SPEECH BY DEPUTY WILFREDO NAVARRO IN THE PLENARY
OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY IN A SPECIAL SESSION
CONDEMNING THE GENOCIDE AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2024
A very good day brothers and sisters: Good day to our Foreign Minister, to the representation of the heroic people of Palestine and to all the fellow ambassadors and diplomats who are with us today representing their peoples, their governments, their countries on this day of support and solidarity with the people of Palestine.
In a few days we will be marking one year of the invasion, aggression, occupation and the genocide of Palestinians by the fascist army of Israel. We all know the historical suffering of the Palestinian people who have been humiliated, insulted, murdered, tortured since the founding of the State of Israel, which was imposed by Britain and the Western powers, installing in the heart of Palestine the germ of the evil of war and the crime of the so-called Israel, which against history and international agreements, seeks to eliminate the Palestinian State and disappear its people.
We Nicaraguans who have suffered firsthand aggressions, invasions, the presence of the invaders boot on our territory. Who have suffered for years also the barbarism of intervention and the laceration of our nation, we feel the Palestinian cause as our own. It hurts us how children are murdered, women, the elderly along with men. We feel how mercilessly they are persecuted, imprisoned, mocked and condemned in their nation, in their own land, by the genocidal invading Israeli army.
There is a widespread saying that says Israel is the people of God. But neither Netanyahu nor his government represent the people of God. Because God does not murder with impunity. God does not torture. God does not kill innocent people. God does not kill children. God does not kill women or the elderly. What Netanyahu and his government represent is evil. It represents demonic forces. He is the new Herod who today murders children and women, in order to exterminate the Palestinian people. We denounce this barbarism and genocide being committed against the Palestinian people. We cannot but also denounce and condemn the support and complicity of US imperialism and the European Union that sponsor and supply arms to those who murder the Gazan people. They protect and defend the Israeli army which commits war crimes and crimes against humanity every day. Imperialism and the European Union are also responsible for this genocide and barbarism against the Palestinian people and will have to be made accountable to history for their crimes and complicities.
Much is hidden about what is happening in Palestine because as the Western governments control the media they cover up the cruelty, brutality and criminality of the invading army and the Palestinian suffering and destruction. We cannott let it pass. And here I want to make a compilation of what has happened and is happening in Palestine. Most of the hospitals in Palestine are out of service and the ones that remain are in a critical situation without medicines, without supplies and so on. Palestinians are dying in the streets, they are dying on the roads, but there are no medicines and there is no medical care. 11,000 Palestinians are imprisoned in the West Bank, I'm not talking about Gaza I'm talking about the West Bank and those prisoners include thousands of women and almost a thousand children. More than 200 prisoners have died in the prison and that's not counting the prisoners who fall in Gaza daily. 80% of the schools in Gaza are destroyed, 800,000 children are deprived of their right to attend school for a second year. 11000 students have been killed and 17000 injured. 700,000 children suffer serious psychological effects. And these data are not data taken at random without support, they are data from International Organizations of the UN.
The United States' support for Israel to massacre the Palestinian people is clear from just one fact. The Zionists have received 53,000 tons of weapons and equipment from the U.S., including missiles and 2,000-pound bombs. To understand the power of these bombs that the United States has delivered to Israel, they are bombs which, when they hit the ground, leave craters of almost 10 meters in diameter causing total destruction. More facts about the barbarism: There are more than 42000 dead in Gaza, of which 75% are children, women and the elderly. Israel is not killing Hamas fighters, Israel is killing children and women because it wants to exterminate the Palestinian people, it wants to finish off the Palestinian people. That is the essence of Netanyahu's will. There are 97,000 injured and according to estimates there are also 10,000 corpses buried in the rubble: Every day the numbers continue to increase to the shame of the world that impassively contemplates this genocide. The figures are already reaching almost 2 million for refugees and people displaced from their homes. Palestinian families today have no water, no electricity, no food, no medicine, no houses and live in tents. Imagine 2 million people living in the desert in tents children are drinking sea water because there is no drinking water. That is the situation of this heroic people today. These are brutal actions leaving the population devastated not only by deaths and injuries, but also by the destruction of their livelihoods and subsistence. The brutal acts of the Zionist army reflect a clear desire for a war of extermination, with a deliberate policy of annihilation.
