18.2.24
It’s over two weeks since I’ve written about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, but it’s not because I’ve “moved on”, or forgotten about it. On the contrary, it still consumes my every waking hour, an aching anguish that only ever goes away when I somehow manage to distract myself through immersion in some other activity: my long-running work on Guantánamo, for example, or working on my music, or managing to snatch some precious time with my family on a recent weekend break in Dorset.
Mostly, though, the horror engulfs me permanently — the unending horror of one group of people, the State of Israel, whose leaders, media and citizens in vast numbers are committed, with a delirious, maniacal and alarmingly self-righteous enthusiasm, to the annihilation of another, the Palestinians, trapped in the Gaza Strip, a small sliver of land where their ancestors were ethnically cleansed when the State of Israel was created 76 years ago.
Everywhere I look, I see other people struggling to maintain their mental equilibrium in the face of the relentless slaughter that, over the last four months, has claimed 36,671 lives, including 14,031 children and 8,122 women — with the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which compiled the figures, estimating that 33,590 of those killed (91.6%) were civilians, and also pointing out that an additional 70,180 people have been wounded, many of them severely. Over a thousand children have lost one or both legs, with many amputations having to be conducted without aesthetic, because of Israel’s refusal to allow medical supplies into Gaza, and over 17,000 have been orphaned, known by a new designation of Israel’s making: ‘WCNSF’, which stands for “wounded child, no surviving family.”
It’s impossible for all of us around the world, so safely removed from this never-ending carnage — being bombed relentlessly, starved, deprived of clean drinking water, deprived of medical supplies, randomly murdered by snipers, and, in some cases, abducted and “disappeared” in Israel’s brutal and unaccountable prisons for Palestinians — to truly imagine how horrific it must be for those on the ground in Gaza, but its repercussions have spread around the world, disrupting and disorientating the “normal” lives of millions of people.
When I meet friends — decent, sensitive people — they too are haunted by this genocide, and by our powerlessness to make it stop. Some are more successful than me at distracting themselves in defence of their mental health, but, unless you’re someone who lives in a permanent state of self-obsessed distraction — or, in the worst case scenario, when you’ve let go of your fundamental humanity in support of the genocide — the relentless bombing, the endless cries of children and their cold-blooded murder have seeped into reality for millions of us in the west, challenging the notion that there is a fundamental decency to humanity that outweighs its orgiastic bloodlust, and eroding any belief that international bodies established since the horrors of the Second World War, with their mandate to uphold human rights and international humanitarian law, have any power to prevent the vilest of atrocities from taking place.
Israel’s openly stated genocidal aims
My delay in writing an update about Israel’s “war” on Gaza is because I’ve been struggling to define exactly why it is that genocide should concern us so deeply. Throughout human history, after all, brutal wars of conquest have taken place — generally for land and resources — in which the erasure of entire populations has been commonplace. War, by its very nature, has to involve the sweeping dehumanization of the “enemy” to enable it to proceed, because it’s difficult to persuade soldiers to slaughter other soldiers (let alone civilians) if they see them as the same, as equals.
What distinguishes genocide from war, however, is the deliberate, rather than the incidental drive to exterminate an entire population on the basis of this dehumanization, and this is what Israel has been undertaking in Gaza since October 7. The fact that this somehow needs explaining shows quite how complacently or triumphantly depraved so many people in Israel and amongst Zionist-supporting communities worldwide have become.
From the very beginning of Israel’s genocidal assault, in the wake of the attacks by Hamas and other militants, in which 1,139 people were killed (695 Israeli civilians, 373 members of the military and the police, and 71 foreigners), Israeli ministers have made no secret of their aims.
To cite just four examples, out of over 500 statements made by senior government officials, army personnel and officers and legislators (plus journalists and “influencers”), and collated here by Law for Palestine, on October 9 defence minister Yoav Gallant, imposing a “complete siege” on all supplies into Gaza, stated, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”, and, the day after, told Israel troops, “I have released all restraints. Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything.” On October 12 Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, stated, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It is absolutely not true”, and on October 25, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, stated, “We are the people of the light, they are the people of darkness.”
