1.11.23
As you read this, the death toll in Gaza, since Israel began bombing its 2.3 million captive civilians on October 7, has surpassed the number of people killed in the Srebrenica Massacre, during the Bosnian War of 1992-95, when, in a 72-hour period between July 13 and July 15, 1995, 8,372 Muslim men and boys were murdered by Bosnian Serb and Serbian soldiers, in what the Guardian, in 2020, described as “the only massacre on European soil since the second world war to be ruled a genocide.”
As of yesterday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that at least 8,525 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military bombardment began 25 days ago — a rate of 340 deaths a day, or 14 every hour, or one every four minutes, meaning that, by the weekend, it can be expected to reach 10,000.
Shamefully, however, although human rights experts and experts in international humanitarian law are already talking openly about Israel’s actions in Gaza being a genocide, the silence from political leaders in the west, and the mostly complicit mainstream media, is profoundly shocking. What, when this all over — as it must be one day, one way or another — will they say in their defence?
The death count doesn’t even include those killed yesterday afternoon, when Israel mercilessly and unforgivably bombed Jabalia refugee camp, the largest in Gaza, with six massive US-manufactured bombs, razing its buildings to the ground and killing at least 50 people and wounding 150 more, on the basis of suggestions that “a very senior Hamas commander” was in the area, as the Scottish-born Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht told CNN, breezily dismissing what was very obviously a war crime.
As if this wasn’t damning enough, at least 3,542 of those killed in Gaza are children or babies, and 2,187 are women, and at least 2,000 other people, including 1,100 children, “are reported missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings, indicating the actual death toll is much higher.” as DCI Palestine (Defense of Children International) reported two days ago. In addition, 21,543 people are injured, many of them severely.
Israeli politicians’ and pundits’ open declaration of support for war crimes and crimes against humanity
After Hamas militants’ deadly incursions into Israel on October 7, in which over 1,500 people were killed, according to Israeli figures, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “We are at war and we will win it”, also stating that he had “convened the heads of the security establishment and ordered — first of all — to clear out the communities that have been infiltrated by terrorists”, and that Israel would “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known”, and that “[t]he enemy will pay an unprecedented price.”
Western leaders immediately pledged their unconditional support for Israel’s “right to defend itself”, failing to react publicly with any caveats when, the next day, the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, stated, unambiguously, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”
There was more to come, even as the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, President Biden, the EU President Ursula van der Leyen, and the UK’s hopeless Prime Minster Rishi Sunak all dutifully flew into Israel to declare their support in person, as I explained in my first article about the Gaza crisis, My Shame at the West’s Uncritical Support for Israeli War Crimes in Gaza, published on October 11. Meanwhile, in the UK, Keir Starmer, a lawyer by profession, told LBC that Israel had the right to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians, showing clear contempt for international humanitarian law, and later having the effrontery to claim that he didn’t say what he very evidently said, as Muslim councillors and Labour Party members began resigning in droves.
On October 14, in the most prominent warning that Israel also had nothing but contempt for international humanitarian law, which absolutely prohibits the indiscriminate targeting of a civilian population, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog fully endorsed the collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza, stating, “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true”, while, in an interview, Sara Netanyahu, the Prime Minister’s Wife, went even further than Yoav Gallant, hoping for “a very big revenge”, and adding, “I don’t call them human animals because that would be insulting to animals.”
Others explicitly called for genocide — the journalist Shimon Riklin, for example, who tweeted that “Gaza should be wiped from the face of the earth”, and another journalist, Roy Sharon, who stated, “I spoke about a million bodies not as a goal, I said that if, in order to finally eliminate the military capabilities of Hamas … we need a million bodies, then let there be a million bodies.” The popular Israeli singer Eyal Golan, meanwhile, said, “Erase Gaza, don’t leave a single person there”, while Moshe Feiglin, a former Likud MP, stated, “It is not Hamas that should be eliminated. Gaza should be razed and Israel’s rule should be restored to the place. This is our country.”
More recently, on Israeli TV, Feiglin, visibly consumed with genocidal hatred, said, “We still have not revenged in a biblical way. We did not burn Gaza to ashes immediately. Create a tremendous humanitarian crisis. Level the entire area. Do not leave a stone upon stone in Gaza. Gaza needs to turn to Dresden. Annihilate Gaza now!” The mention of Dresden refers to the joint UK-US bombing of the German city in February 1945, when nearly 4,000 tons of bombs were dropped, devastating the city and killing up to 25,000 civilians, in what was clearly not an act of military necessity.
