fitting for you to be called human.”

The above applies most appropriately to the current atrocities and genocide launched on Palestinians in Gaza by Israel. Any TV channel you watch is full of dramatic pictures of corpses being buried, malnourished children, kids begging for food, destruction of buildings, and miles of people loaded with their belongings – chairs, bedding and other household goods — fleeing Gaza, episodes of human misery that no one wants to do anything about. Isn’t there any milk of human kindness left in the world?

A U.N. commission has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, are responsible for inciting the acts. Among the list of atrocities, the panel said Israel had committed against the Palestinian people were “imposing starvation,” seeking to “erase Palestinian culture” and deliberately targeting children to “destroy the biological continuity” and “future existence” of Palestinians in Gaza.

The independent Commission of Inquiry-which does not speak for the UN-found that Israeli forces had committed four of the five acts of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The 72-page report studied a wide range of rights abuses, including deliberately starving the population, shooting children, carrying out sexual violence, and bombing Gaza’s largest IVF clinic.

The report said, “The commission finds that the attack (on Al-Basma) was intended to destroy the future of Palestinians, the growth of the group, and their very existence.” Under international law, U.N. member nations are bound to do what they can to “prevent and punish the crime of genocide whenever and wherever it occurs.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been ruthlessly bombarding Gaza while pretending to seek peace. How can anyone have peaceful intentions while continuing to kill his adversaries? How can anyone become a respected member of the international community while defying all United Nations resolutions?

As of Sept. 10 over 65,643 Palestinians, including 20 000 children, have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as 217 journalists and media workers, 120 academics and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, a number that includes 179 employees of UNRWA Scholars have estimated 80 per cent of Palestinians killed are civilians.

The charity, Save the Children, has also reported that the use of explosive weapons in Gaza has resulted in an average of 475 children each month in 2024 having lifelong disabilities such as severely injured limbs and impairments.

According to the United Nations, the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel since the start of the war stood at 242 by August 11. The Committee to protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that 192 journalists, at least 184 of them Palestinian, had been killed by Israel as of August 10, 2025, while the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reported the killing of at least 180 Palestinian journalists and media workers by Israel as of Aug. 11. 

Even U.S. President Donald Trump, who loves to pose as a modern peacemaker, has failed to bring peace in the conflicts with Hamas or Ukraine. Both Netanyahu and Russia’s Putin have defied him, making mockery of his peace efforts. U.S. sent its Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Tel Aviv and Qatar, but there have been no signs of U.S. frustration or annoyance with Israel’s latest bombing moves in Doha. Israel’s action in bombing Hamas headquarters in Qatar is a classic example of hypocrisy when U.S., Israel’s chief allay, pretends to negotiate for peace, but continues to arm Israel for years.

It’s the same United States government, the so-called peacemaker, who refused to allow Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to travel to New York for a United Nations gathering of world leaders.

It’s sad that Israel is allowed to do what and when it wants, unquestioned while the world watches. A close analysis of the situation clearly indicates that the U.S. is not interested in bringing the conflict to an end. It’s commendable that 147 of the 193 United Nations member states have recognized the State of Palestine but one wonders if there will be Palestine as we know it today left when Israel decides to stop its bombardment.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced the recognition of Palestine provided the Palestinian Authority commits to reform itself, hold elections in 2026 and demilitarise a Palestinian state. United Kingdom and Australia have followed suit in recognizing Palestine, which frankly doesn’t need recognition; it desperately requires armaments, goodwill and concrete measures to end misery launched by a brutal regime. However, despite all the fuss about it, recognition of Palestine is somewhat symbolic, representing a strong moral and political statement, but changes little on the ground.

Why all the U.N. members, who have suddenly now become friends of Palestine, have not considered stationing U.N. peacekeeping troops to monitor the flight of Palestinians in Gaza? U.N. peacekeeping missions have been deployed in the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Lebanon, and Cyprus, among others across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Why not Gaza?

As the Guardian newspaper editorial mentioned, “The symbolism of Palestinian statehood matters. For months, the Israeli prime minister and his far-right coalition allies, have cruelly laboured to make Gaza an unthinkable hellscape. In the West bank, the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements is likewise intended to foreclose, for ever, the possibility of a viable, independent Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu’s approach to calls for a two-state solution in the Middle East has been to systematically work to ensure it never happens.”

What is urgently needed is not to build a state, but to save a population on the brink of social and physical collapse. Decisive action is urgently required if Gaza is to be saved.

Mansoor Ladha is a Calgary-based journalist, travel writer and author of Canadian Experience, Aga Khan: Bridge between East & West, Memoirs of a Muhindi: Fleeing East Africa for the West, Off the Cuff and A Portrait in Pluralism: Aga Khan’s Shia Ismaili Muslims.

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