Inflicting genocide through relentless bombing
As bombs rained down on Gaza with unparalleled ferocity and intensity, any claims that Israel was acting “proportionately” in its self-declared intent to “eradicate Hamas” were revealed as blatantly deceitful. In November, an Israeli journalistic investigation exposed an AI program used to generate military targets in Gaza, which included not only senior Hamas operatives, but also junior and, one might say, profoundly peripheral targets too.
As I explained at the time, “In a follow-up article, the Guardian noted that, when AI was used in attacks on Gaza in 2021, Aviv Kochavi, then the head of the IDF, stated admiringly that, ‘in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year. Now, this machine produces 100 targets in a single day’” — a declaration that ought to lead anyone with any skepticism to wonder quite how accurate this AI “intelligence” was.
As I also noted, “One official explained to +972 Magazine how expanding the targets to alleged ‘junior Hamas members’ — which had not happened previously — had caused so much death. ‘That is a lot of houses’, the official said, adding, ‘Hamas members who don’t really mean anything live in homes across Gaza. So they mark the home and bomb the house and kill everyone there.”
It would have been more accurate for this official to have admitted that it wasn’t just one house that was targeted in each instance; it was actually entire residential blocks, but in any case, even if the AI program provided some sort of deeply flawed justification for which targets were chosen, the unprecedented scale of destruction — seen through the lens of senior Israeli officials’ genocidal comments, and through a leaked document that emerged on October 28 — demonstrated that the intended aim was the complete destruction of the Palestinian presence in the Gaza Strip, through the eradication of its entire built environment, and the exile of its people to the south, and then to tent cities in the Sinai Peninsula.
The document in question, endorsed by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence on October 13, was not an official policy document, although as Israel began ordering inhabitants of the north to re-locate to the south, coinciding with a ground invasion by the IDF on October 27, it was difficult not to conclude that it signposted Israel’s intent to an alarming degree. This was a suspicion that only solidified in the weeks that followed, as those who survived Israel’s non-stop bombing in central Gaza were also pushed south, and IDF soldiers, as well as engaging in looting and occupying former Palestinian homes (filming everything along the way, and posting it on social media), also began blowing up surviving buildings and erasing entire neighbourhoods.
Inflicting genocide through physical destruction
Moreover, in countless other respects, Israel’s genocide was shamelessly undisguised. As defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide not only consists of the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” through “killing members of the group” and “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”; it also includes “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
Israel has been undertaking this aspect of its genocide in the Gaza Strip in numerous disturbing ways since October 7, via the “complete siege” declared by defence minister Yoav Gallant on October 9, cutting off all supplies of water, food, fuel and medical supplies to a population dependent on humanitarian aid deliveries since Israel first severed it from the outside world and made it an “open-air prison” in 2007, and via the complete destruction of everything required to sustain life — the last of its already severely degraded water supply system, its sewage system, its farmland, its factories, its bakeries, cafes, restaurants and shops, all specifically targeted and destroyed.
In addition, every aspect of Gaza’s cultural and political life — universities, schools, government buildings, courts, libraries, archives, mosques, churches and historic landmarks — has also all been destroyed or severely damaged (along with shockingly large numbers of those who ran or worked in these facilities), with not even any pretence that any of this destruction involved military necessity.
Most sinister of all, however, has been Israel’s “war” on Gaza’s hospitals and its entire healthcare infrastructure, a grave war crime that Israel sought to justify through risible claims that the hospitals were Hamas command centres. I first covered this particular story in three articles in November and December, available here, here and here, which established that, based on claims regarding Hamas that were unverified, and that subsequently turned out to be untrue, Israeli forces first besieged hospitals, killing those who tried to enter or leave via sniper fire, then invaded them, arresting and “disappearing” doctors and medical staff, and then forced patients to leave on foot — or in wheelchairs, or, in some cases, hospital beds — sometimes leaving behind a skeleton staff and the most severely ill patients who could not be moved, in essentially “decommissioned” facilities without fuel to power necessary life-saving equipment, and without medical supplies.