Another journalist, David Mizrahy Verthaim, noted admiringly that “World War II ended with the USA inflicting a Holocaust on Hiroshima, and even before giving the Japanese a chance to digest, dropped another bomb on Nagasaki, while promising that every Japanese city would be destroyed until surrender. The Japanese were no less crazy than the Arabs.” It was, presumably, only the proximity of Gaza that stopped Shimon Riklin from following up on his question, “Say, why do we have an atomic bomb?”
The genocide unfolds, unchallenged by the west
With the west not only supporting Israel unconditionally, but, in many cases, explicitly providing it with the weapons to continue its slaughter, the death toll has risen relentlessly, with hundreds of people killed everyday with complete impunity — and with at least a third to a half of them, on a daily basis, being children.
Emboldened by the west’s lack of criticism, the Israelis then began targeting hospitals, schools and mosques, claiming that it was because Hamas ‘terrorists’ were using them as command centres, an obvious lie, but one that, yet again, was not challenged in the west — and, when they ordered people to move from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south for their safety, they were bombed en route and on arrival, making sure that every Palestinian knew that nowhere in Gaza was safe.
In addition, the “complete siege” announced by Yoav Gallant on October 8 has been ruthlessly maintained for the last 24 days. Under pressure, possibly, from the US, one or two tiny aid convoys were eventually allowed in, but their ability to stem the humanitarian crisis has been non-existent. The entire population now has just 5% of the daily supplies of water that they need, and that they had before October 7, and hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s residents are now having to drink dirty or contaminated water.
Food is also in short supply — a situation made worse by Israel’s targeting of bakeries, and a reminder of how, before the Srebrenica Massacre, Bosnian Serbs also used starvation as a war tactic, as, of course, the Nazis did to Jews in the Second World War. Moreover, in the hospitals, the lack of medicine, and of fuel to keep the power running, has contributed to scenes of medieval desperation, with doctors forced to conduct operations without anaesthetic, and with the dwindling power supplies threatening to kill, at any time, around 130 premature babies in incubators. If asked, Israeli government spokespeople would no doubt, I’m sure, defend the deaths of these babies as being necessary to prevent them growing up to be future terrorists.
While the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, the UN Special Mandates, and numerous NGOs, aid groups and medical organisations have condemned Israel’s actions as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, based on all the evident crimes mentioned above, they are powerless to do anything about it. The broken and divided UN Security Council cannot agree on a binding resolution, let alone enforcing any call for restraint, while those with the power — primarily the US government, but also other western powers — continue to refuse to even call for a humanitarian ceasefire.
They now murmur platitudes about defending Palestinian civilians — perhaps because their lawyers told them that they might otherwise be complicit in genocide — but their actions are unlikely to do anything to stop investigators from one day, I fervently hope, condemning them for their evident and ongoing complicity in Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Does Israel have a long-term plan?
Throughout all this, Israel’s objectives have not been scrutinized at all, except by those cataloguing its crimes. Collective punishment was definitely clear at the start, but then the intensity of Israel’s murder of civilians began very evidently to be genocidal in its scope. Ethnic cleansing has also been regularly referred to, but it wasn’t until a few days that — beyond the wild words of murderous Zionist politicians and journalists — the contours of any long-term plan became evident.
While obviously continuing to kill as many civilians as possible, a leaked intelligence document — not any kind of officially endorsed document, but one that clearly chimes with what the Israeli leadership is thinking — recommended nothing less than the total expulsion of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula — their “forcible and permanent transfer”, according to +972 Magazine, which first published an English translation of the report on October 30.
As +972 Magazine explained:
The document recommends that Israel act to “evacuate the civilian population to Sinai” during the war; establish tent cities and later more permanent cities in the northern Sinai that will absorb the expelled population; and then create “a sterile zone of several kilometers … within Egypt, and [prevent] the return of the population to activities/residences near the border with Israel.” At the same time, governments around the world, led by the United States, must be mobilized to implement the move.
Elaborating on some of these points, Vice News noted that the plan recommended that the two million expelled Palestinians would be “housed in tent cities and serviced by a humanitarian corridor before permanent cities were built”, and also recommended that “this strategy should be pitched to the international community as a humanitarian approach to minimising civilian casualties in Israel’s assault on Gaza and be accompanied by a push for Arab and Western countries to also take in Palestinian refugees.”
On this basis, the erasure of as much of Gaza’s infrastructure as possible, and the efforts to force the population to move to the south of the Gaza Strip, all make horrible sense, although no one involved seems to have any idea how, practically, Egypt’s President Sisi can be persuaded to accept over two million expelled Palestinians, when he has repeatedly refused to contemplate doing so.
