Dominique de Villepin: "We have an absolute moral duty to oppose this murderous madness in Gaza"

Today , looking at Gaza, observing day after day what is happening there, I must face the tragic facts: a crime is taking place in Gaza, a crime of genocide. More and more voices, including among historians and Israeli associations, are rising up to say so, and I appreciate and admire the courage it takes to do so, like Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg, or B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights.

As we commemorate the Srebrenica genocide of July 1995, which led to the disappearance of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys and the forced displacement of 30,000, I now understand how what seemed impossible yesterday is possible today. I understand that silence, willful blindness, moral paralysis, far more than human weaknesses, are the very conditions by which genocide is possible.

How can we accept seeing international organizations sidelined in this way, international law flouted, without even mentioning the unprecedented pressure exerted on international justice? All these attacks are aimed at maintaining the blanket of silence, since these organizations have the precise mandate to qualify and name the unspeakable.

To remain silent is to become complicit. To name things is already to act. Yes, today we must call things by their name. In Gaza, before our eyes, a genocide is indeed taking place. All forms of death are accumulating: death from the crush of incessant bombardments, death from organized hunger, death by gunfire for trying to snatch a few grams of flour from the back of a truck, death from the absolute abandonment of a population deprived of water, electricity, and medicine. Death also from the daily humiliation inflicted on the survivors, deprived not only of dignity, but also of all hope. All these forms of death converge in a single place, under the influence of a clear intention.

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