Having largely succeeded in disseminating their lies about Hamas command centres (particularly at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City), Israeli forces have subsequently attacked and destroyed other hospitals without even pretending to find an excuse to do so, and they continue to wage their “war” on hospitals in the south. Just two days ago, the Israeli government invented new lies about the involvement of Hamas at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the largest surviving hospital in the Gaza Strip, as a pretext for first besieging the hospital, then sending a Palestinian prisoner into the hospital to tell everyone to evacuate, before killing him afterwards, and then invading the hospital militarily, leading to the deaths of critically ill patients, the arrest and “disappearance” of doctors and medical staff, and the expulsion from the hospital of patients.
The Israeli army said that it had arrested more than 20 “terrorists” based on “intelligence indicating terrorist activity by Hamas in the hospital” (a figure since updated to 70), with a spokesman alleging that “some of those detained were involved in the October 7 attacks inside Israel, including an ambulance driver”, and further alleging that the Israeli military “also believes there are bodies of Israeli captives somewhere” in the hospital’s grounds.
In response, Hamas said in a statement, “We have repeatedly said the policy of our Palestinian resistance is and remains to distance public and civilian institutions and the health sector from any military activity. We have asked the United Nations and relevant organisations on several occasions to bring an international committee to examine the hospitals and prove that Israel’s narrative is a lie. But our demands have not been heard.”
The extraordinary horror of a live-streamed genocide, openly celebrated by its perpetrators
When I was growing up, I first found out about genocide through watching ‘The World At War’, Jeremy Isaacs’ ground-breaking 26-part documentary series for ITV, when my natural pacifism was confirmed for life. I recall in particular the horror of seeing naked emaciated corpses as a concentration camp was liberated, and instantly developing an antipathy towards war whose intensity has never dimmed.
Fittingly, the impression I had of the Holocaust — in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, along with five to six million other civilians — was that genocide was an act of the most abysmal darkness, the most startling failure of the human spirit, and the very definition of collective evil.
While not necessarily hidden, it also struck me that there was generally something furtive about genocide, as though those involved knew that, although they were embracing it with enthusiasm, there were some who might respond to it being publicized too openly with their consciences, a part of humanity’s moral compass that nowadays seems to be gravely endangered.
79 years on from the liberation of the Nazis’ concentration camps, what is most shocking about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip — beyond the perennially shocking truth that it is being undertaken by the very people whose ancestors were murdered by the Nazis — is that it is so openly and proudly celebrated within Israel, not just via the country’s political leaders, but on TV and in newspapers, in popular culture, and through social media, with much of this enthusiasm also echoed by prominent Zionist-supporting Jewish commentators abroad.
While this is in some ways merely a continuation of a ferocious hatred of the Palestinians that was evident at the very founding of the State of Israel in 1948, when 15,000 Palestinians were murdered and 700,000 driven from their homes via ethnic cleansing, and while the periodic bombing of Gaza since it was first cut off from the world in 2007 is dismissively referred to by Israeli authorities as “mowing the lawn”, and Israeli atrocity tourists gathered on the hills to cheer the bombing of Gaza in 2014, when over 2,000 of Gaza’s inhabitants were killed in an assault that lasted for seven weeks, the frenzy of genocidal intent this time around is unparalleled in the entire blood-soaked history of Israel’s long efforts to rid itself of the Palestinians.
Sadly, I suspect that some of this can be attributed to a far-right drift in politics across so much of the world over the last decade, which, in Israel, led to two far-right politicians, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, being given ministerial positions in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, formed in December 2022, and that some of it can also be attributed to the rise of social media, which has prioritized anger and outrage over engagement and nuance, and has also facilitated the creation of echo chambers of the like-minded, where, it transpires, anger and outrage can coalesce into genocidal fury.
