OPINION: What can move Caribbean governments to take some humanitarian actions?

Last Updated on Wednesday, 13 August 2025, 18:49 by Writer

By Former President of Guyana Donald Ramotar

As this article is being written some 68,326 Palestinians have been murdered in the Gaza strip. More than 70 percent of the counted dead were children and women. Those with injuries are more than double the number of dead.

The figures themselves as high as they seem are grossly underestimated. Tens of thousands are reported missing, most certainly dead.

The inhumanity of the Israeli terrorist regime compares very favourable with those of the Hitlerite Fascist regime of Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. The Apartheid regime has devised other ways of decimating the Palestinian people other than bombing their homes, their hospitals, their schools and now their tents.

After expelling the UN’s relief body UNRWA which has been providing some services for the occupied and oppressed Palestinian people, they have engaged an American organisation, set up in February 2025, called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) to distribute food to the suffering people in Gaza.

The Israeli soldiers are using those areas to kill Palestinians as they line up to receive some morsel. Children seem to be the main target for the Israeli soldiers. About one thousand have already been killed at those centres.

While millions of tons of food lie in trucks at the gates of the Gaza strip, Palestinians are starving to death. This method of murder (by starvation) is killing more children and babies than adults.

The inhumanity of the occupiers is displayed by the fact that they are deliberately preventing baby formula into the strip.

To try to restrict news of the mass murder and the imposed inhumane conditions which Israel has created in Gaza, they have been targeting journalists. On August 11, six journalists, were assassinated in their sleep in a tent just outside of an almost destroyed hospital in Gaza.

Allied with Israel in this deliberate scheme to force Palestinians to leave their land or die are the Western governments. Demonstrators in the main cities in the United States, London, and other European capitals are being thrown in jail for protesting against the unbelievable atrocities that are being committed against the helpless civilians and are being beaten and arrested in the streets.

Thousands of University students are facing the same faith. Added to that, those who are not US citizens are being deported for standing up for human decency. US citizens are being denied graduation.

Those are the countries that claim for themselves of being civilised and respecters of human rights. The situation in Gaza has taken the masks off their real inhumane nature.

It is almost embarrassing to look at the Arab world. Those countries, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and Jordan to name just four, spend trillions of dollars arming themselves. They remain content not to lift a finger to help. From time to time, they mutter some meaningless, ineffective criticism.

Only Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, is giving real solidarity to the Palestinians. They have proven to be the most humane in the Middle East.

It is very disappointing that Caribbean governments have been so silent in the face of such a catastrophe that is happening to a poor and oppressed people. Very rarely they mutter some small criticism and then promptly ignore what is happening daily to the unfortunate Palestinians. In the light of the seriousness of what is happening and on the eve of another Israeli invasion of Gaza, silence amounts to complicity with the crimes against humanity!

The only country in our region which has taken a principled, and humanitarian position is Belize. They have severed diplomatic relations with the murderous Israeli regime. Belize has show real courage which others in our region is clearly lacking.

I call on Caricom Governments to show real solidarity with the poor, suffering masses in Palestine. Show your humanity and your stated solidarity by immediately breaking relations with Israel. You have nothing to lose and a lot of respect to gain from people everywhere.

How many more Palestinian women, children and babies must die to awaken your conscience to act? Please act now!