One dictionary describes conscience as “a person’s moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one’s behaviour.”
Late Fulani sage, Usman Dan Fodio, says:”Conscience is an open wound, only truth can heal it”.
In the matter of Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza, it is hard to discern a moral sense of right and wrong acting as a compass to noble conduct by key world leaders, in response or intervention to the indiscriminate killing by Israeli forces, of innocent Palestinians in the steaming cauldron that is Gaza.
The open wound is glaring for all to see but the balm of truth to heal it seems nowhere to be found, despite 38 days of war and over 10,000 Palestinian deaths, including women, children, the old and the infirm.
Two case studies:
The Live Aid Concert was a charity musical performance held by civic minded musicians for victims of famine in Ethiopia in 1985.
The 16-hour Live Aid marathon was watched by an estimated global audience of 1.5 billion and raised more than $140 million for famine relief.
The Live Aid Concert was a multi-venue benefit concert held on Saturday 13 July 1985, as well as a music-based fundraising initiative. The original event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise further funds for relief of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.
Live Aid was held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, attended by about 72,000 people, and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, attended by 89,484 people.
On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative were held in other countries, such as the Soviet Union, Canada, Japan, Yugoslavia, Austria, Australia, and West Germany. It was one of the largest satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time; an estimated audience of 1.9 billion, in 150 nations, watched the live broadcast, nearly 40 percent of the world population.
It was a great show of conscience and civic conduct by musicians who were otherwise not obliged to intervene, as they did not hold public office and were not fishing for votes to ascend to public office.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, military aid has been donated by EU institutions, 45 sovereign countries, companies, and other parties. The United States alone has pledged about $45 billion in arms and military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s massive invasion in February 2022.
In total aid (military, financial and humanitarian combined), the European Union and its countries have provided the most to Ukraine, according to Kiel Institute, whereas the United States has by far provided the most in military aid.
Some NATO countries and allies, such as Germany and Sweden, have reversed past policies against providing offensive military aid in order to support Ukraine, while the European Union for the first time in its history supplied lethal arms through its institutions.
The donation of military aid was coordinated at monthly meetings in the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, throughout the war.
All EU member states donated military aid both individually as sovereign countries and collectively via EU institutions, except of three countries (Hungary, Cyprus and Malta) that opted not to donate military aid individually as sovereign countries.
Since the 1960s, the US has been a very strong supporter of Israel. It has played a key role in the promotion of good relations between Israel and its neighbouring Arab states—namely Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, along with several others in the 2020 Abraham Accords—while also holding off hostility from other Middle Eastern countries such as Syria and Iran. Relations with Israel are a very important factor in the US government’s overall foreign policy in the Middle East, and the US Congress has likewise placed considerable importance on the maintenance of a close and supportive relationship.
Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign aid: until February 2022, the US had provided Israel $150 billion (non-inflation-adjusted) in bilateral assistance. In 1999, the US government signed a Memorandum of Understanding through which it committed to providing Israel with at least $2.67 billion in military aid annually, for the following ten years; in 2009, the annual amount was raised to $3 billion; and in 2019, the amount was raised again, now standing at a minimum of $3.8 billion that the US is committed to providing Israel each year.
Since 1972, the United States has also extended loan guarantees – a form of indirect US assistance to Israel, as they enable Israel to borrow from commercial US banks at lower rates – to Israel to assist with housing shortages, Israel’s absorption of new Jewish immigrants and its economic recovery following the 2000-2003 recession, caused in part by the Second Intifada.
Moreover, the United States is Israel’s largest trading partner, and Israel is the United States’ 25th-largest trading partner; two-way trade totaled some $36 billion in 2013. Bilateral trade increased to nearly $50 billion by 2023.
What all of this says is that where there’s a will thers’s a way. It also indicates that the foot dragging by the EU and the US to intervene in the Israel-Palestine war with conscience and conviction, is merely a lack of the will to do so, even in the face of the horrendous killing of thousands of defenceless and innocent Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Forces.
Given its immense financial and material support for Israel and its purported role as a global leader of conscience, it is expected that the US should be able to influence a ceasefire, humanitarian aid and call Israel to order as regards its indiscriminate bombing of sites in Gaza where civilians are taking refuge.
Strategic international policy and military objectives need yield in some measure, to humanity, conscience and morality. Over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in this 38 day rand still counting.
Israel has revised downwards, its count of Israeli lives lost in the gruesome attack by Hamas on October 7.
The number is now put at 1,200. Meanwhile, some politics watchers have said that Israel have a policy of taking ten Palestinian lives for every Israeli life lost to hostilities with Hamas.
If this is so, who bears the brunt, Hamas or innocent Palestinians? Whatever the case, the count is on and the death of innocents keeps piling up.