Certainly, a kind of self-perpetuating and ever-escalating genocidal hysteria has successfully been provoked via the atrocity lies that were cynically amplified after the October 7 attacks, of which the claim that 40 beheaded babies were found at Kfar Aza, a kibbutz near the Gaza border, was the most lurid and the most influential, along with contentious allegations of mass rape.
The 40 beheaded babies story was finally debunked when official Israeli figures revealed that no babies were killed at Kfar Aza, and the total number of children killed on October 7 was 36, and in January Haaretz reported that, despite three months of investigations, the Israeli police were “having difficulty” finding “victims of sexual assault from the Hamas attack[s].”
Nevertheless, the genocidal frenzy continues, as Israel’s supporters ignore the 14,031 children killed in Gaza, and, on Israeli TV last week, former Mossad official Rami Igra echoed Isaac Herzog’s claims about it being “an entire nation” that was “responsible” for the Hamas attacks by stating, “In Gaza, everyone is involved. Everyone voted Hamas. Anyone over the age of four is a Hamas supporter.”
Just as alarmingly, in France last week, Aurore Bergé, the Minister for the Fight against Discrimination, told a Jewish radio station in Paris that she’d stop the funding for all French feminist organizations that do not promote Israel’s understanding of the events of October 7, which, as she described it — far exceeding even the wildest claims of Israel’s most deranged propagandists — was that “thousands of women were exterminated, murdered, burned, or raped.”
The erasure of historical context
In addition, of course, a breeding ground for hysterical genocidal frenzy is also facilitated when historical context and nuance are dismissed. This was made abundantly clear in February 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was shorn of its context — that NATO’s relentless expansion over the previous decades had repeatedly crossed red lines laid down by Vladimir Putin — allowing Putin to be portrayed as the embodiment of pure evil, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his dubious associates to be portrayed as saints, and it has happened again with Israel and Hamas, although this time around Hamas are the embodiment of pure evil, while Israel are the saints.
In both cases, history has been portrayed as beginning when the acts of allegedly unique, unprecedented and unprovoked “evil” took place — in Russia’s case, on February 24, 2022, and in the case of the Gaza Strip, on October 7, 2023. I have written before (in a global environmental context) about the poisonous one-sidedness of the west’s position regarding Ukraine. In the case of Gaza, however, the erasure of all history before October 7 is an act of enforced amnesia that is surely unparalleled in its cynicism.
Since hundreds of thousands of European Jews were welcomed to Palestine by its British caretakers in the 1920s and 1930s, to fulfil the deranged promise of an Israeli state on land that was home to the Palestinians (and, crucially, where they were also largely co-existing peacefully with Arab Jews and Christians), Palestine was transformed into the battleground for the last major European settler colonial project, which, like Europe’s previous centuries-long settler colonial projects, was frequently genocidal in intent. Seeking resources, European settlers, always brandishing their sense of superiority over the inferior natives, plundered half the world, subjugating the indigenous people, and exterminating them if they sought to resist.
The history of Israel is, fundamentally, no different, except in the sense that the European “chosen people” who moved to Palestine and set about conquering it to create the State of Israel were Jewish, rather than Christian. The colonial template, which began with the murder of 15,000 Palestinians, and the expulsion of 700,000 others, was reinforced in 1967, when Israel took the Gaza Strip and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan, and it has continued ever since, with the former eventually turned into an “open-air prison”, and the latter shattered by huge influxes of settlers and a vast dividing wall.
To believe that history began on October 7 is to ignore the fact that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have, since 1967, officially been regarded as Occupied Territories, to ignore the fact that Israel has repeatedly been condemned for its treatment of the Palestinians, and to ignore the fact that an occupied people, adamant about their right to their land (even what little of it remains after the depredations of 1948 and 1967), cannot be expected to sit back and endlessly suffer greater and greater deprivations and indignities from the occupier. In all contested lands, there will be conflict between the occupier and occupied, and if the circumstances are militarily unequal, as they almost always are, and as they certainly are between Israel and Gaza, one side will engage in asymmetric warfare, while the other — as Israel has done repeatedly since cutting off Gaza from the rest of the world in 2007 — will respond with its grotesquely superior firepower.