As Middle East Eye reported yesterday, however, according to the Israeli Ynet website, “Israel is proposing writing off a significant chunk of Egypt’s international debts through the World Bank” to entice Sisi’s government, “currently mired in a debt crisis”, to accept the plan, with, seemingly, no idea, or no concern for how this would play with the Palestinians, for whom a second Nakba — meaning ‘catastrophe’, and referring to the the mass displacement and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians at the time of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 — is an intolerable thought.
Having spent 56 years in the Gaza Strip, as refugees from their land and their former homes, which were taken over by Israel, and having, in addition, spent the last 16 years in a “open air prison” under a permanent Israeli blockade, it is difficult to imagine that many of them would be willing to be dispossessed again.
In addition, Israel’s ethnic cleansing mania — this time driven by both the military and by far-right settlers — is creating an ever-growing problem in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where the rest of the Palestinian population lives. Israeli violence — never far away — has, predictably, increased enormously since October 7, even though the Hamas excuse holds no sway here, as it is the Palestinian Authority, and not Hamas, that holds what limited political power there is in the West Bank. Despite this inconvenient truth, there is a very real fear that Israeli violence in the West Bank will also escalate uncontrollably, as the west continues to give Israel a green light for whatever atrocities it cares to indulge in.
For this to be resolved, some ethnic cleansers in the Israeli government must be hoping that Jordan can eventually be persuaded to take in all of the West Bank’s 3 million inhabitants, although that, to be frank, seems even more unlikely than the unfeasible Sinai plan.
Calling for an immediate ceasefire
As ever, the solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis cannot be resolved though endless violence — or, I’m sure, through a second Nakba, and it’s important to note that, under international humanitarian law, the forced displacement of an entire population is another war crime to add to Israel’s already staggering list of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The events of the last few weeks — so shamefully endorsed by the west — have hopefully revealed this truth, as the alternative is always, in some form or another, genocidal in intent.
The US and Israel’s other supporters in the west need to finally recognize this, and to exert the pressure that they undoubtedly have to call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, for hostage exchanges, and for a new peace process to be urgently established, policed by the international community.
That’s fanciful, I know, but forgive me for clutching at straws while powerlessly watching a genocide, and while conceiving an implacable animosity for all the political leaders, pundits and so-called intellectuals in the west who have, in any way whatsoever, endorsed or supported a killing machine of such voracious savagery that, for the last three and a half weeks, it has been killing Palestinian children and babies at the rate of six an hour, every single hour of every single day.
That will never be forgiven, because genocide is never excusable — and especially not when its instigators and apologists keep maintaining that they are a special case, above the law, above morality, and above even the most basic demonstrations of fundamental human decency.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.
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Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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22 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, an update on the Gaza crisis, as the number of Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli bombing raids since October 7 surpasses the number of Muslims murdered in the Srebrenica Massacre in 1995, which was later judged to have been a genocide.
And yet, as I note, western leaders still almost entirely defend Israel’s actions, and refuse to call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, leading me to wonder if they are not aware that one day they will be judged as having been complicit in a genocide.
I also examine whether Israel has a plan beyond all this indiscriminate slaughter, and note recent suggestions that what they are hoping to achieve — even though it seems impossible — is the expulsion of all of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants to the Sinai Peninsula, which, even if feasible, would constitute the most monstrous act of forced displacement (another war crime) since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were displaced.
...on November 1st, 2023 at 6:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Lesley Marshall wrote:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3155557834588650&set=p.3155557834588650&type=3
...on November 1st, 2023 at 8:50 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for sharing the first page of that extraordinary resignation letter by Craig Mokhiber, Lesley, the Director of the New York Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The whole of it is here: https://twitter.com/Raminho/status/1719385390086271164
I’m thinking of transcribing it and posting it.
...on November 1st, 2023 at 8:52 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Tamzin Jans wrote:
And still … the US of Biden, the EU of von der Leyen, they have a selective idea of compassion. They can fly Ukrainian flags but not Palestinian. They can fly Israeli flags but not Palestinian.
The problem with Europe and with Israel is that they don’t know where the frontier stops.
...on November 1st, 2023 at 8:53 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Well said, Tamzin – “they don’t know where the frontier stops.” It’s an uncomfortable conclusion for many people, but sadly and shamefully true that the establishment of the State of Israel was the last major European colonisation project.
...on November 1st, 2023 at 8:55 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Barrows wrote:
Our fellow citizens must immediately contact the White House and Congress. Tell them that this mass murder of civilians has to stop now, no excuses. The longer you wait to object, the more innocents will die.