When I was in Ramallah, the situation there was very difficult. Near the Nicaraguan Embassy, five 12-year-old children were murdered just for the fact that they were out on the street flying the flag of Palestine. And God forbid that any Palestinian approaches one of the centers or enclaves where the Israelis live. They are mercilessly murdered but this is not reflected in the Western newspapers or the media.
Every day Palestinians are being murdered in the streets, the mayor of Ramallah told me; that the first thing she did in the morning when she got up very early, was to go to the morgue to find out how many Palestinians were murdered the day before so that she could bury them.
Gaza is a landscape of devastated land and when you see pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that's nothing compared to the destruction that Israel's fascists have caused in Palestine with their bombings. It is scorched earth, there is a total destruction of the infrastructure because in addition to targeting their bombs on Palestinian children and women. The Israelis are destroying the entire infrastructure. They have destroyed streets, roads, buildings, hospitals, ambulances, health centers, schools, universities, homes, buildings, and so on and on. They destroy everything that might serve for the survival of the people. They are the modern huns who destroy everything in Gaza and the West Bank. Their strategy is "scorched earth." They want the total extermination of the Palestinian people. They extinguish their seed. Destroy their roots.
No one escapes Israeli barbarism, 85 Palestinian journalists have been killed, 130 imprisoned, just for the fact that they are Palestinian journalists and that they want to report the truth of what is happening.
That is why the UN awarded the World Press Freedom Prize to these murdered and imprisoned journalists. An utterly macabre fact is that in almost a year the Zionists have murdered more than 3000 children under the age of 2. These are persons under 2 years old, what danger can they generate?. They have murdered more than 1000 members of the medical staff of hospitals, doctors, nurses, assistants. 350 medical staff have been jailed for taking care of the wounded arriving at the few hospitals and the existing ambulance fleet has been destroyed. In their barbarism they have not respected anything. By now, 300 UN workers who have been killed, there are 19,000 orphaned or abandoned children and there are 1 million nine hundred thousand children with infectious diseases.
UNICEF estimates that 90% of the children living and suffering in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said“ "Nothing justifies the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation authorities against the Palestinians of Gaza. The level of suffering, death and destruction in Gaza is incalculable.”
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has pointed out “that such a massive violation of children's rights has not been seen before as those that have occurred in Gaza. These have been the worst rapes against children in recent history. They are a dark stain on contemporary history.” It described as unacceptable the rates of violations of International Humanitarian Law for the protection of children's Human Rights."
The UN Human Rights Council has affirmed that the Israeli occupiers have violated international law and all human rights norms. He has called for an investigation into the crimes and violations.
And the Zionist barbarism does not stop, after continuing and being carried out for one year murdering, torturing and destroying everything that existed in Gaza it is now spreading and increasing its criminal actions to other Arab peoples of the region. They are trying to turn Lebanon into another Gaza. There are already almost 1,500 dead, 5,000 injured and a displacement of the population of more than 600,000 people. They are attacking Syria. They are attacking Yemen. They are threatening Iran. These evil individuals with the support of imperialism are putting world peace and security at risk, because at any moment a nuclear war could start that would affect all the peoples of the world.
Israel wants to impose its arrogance, cruelty, extreme hatred and its supremacist spirit. It does not stop imposing its aggression on the Middle East and that is why peace-loving peoples, the peoples who want a free world are in support of and must support the heroic people of Palestine condemning the barbarism being committed with a nation which suffers its pain and gried but holds on to hope. I remember a pregnant woman in Ramallah when I asked her what she expected from the future for Palestine and she told me: “You may be able to cut the trunk of the tree but the roots persist” and so rest assured that Palestine will resurface with more vigor and with more strength. That is what the peoples of the world in solidarity expect and that is why we will always support Palestine. Courage, heroism, love for their nation, dignity and fighting spirit will enable them to triumph and overcome the evil and hatred of the Zionist fascist devil.
Nicaragua is a people that has historically supported the Palestinian people. We have done this in international forums. Everywhere, we denounce Israel's policies of extermination and barbarism, demanding peace in the Region. As a government, we have taken action at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, rejecting the violations of International Law, Human Rights and international humanitarian Law committed by the Zionist government of Israel against the heroic Palestinian people.
We have reiterated as a country the demand for compliance with all United Nations resolutions for the creation of the State of Palestine as a free, sovereign and independent state. We will continue in that struggle, seeking the solidarity of the world against Israel's barbarism and criminality.
Long live free Palestine!