The attacks on October 7 were, as has been noted, the deadliest attacks on Jewish people since the Holocaust, but, to provide context, it should also be noted that, in the long and unequal struggle between Israel and the Palestinians, 6,407 Palestinians were killed between January 2008 and September 2023, compared to 308 Israelis — a ratio of over 20:1.
The west’s sickening complicity in Israel’s genocide
For millions of us in the west, the disgust we’ve been feeling towards the State of Israel for its actions over the last four months has, sadly, been matched by the disgust we’ve been feeling towards our own governments, for their overt complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Shamefully, since October 7, the US and Canada, the UK, the 27 countries of the EU, the rest of Europe, and Australia and New Zealand have almost all offered uncritical and unconditional support for Israel’s “right to defend itself”, continuing to do so — and, crucially, to supply Israel with weapons — even as an evident genocide has been unfolding.
There are, I think, five main reasons for this. One, of course, is historic guilt about the Holocaust, and the consequent and repeated turning of a blind eye to the “exceptionalism” that Israel has demanded for itself since its founding as the only aggressor that is not allowed to be regarded as an aggressor because it is always a “victim.”
Another reason, however, relates to Israel’s role as the last European settler colonial project, and it is on this point that so many citizens of western countries have awakened to the painful truth that, beneath the veneer of our supposed civilized democracies, our leaders — and our would-be leaders — remain as fundamentally colonial in their outlook, and as fundamentally supportive of brutal colonial enterprises, as they were when ships full of loot filled western docks, and human beings were traded as commodities.
Allied to this, of course, is a fundamental racism, a localized version of the rabid Islamophobia that gripped the west after the 9/11 attacks, in which the Palestinians, as Muslims, are regarded as inferior — if, indeed, their existence is ever acknowledged at all. Western politicians and western media have all revealed over the last four months how little they care about Palestinian lives.
Another point, which I touched on above, is the debasement of politics, particularly over the last decade, whereby, instead of having politicians and media editors capable of historical analysis, context and nuance, we have the same simple-minded sewer of absolutist dogma that has poisoned the critical faculties of so many citizens of the west.
And the last reason — the one that most people run scared of, and which undoubtedly influences some of the above — is the control wielded by pro-Israeli lobby groups, who have been buying up supporters and intimidating critics for decades.
An added complication is that, leading the pack of support for Israel in the west is a US president, Joe Biden, who, it seems to me, is no longer mentally able to fully grasp the enormity of Israel’s genocide. Historically a well-known warmonger, and a friend of Netanyahu’s for 50 years, he appears to be intransigently fixated on unconditional support for Israel, regardless of the facts, and has also, notoriously, persistently repeated lies about Hamas beheading babies, and burning women and children alive, despite being repeatedly told that they were unsubstantiated claims.
Where the US leads, the rest of the west largely follows, as we have seen with the unquestioning support for Israel from so many western countries. Its impact, moreover, not only affects the Palestinians in Gaza; in country after country, free speech is under threat as never before, as governments pliantly seek to prevent, or even to criminalize as anti-semitic any mention of support for Palestine, or criticism of the Israeli government. Bizarrely, this support appears to be so rigid that forthcoming elections may even be lost by political leaders whose normal sense of self-preservation above all other considerations has abandoned them when it comes to pledging unconditional support for Israel.
The endgame
Hopefully, however, western leaders will start to recognize the urgent need to start walking away from unconditional support for Israel — even though it is too late for them to salvage the humanity that they flushed away so readily — if only because the noose of complicity in genocide not only threatens Israel; it is also beginning to tighten around their own necks.
Key to this, of course, was the ruling by the International Court of Justice three weeks ago, in which “the principal judicial organ” of the United Nations, also known as the World Court, accepted a case brought by South Africa against the State of Israel “concerning alleged violations in the Gaza Strip of [its] obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”, and imposed conditional measures on Israel to prevent what the Court judged to be the grave likelihood of a developing genocide.
