Akhtar Raja
At the press conference before the “Global Sumud Flotilla” set off from Spain on 31 August 2025 to help break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, Liam Cunningham, who acted in Game of Thrones, played a recording of “gorgeous” 5 year old Fatemah’s angelic voice singing a song. He told us that she was “making arrangements for her own funeral” and wanted her song to be sung at that time. She was killed four days later. He said someone was now singing that very song over her body.
“I’m so scared, please come,” were six-year-old Hind Rajab’s last words in a telephone call to rescuers. She was trapped in a car surrounded by six dead relatives for three hours while she pleaded for help on 29 January 2024 in Gaza City. Working with journalists from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, Forensic Architecture produced a report on 21 June 2024 stating: “We mapped a total of 335 bullet holes on the body of the Kia.” Prof. Nick Maynard, a gastrointestinal surgeon working at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, told the BBC that he and his colleagues saw children with “clear patterns of injury” including “certain body parts on different days, such as the head, legs or genitals.” He went on to say: “On one day they’ll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they’ll all be head gunshot wounds or neck gunshot wounds, on another they’ll be arm or leg gunshot wounds…It’s almost as if a game is being played, that they’re deciding to shoot the head today, the neck tomorrow, the testicles the day after.” On 27 March the British Guardian newspaper carried an article: “There are more child amputees in Gaza than anywhere else in the world…”. Ahmed Moor told us about Elias, a four-year-old and his five-year-old sister Taline who needed urgent medical care. “They had sustained staggering injuries when an Israeli pilot or drone operator shot a missile at the house they were taking refuge in. The explosion cleaved Elias’s right leg off below the knee. Taline’s injuries were also severe; she arrived in the US with external fixators – pins and steel in her legs – as she battled infection.” Victoria Rose, a consultant plastic surgeon at St Thomas’ Hospital, worked as a volunteer in Gaza and described “appalling” levels of malnutrition and starvation.
She says “…children, particularly the fives and under. They’ve been affected really badly by the lack of food. You can see they’ve lost their fat resources.
They’ve got muscle wasting. But the real issue for us, fighting the trauma cases, was that they’re just not healing their wounds because the immune system’s been suppressed so much by the lack of vital vitamins and nutrients. And also they’re so susceptible to infection and in that situation where they’re all living in tents, they’ve got no proper sanitation and water, clean water is very scarce and that just magnifies the risk of infection.” It comes as no surprise therefore why journalist and Novara Media’s senior editor, Ash Sarkar, explained Blair’s recent trip to Washington to peddle his pitch deck for the riviera plan to Trump in the way she did: “I guess it’s because Satan was unavailable.” She categorises the genocide as “an international project”.
What remains baffling therefore is the lack of any meaningful effort by Muslim states to offer a coordinated plan to put an end to the process of extermination. ‘Day after’ steps are meaningless right now. Why would anything less than something akin to the shaping of a framework like the one being articulated by European leaders and the U.S to end Russia’s war against Ukraine be acceptable for Palestine? Terms being explored for security guarantees include: A collective response to aggression, even without Ukraine’s formal NATO membership, troop deployments, air defence, weapons and ceasefire monitoring by Ukraine, European nations and NATO. Europe has put together a “Coalition of the Willing” to support the guarantees. Ukraine proposes a $100 billion deal with the U.S. to buy weapons financed by, it seems, Europe. (I think Ukraine will end up having to pick up the tab over many decades once Zelensky has move on.
The West doesn’t offer free lunches. It also wants to keep Russia busy in Ukraine. That’s unlikely.) There has also been discussion about the provision of a “sky shield” enforced by European fighter jets. Vladimir Putin opposes this and yet Macron confirms: “We now have 26 countries that have formally committed to deploy a force of reassurance for Ukraine armed forces... to be present on the ground, at sea or in the sky.” Putin will however regard this as “legitimate targets”.
Europe has to calculate the risk of being drawn into the war both abroad and at home. Nevertheless, many leaders seem prepared to take that risk.
In the meantime, inertia continues to paralyse Muslim states. Why? Many Muslim leaders for now appear to have a centre of accountability that is directed somewhere other than where it ought to unambiguously lie. This needs to be collectively readjusted.
Edward Said’s exposition of orientalism has not diminished. It has mutated into a readily identifiable hatred for Muslims. This has been illustrated in a variety of ways in political and legal spheres in the West.
62-year-old Mike Higgins, a blind man in a wheelchair, was arrested during a protest in Parliament Square (in London) on 9 August (along with just under 900 other protesters). He maintained “…it’s about trying to stop the killing in Palestine”. In the meantime, the British political elite do not hide the depth of their detestation for Muslims. This was aptly illustrated by Michael Gove, a former member of Parliament and senior cabinet member, whose loathing was expressed in a recent debate with Mehdi Hasan: “For the avoidance of doubt…Israel is not carrying out a genocide.” He repeated this for a second time. The former foreign secretary, David Lammy, stated to Parliament in a letter dated September 1, 2025 that the UK has not concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Instead, the government rolled out red carpets for Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, visit to London this week. Both Gove and Lammy (and many more politicians) do not see an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” even though leading genocide scholars unequivocally do.
This state of affairs remains insufficient to spur Muslim nations into action.
There is a palpable feeling that for them truth is not represented by a need to defer to a divine authority and an obligation to save lives. This stance is born out of fear, inferiority, misplaced trust, self-preservation or simply denial. But the reins of power are held by those who reflect a wider collective misalignment with submission and accountability to the Ultimate True force and authority. The failure to turn inaction into meaningful action is the very reason such inaction let down Fatemah, Hind, Elias, Taline, and all of our other children in Palestine. They are our responsibility.
In my 17 November 2023 article in this newspaper I stated nothing should discourage ‘a humanitarian and peacekeeping mission - comprising representatives from armies of each Muslim nation and any other country wishing to participate - from being deployed to support a just cause. There needs to be an end to the grotesque punishment’. Muslim states should be weary. The illusory territorial borders of ‘Greater Israel’ are expansive. Who will states call on for assistance without a coalition of Muslim countries bound by a duty to their Creator and a responsibility to save life? Without this step the West will continue with its foreign policy adventures against Muslims by deploying their unsatiated Balfourian attack dog whose rabid mindset seems ever more vitriolic.
- Akhtar Raja is a British lawyer based in London and Principal of Quist Solicitors
