Putrajaya, Malaysia – When Malaysia’s 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.“The main thing is that I work all the time. I don’t rest myself,” Mahathir told Al Jazeera.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list“I am always using my mind and body. Keep your mind and body active, then you live longer,” he said.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’s political situation and unfolding world events, particularly the situation in Gaza.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’s ruthlessness against the Palestinian population of Gaza would be etched into world history.Israel’s killing of nearly 66,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority women and children, will be remembered for generations, possibly for “centuries”, Mahathir said.“Gaza is terrible. They killed pregnant mothers… babies just born, young people, boys and girls, men and women, the sick and the poor… How can this be forgotten?” he asked.“It will not be forgotten for maybe centuries,” Mahathir said.Describing the war in Gaza as a genocide that parallelled the kill …