Although the UN and other international bodies have, sadly, developed a reputation for impotence, largely because of inbuilt failures to provide mechanisms for compliance with rulings, it is inconceivable that senior legal advisers to governments throughout the west will not have been warning their bosses that being found complicit in genocide is not a good look.
Having failed to do anything to compel Israel to curb its genocidal actions — and, in fact, having compounded the developing genocide by disgracefully accepting uncorroborated information by Israel about Hamas involvement with UNRWA, the UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians, and cutting funding for what is the main agency providing humanitarian aid — it is, perhaps, noteworthy that, as Israel approaches its endgame in Gaza, threatening to invade the tent city in Rafah, where most of the population has now ended up after being moved, often up to six times, from their former homes further north, western leaders are finally noting that there is something unpalatable about allowing Israel to continue to slaughter civilians in what they have persistently portrayed as the last supposed “safe place“ in Gaza.
Even more alarmingly, the Egyptian government — which has repeatedly refused to accept Israel’s intention to force the entire population of Gaza into the Sinai peninsula — has, nevertheless, been preparing a walled enclosure on the border of the Gaza Strip, which the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights (SFHR), a monitoring group, has described as being built “with the aim of receiving refugees in the event of a mass exodus.”
The forced displacement of the Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip has very evidently been one of the aims of Israel’s genocidal assault over the last four months — fulfilling the far-right Zionists’ dream of a Gaza “cleansed” of all Palestinians, and rebuilt as a beach resort for settlers — but while the west has been content to allow a genocide to take place, it is uncertain if they can stomach the outrage that would greet Israel succeeding in creating a second Nakba that is even more extreme than the first, back in 1948, or, indeed, if such a colossal act of mass ethnic cleansing could be undertaken without engulfing the whole of the Middle East in a much wider conflagration.
The answer, of course, is for the genocide to stop, and for negotiations to take place to begin rebuilding Gaza, and to provide the Palestinians with a safe and secure independent home, presumably along the 1967 borders. Right now, this seems unthinkable, but no other solution seems possible, however much Israel’s collective genocidal frenzy still hungers for the erasure of the entire Palestinian people, whether through genocide, forced displacement, or both.
Is it too much to hope that this vilest of experiences may eventually usher in a better future, one in which Israel’s economy collapses, and its supporters in the west lose power as their own citizens turn against them? Certainly, what has been revealed over the last four months is how, with the exception of Israel itself, the political leaders of countries in the west who have supported its genocide have found themselves out of step with the majority of their populations.
It is, surely, time for the genocidal warmongers to be replaced, not just for what they have been doing and enabling in Gaza for the last four months, but also for the sake of the whole of humanity, threatened with ecological extinction because of the same impulses that make some humans — vile, ambitious, failed examples of our common humanity — think that murdering, or seeking to murder an entire population of people is anything other than the most profound failure imaginable.
* * * * *
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.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
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. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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39 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, a long read about Israel’s still-ongoing genocide in Gaza, the unimaginable horror of being in Gaza itself, and the permanently unsettling psychic repercussions reverberating around the world, plus a comprehensive overview of how and why it is a genocide, and my shock that so many people are so openly and publicly supportive of what ought to be readily recognized as “the most abysmal darkness, the most startling failure of the human spirit, and the very definition of collective evil”, as I describe it.
I also express my disgust at western complicity in the genocide, discuss the huge importance of not allowing Hamas’ attacks on October 7 to be perceived as having taken place in a vacuum, and conclude with the hope that, as Israel prepares to attack the last refuge of Gaza’s displaced population in Rafah, and to push for the permanent expulsion of all the survivors, western indulgence of Israel — especially with complicity in genocide hovering over them via the International Court of Justice — will finally cease and, somehow, bring this otherwise unending slaughter to an end.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 5:55 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anna Brown wrote:
Thank you! Will share with my students in a genocide class.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thank you, Anna. I am so thrilled to hear that!