...on November 1st, 2023 at 8:56 pm
Andy Worthington says...
There’s a form here on the Jewish Voice for Peace website, David, whereby people can write to their members of Congress asking them “to call on President Biden to immediately demand and facilitate a ceasefire”: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/email-congress-support-ceasefire/
...on November 1st, 2023 at 8:57 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Tony Dowling wrote:
My hunch is that Israel will try to expel all Palestinians from Gaza.
...on November 1st, 2023 at 8:58 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, it’s certainly looking like that’s the only way that Israel will stop its relentless bombardments unless there’s a death toll that is so severe that the countries supporting it can no longer pretend that it’s acceptable, Tony. People keep asking what’s an ‘acceptable’ number – is it 10,000? 20,000? 30,000? – but no one will answer. However, I honestly can’t see Sisi accepting Israel’s colossal ethnic cleansing proposal, however much he’s pressurised, as I think it would be politically seismic.
...on November 1st, 2023 at 8:59 pm
Andy Worthington says...
UPDATE: The Ministry of Health in Gaza is now reporting that 9,061 Palestinians have now been killed, including 3,760 children and 2,326 women. 32,000 are injured, and over 2,000 are missing, and hospitals are shutting down because of a lack of fuel. In addition, 132 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank. https://twitter.com/MustafaBarghou1/status/1720040847280841102
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 12:09 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Andy Morrison wrote:
Trade Union leaders in the UK should be calling for collective action on this, or a one day general strike or something.
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 12:10 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, a one-day general strike would be an amazing show of solidarity, Andy. I’m sure options like this are being discussed within some unions, and I note that the TUC called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire on Oct 18: https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/tuc-general-council-statement-gaza-and-israel
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 12:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Also, yesterday, Left Foot Forward posted an article showing all the unions who support a ceasefire, and, importantly, those blocking weapons shipments to Israel: https://leftfootforward.org/2023/11/the-trade-unions-that-have-called-for-a-ceasefire/
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 12:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
After my friend Tony Dowling shared this on Facebook, Matt Cummins wrote:
There simply aren’t the words for this, are there? When words like “horrifying” so clearly don’t even begin to capture the situation … well, I feel lost, sickened.
What journalists like Worthington manage to do is bring sober, powerful testimony to this illegal slaughter. And that’s all you need. Just look; it’s happening live, in front of us. It must stop. Ceasefire Now.
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 12:14 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Matt, and thanks for the supportive words about my writing. I don’t think any of us have ever watched such evil play out in real time before, while being so persistently failed by those who claim to be our leaders, who buy into Israel’s openly genocidal fury as though it’s in any way acceptable.
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 12:14 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Tamzin Jans wrote, in response to 5, above:
Andy, the Arabs know that this is a major European colonisation project. But how does one stop this when the Arab world is not now willing to put up a fight? They are (thankfully) busy trying to create a comfortable living for their own citizens rather than get into loggerheads with the colonizers.
Israel will never give back Gaza to the Palestinians. The way it is razing it to the ground does mean that many Palestinians won’t be able to live there again.
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 1:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
No one has thought anything through, Tamzin. This is pure genocidal fury by Israel, trying to finish off what they started 75 years ago – the erasure of the Palestinian people, through their expulsion, their extermination, or a mixture of both. If their delusional plan to expel all of Gaza’s population to the Sinai Peninsula doesn’t work, as I’m sure it won’t, what is Plan B? Keep bombing Gaza forever until everyone’s dead? At some point – and none of us knows when – the western countries supporting Israel are going to have to call for a ceasefire to avoid being definitively complicit in crimes against humanity. Will it be 20,000 dead? 30,000? More?
And then what? If Israel’s expulsion plan fails, it doesn’t seem reasonable to suggest that the west will support the surviving people of Gaza having to live in tents in a giant bomb site for the rest of their lives. Reconstruction work will have to begin, and pressure will also eventually have to be exerted to prevent the killings in the West Bank, which everyone’s currently trying to ignore, because, uncomfortably for their propaganda machines, they can’t blame Hamas for the murders and ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Israeli military and settlers, because Hamas isn’t in control in the West Bank.
It’s absolutely essential that the west works this out sooner rather than later, otherwise the poison of Israel’s genocide can only spread to neighbouring countries, eventually drawing them in. The west needs to confront the reality I noted above – that, without a ceasefire and the resumption of new negotiations for some sort of land-sharing agreement between Israel and the Occupied Territories, Israel will keep bombing Gaza forever until everyone’s dead, and the population of the West Bank will increasingly be terrorised and killed by the Israeli military and settlers.
