{"id":24680,"date":"2025-09-29T05:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T05:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=24680"},"modified":"2025-09-29T05:22:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T05:22:16","slug":"malaysias-mahathir-at-100-israels-genocide-in-gaza-will-not-be-forgotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=24680","title":{"rendered":"Malaysia\u2019s Mahathir at 100: Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza will not be forgotten"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says Israel \u2018did not learn anything\u2019 from its experience of genocide by Nazi Germany.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad speaks during an interview in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2020 [File: Lim Huey Teng\/Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a><\/a><\/a>When Malaysia\u2019s former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad turned 100 earlier this year, he marked his birthday by following a lifelong routine of discipline: he ate little, worked a lot, and did not succumb to the lure of rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe main thing is that I work all the time. I don\u2019t rest myself,\u201d Mahathir told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am always using my mind and body. Keep your mind and body active, then you live longer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a desk at his office in Putrajaya city, south of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, he spent his centenary like most days: penning his thoughts on the Malaysian economy, the country\u2019s political situation and unfolding world events, particularly the situation in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sitting down with Al Jazeera for an interview after recovering from a spell of exhaustion around the time of his birthday, Mahathir predicted that Israel\u2019s ruthlessness against the Palestinian population of Gaza would be etched into world history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel\u2019s killing of nearly 66,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority women and children, will be remembered for generations, possibly for \u201ccenturies\u201d, Mahathir said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGaza is terrible. They killed pregnant mothers\u2026 babies just born, young people, boys and girls, men and women, the sick and the poor\u2026 How can this be forgotten?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt will not be forgotten for maybe centuries,\u201d Mahathir said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Describing the\u00a0war in Gaza as a genocide<\/a>\u00a0that paralleled the killing of Muslims during the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s and the Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II, Mahathir said he was confounded that the people of Israel, who had experienced genocide, could, in turn,\u00a0perpetrate a genocide.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought people who suffered like that would not want to visit it on other people,\u201d he said. Victims of a genocide should \u201cnot want to wish their fate to befall other people\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, in the case of Israel, he was wrong, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Malaysia\u2019s then-interim leader Mahathir Mohamad attends a committee on the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in February 2020 [Vincent Thian\/AP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the height of his power in the 1980s and 1990s, Mahathir earned a reputation on the world stage as an outspoken voice for the Global South, and a vocal critic of Western imperialism and its contemporary exploitation of developing countries through flows of financial capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A staunch and lifelong supporter of the Palestinian cause, Mahathir was also roundly criticised for making \u201canti-Semitic\u201d statements alongside his tirades against the West, particularly the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, as he told Al Jazeera, he had sympathised deeply with the Jewish people when the horrors of the Nazis became known after World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israelis, he now says, \u201cdid not learn anything from their experience\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey want the same thing that happened to them; they want to do it to the Arabs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the only \u201creasonable\u201d way to address the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people is to implement a two-state solution, he added. But Mahathir said that such a solution \u2013 which received a major boost when Palestinian statehood was recently recognised by Australia, Belgium, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, among other countries \u2013 is still a very long way off, and he would not live to see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn my lifetime, no. Too short a time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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