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:04 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anna Brown wrote:
And thank you also for how you started the article, Andy. The darkness is real and feels so all-enveloping. My heart feels broken in a million pieces.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Again, thanks so much, Anna. I was very much trying to personalize how this horror is affecting so many of us.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Cathy Teesdale wrote:
A powerful & comprehensive piece, Andy, thoroughly exposing Israel’s lies & bloodthirsty, murderous depravity, & the deeply shameful complicity of so many Western governments, including our own. 💔
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks so much for the supportive words, Cathy. I’m so glad to hear that the scope of the article encompassed all that I hoped it would.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Mary MacGregor Green wrote:
Well said.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks very much, Mary. Good to hear from you.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
Thank you, Andy. It’s still very chilling for me to see people around me are still silent about this. Only my activist friends are talking about the genocide. Everyone else pretends this is not happening. I’m enraged.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:09 pm
Andy Worthington says...
That must be difficult to deal with, Natalia. Indifference is genuinely shocking in the face of such atrocities.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:09 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
Andy, how can people be indifferent and quiet about this?
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:10 pm
Andy Worthington says...
That’s the key question of our times, Natalia. How can so many people refuse to engage with the deadly political realities of our times, retreating into themselves, or living in a fantasy consumer world?
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Siobhán O’Cuinn wrote:
Same, Natalia!
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Sorry to hear that, Siobhán, although from what I’ve been seeing there have been, and continue to be significant protests across much of the US.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anna Giddings wrote:
Thank you, Andy. It’s shameful what the Palestinians have been reduced to.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:13 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Anna. It’s almost unbearable, isn’t it, which is why I felt that, although it’s obviously impossible to truly imagine what the people of Gaza are going through, it was important to discuss the psychic damage it’s causing to everyone who still has a heart, or any vestige of human decency.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:14 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Carol Scherer wrote:
Sharing.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Carol. Good to hear from you.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Russell B Fuller wrote:
Sharing as well. Thanks, Andy.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:16 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Russell. Much appreciated.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 10:16 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Siobhán O’Cuinn wrote, in response to 15, above:
Indeed there are, Andy! Especially in my uber-progressive city (Seattle).
But Natalia is correct, outside of activists, it’s as if Gaza does not exist. Nobody dares to talk about it in my workplace: a world-renowned cancer research center! We are doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers.
It’s mindblowing.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 11:38 pm
Andy Worthington says...
There’s so much institutional silence, Siobhán, and often understandably, sadly, because the weaponization of alleged “antisemitism” – meaning criticism of the actions of the State of Israel, not real antisemitism – is so virulent.
It’s extremely important that anyone with any kind of independence – and, if possible, brave people coming together in academic institutions, and in the arts – keep calling this out, not just to protect the vital right to support Palestine and to criticize Israel, but also because of the otherwise chilling impact it may have on all free speech.
...on February 18th, 2024 at 11:39 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Al Glatkowski wrote:
Excellent, Andy. Sharing.
...on February 19th, 2024 at 12:15 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Al. Very glad you appreciated it.
...on February 19th, 2024 at 12:16 am
Andy Worthington says...
Zoon Imran wrote:
As always thnx so much Andy, hurts beyond words, truth always does‼️🇵🇸✌🏻🇵🇸
...on February 19th, 2024 at 12:30 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Zoon. The truth right now is almost unbearably painful, but those it really needs to hurt are those who are engaged in the genocide, or complicit in it, and yet still see themselves as somehow virtuous. The task of not letting them forget and holding them accountable will be long, but it is absolutely necessary.
...on February 19th, 2024 at 12:30 am
Andy Worthington says...
Hanann Abu Brase wrote:
Thank you, Andy. It eases our heartache everywhere knowing there are people like you out there still fighting despite all the odds against you and us and the Palestinians.