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 1:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Following up on 10, above, if you come across anyone paying any credence to Biden’s doubts about the death toll, the Washington Post “has released an important deep dive on how Gaza health officials report daily death counts of Palestinians. Conclusion: in casting doubt on the number of Palestinian dead, Biden was ‘remarkably uninformed by history and precedent.'” https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1719709250077819125
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 1:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
For some hope, please check out this thread of “major organisations, statespersons and other notables showing leadership and calling for a #CeasefireNOW”, put together by Rohan Talbot, the Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestine: https://twitter.com/rohantalbot/status/1719865162075623766
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 1:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ceasefire NOW! For the third day running, Israel has bombed Jabalia refugee camp, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight refugee camps, this time targeting a school. There’s footage here, but I warn you: it’s quite grim. https://twitter.com/CjvHenderson/status/1720041821487698415
Surely now the illusion that this is a “just” war by Israel must be abandoned by the US, the EU, the UK and other western countries? They gave the green light to the slaughter in Jabalia refugee camp two days ago, so yesterday Israel bombed it again, and again today for a third time.
Israel attempted to justify the first attack by claiming it was targeting a Hamas leader, but the scale of the attack was so disproportionate that even some supporters of Israel were appalled, and the Guardian undertook analysis demonstrating the devastating use of five 900kg bombs. Munitions experts told them that the bombs – JDAMs (joint direct attack munitions), “either a GBU 31 (Warhead Mark 84) general purpose bomb or possibly a GBU 56 (Warhead BLU 109) bunker buster”, both weighing around 900kg (2,000lbs) – “will burrow through the ground, and have a delayed detonation, causing the building to collapse on itself. This explains the extent of the damage. Buildings also collapse due to the blast wave.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/01/jabalia-camp-airstrike-gaza
Israel said it had told people to leave Jabalia, but some are too ill, and there’s nowhere to go, of course, because nowhere in Gaza is safe. As human rights professor Helen Duffy explained, “Civilians that cannot leave or do not leave are still civilians. You cannot … carry out attacks that have disproportionate impact on civilians.”
Given the extent of the criticism of the attack, following up with and second attack yesterday – again with Israel claiming that it was targeting a Hamas commander – showed utter contempt by Israel for any notion that any rules exist in war, as the death toll reached 195, with 777 wounded, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said, “we have serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/2/un-rights-office-says-israeli-attacks-on-jabalia-could-be-war-crime
This third bombing, then, this time targeting a school, looks like nothing less than a declaration of war by Israel on the very notion that there is such a thing as proportionality. Surely when western leaders hear about this, they must flinch with some recognition that, having given the green light to Israel, they are watching war crimes unfold, and will find it difficult to claim that they didn’t know.
...on November 2nd, 2023 at 5:45 pm
Manny says...
One thing that you have not done in your narrative is examine in detail all of the Israeli rationales that have been given regarding why they use the tactics that they are using. Their goal is the total elimination of the any Hamas influence, making Hamas totally irrelevant and neutralizing the threat of any Hamas reconstitution. In no other way will the population of Israel be willing to repopulate those areas that were attacked on 10/7.
Israel is not doing this without scrutiny. See these articles:
https://aish.com/5-more-myths-about-israels-war-with-hamas/?src=ac
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-11-01/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israel-is-not-committing-genocide-in-gaza/0000018b-8785-d055-afbf-b7a75d450000
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-accuses-hamas-of-using-over-100-women-and-children-as-human-shields-in-gaza/
...on November 12th, 2023 at 6:21 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the links, Manny, but no, I haven’t examined in detail the Israeli government’s supposed rationale, because it’s simply not justifiable. From the beginning, it has only been possible to interpret the aim you describe – “the total elimination of any Hamas influence” – as involving the relentless and indiscriminate killing of civilians, through the relentless bombing of people’s homes, and the deliberate targeting of hospitals, ambulances, doctors and their families, journalists and their families, schools, universities, facilities run by the UN and NGOs. The list of unacceptable targets goes on and on.
As of yesterday, in addition to the more than 11,000 people killed – nearly all of them civilians – over 220,000 homes have been destroyed, and two-thirds of Gaza’s population have been displaced. There is nothing about any of this that suggests any realistic effort to eliminate Hamas by any other means other than the mass slaughter of civilians, and the destruction of the infrastructure necessary for a civilian population to live.
...on November 13th, 2023 at 9:19 am