Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1518643
9 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 APRIL 2024 OPINION micfal45@gmail.com Michael Falzon Unstoppable Israel ISRAELI Army Radio has reported that Israel's 'Nahal Brigade (162nd Divi- sion)' was responsible for directing the air attack on the World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers that killed seven of them a week or so ago. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP), two US-based defence think tanks, unnamed senior Israeli mil- itary officials had warned in advance of the attack on the WCK staff that coor- dination between international human- itarian aid groups and Israeli forces in Gaza 'was not functioning properly'. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has slammed Israel's explana- tion for the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza as "not good enough", as outrage over the attack continues to reverberate globally. "We need to have accountability for how it has occurred, and what is not good enough is the statements that have been made, including that this is just a prod- uct of war," Albanese said during a news conference in Sydney. An Australian woman - Zomi Frankcom - was among those who were killed when a convoy was hit in an Israeli air strike. The CEO of WCK alleged in an interview that the Israeli military had targeted his employ- ees systematically, 'car by car'. The Cypriot Foreign Minister, Con- stantinos Kombos, who worked closely with slain aid workers, called for ac- countability. Journalists asked US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller to explain if previous Israeli investigations into the killings of Americans have led to ac- countability, in light of this latest inci- dent. Miller said that Israel had cooper- ated with the investigation conducted by the US security coordinator and that had concluded that gunfire from Israeli army positions was 'likely responsible' for the tragic death of a US citizen. More irresponsible and illegal killings and another Israeli excuse. This is not a one-of incident. The deaths of World Central Kitchen workers pushed the number of aid em- ployees killed during the war in Gaza to at least 196, according to the UN secre- tary general, António Guterres. It has been happening ever since Israel has been trying to wipe out Hamas in a reaction to the illegal and surprise incur- sion that Hamas carried out on Israeli soil last October. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has re- leased a detailed investigation into an Israeli air strike that killed 106 Palestini- ans in a six-storey apartment building on 31 October, 2023, describing the attack as an 'apparent war crime'. Witnesses said 350 or more people were staying in the Engineers' Building, just south of the Nuseirat refugee camp, when four aerial munitions struck the building within about 10 seconds, with- out warning, at about 2:30pm local time. The building was completely demol- ished. According to those who survived this strike, the 106 Palestinians, including 54 children, killed in the attack were play- ing football, charging their phones in the downstairs grocery store, or simply seek- ing shelter after fleeing their own homes. The US President, Joe Biden, at least in public, has been expressing his respons- es to Israeli actions in Gaza by ever more indignant declarations. He said he was 'outraged and heartbroken' about the killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza. Is Mr Biden's anger leading to a break- ing point with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom rela- tions have been recently quite tense? In public, at least, Mr Biden has limited his responses to ever more indignant decla- rations. Launching a bombing campaign on the southern city of Rafah would cross a 'red line', Mr Biden has insisted, with- out mentioning what the consequences would be. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and one of Mr Biden's most enthusiastic supporters, has been press- ing for months to place conditions on the arms the United States supplies to Israel. He said: 'Netanyahu ignored the president's requests, and yet we send 2,000-pound bombs with no restrictions on their use.' There have been other moments in the six months since the 7 October terror- ist attacks when the United States has hit a wall in dealing with Mr Netanya- hu, and where declarations of common goals could not hide the fact that the two countries are deeply at odds about how to conduct the war. But Mr Biden consistently stops short of openly breaking with Mr Netanyahu, a confrontation that - according to ob- servers - he believes will only make the Israeli prime minister more difficult to handle. Biden's 'red line' on Gaza does not really exist. Sadly, it is Netanyahu who calls the shots and Mr Biden's bark is not backed by the necessary bite. Meanwhile more innocent people, including an extraordinary large num- ber of mothers and their innocent chil- dren are being systematically killed - or starved to death - by the Israelis. Israel has lost the moral high ground and dragged down Joe Biden and the US to its same level of iniquity. 'Mostly rubbish' 'Why art biennales are (mostly) rubbish is a piece written by Digby Warde-Aldan and published recently in The Spectator. In spite of the generic aspect of the ti- tle, after claiming that 'over the past dec- ade, the average biennale has come to see itself as an agent for social change', the piece centres mostly on Malta's bi- ennale. He puts it this way: 'Across the public squares of its capital, Valletta, perfor- mance artists are blocking busy thor- oughfares and causing havoc on packed café terraces. The Hospitaller and Brit- ish military forts that dominate the cap- ital's famous harbour meanwhile are full of dysfunctional work, while the cu- rio-filled vitrines of local museums are forced to compete with video art.' According to Warde-Aldan: 'Over the past decade and a bit, the average bien- nale has come to see itself as an agent for social change.' He then adds that, 'In Malta this was very much the case. While I heard much about the country's surprisingly strong record on LGBT rights, I don't remem- ber seeing anything that directly ad- dressed the Caruana Galizia affair. Nor were there many works that alluded to the country's medieval record on abor- tion. It's perhaps not uncoincidental that one of these - the excellent German art- ist Bettina Hutschek's wunderkammer of objects investigating the relationship between biblical and folk misogyny and the development of the Maltese lan- guage - was among the programme's few genuine stand-outs' Whether we like it or not, that's how others see Malta's biennale efforts. A view of damaged vehicle carrying World Central Kitchen workers in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on 2 April