...on February 19th, 2024 at 12:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Hanann. I’m glad that I have some sort of a platform – however limited its reach – that enables me to try to explain why this is the defining struggle for our very humanity, and how profoundly troubling it is that it even needs explaining.
Something has gone very wrong with humanity’s moral compass to enable so many people to regard it as acceptable to erase an entire country, and to kill and wound over 100,000 people – nearly all civilians – in response to one day of attacks by militants resisting 75 years of occupation, which, however dreadful, cannot in any way legitimize such a disproportionate response.
...on February 19th, 2024 at 12:23 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Today, a week of historic hearings began at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) into Israel’s long, brutal and illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with submissions from 49 countries and three NGOs.
Today’s three and a half hour session, featuring submissions by and on behalf of the Palestinians, is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve7nzaoCJeo
In a clip on X, Philippe Sands KC told the Court, “The right to self-determination requires that UN member states bring Israel’s occupation to an end. No aid, no money, no arms, no complicity, no trade, no nothing.” https://twitter.com/mockgoose/status/1759584839685075437
Meanwhile, the Palestinian foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki showed five maps of the shrinking Palestinian territories since 1948, with the last of the five featured in a photo of Benjamin Netanyahu, at the UN General Assembly last September, “holding up a map that he called the ‘new’ Middle East in which all vestiges of Palestinian territory had been removed”, as the Guardian described it.
“There is no Palestine at all on this map, only Israel, comprised of all the land from Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”, Maliki told the hearing. “This shows you what the prolonged, continuous Israeli occupation of Palestine is intended to accomplish – the complete disappearance of Palestine and the destruction of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians have endured colonialism and apartheid. There are those who are enraged by these words. They should be enraged by the reality we are suffering.” https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/feb/19/hearings-israel-occupation-palestine-international-court-of-justice
If you’re on X, you can also follow US law professor Heidi Matthews, who is providing informative threads on the proceedings every day. https://twitter.com/Heidi__Matthews/status/1759588860239958146
...on February 19th, 2024 at 7:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Meanwhile, when Palestinian children aren’t being bombed, or shot in the head by snipers, as was revealed over the weekend in shocking testimony by an American doctor who has just returned from Gaza, they’re beginning to suffer from rising malnutrition, as UNICEF explained today after a report, ‘Nutrition Vulnerability and Situation Analysis / Gaza’, was published, compiled by the Global Nutrition Cluster.
As a UNICEF press release explained, “The report finds that the situation is particularly extreme in the Northern Gaza Strip, which has been almost completely cut off from aid for weeks. Nutrition screenings conducted at shelters and health centres in the north found that 15.6 per cent — or 1 in 6 children under 2 years of age — are acutely malnourished. Of these, almost 3 per cent suffer from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, which puts young children at highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent treatment.”
Moreover, because the data was collected in January, the situation will be even graver by now.
You can find the report here: https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2024-02/GAZA-Nutrition-vulnerability-and-SitAn-v7.pdf
And if you missed the US doctor’s story, it’s here: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-16/rafah-gaza-hospitals-surgery-israel-bombing-ground-offensive-children
...on February 19th, 2024 at 7:56 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Zoon Imran wrote, in response to 30, above:
Too little to late Andy Worthington, plZ don’t mind bro’, but nothin’ of this kind feels historic to me at least, feels more like a joke by now … all i feel is anger, all hopes are crushed by now, what outcome will this have even … this onslaught started because of the entire world imperialists, and 4 mnths +75 yrs, and still at this moment even just talks, no action 😢💔😡
...on February 19th, 2024 at 9:09 pm
Andy Worthington says...
No worries, Zoon. I only meant ‘historic’ in the sense that it hasn’t happened before, not that it signifies anything imminently.
I do still believe in the importance of the UN, but, as I mentioned in my article, on legal matters it has become ever more apparent that the inbuilt failures to provide mechanisms for compliance with rulings has been severely damaging the UN’s credibility.
Part of the problem is the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council, but another aspect involves countries like Israel who refuse to be held accountable by anyone for anything.
Something has to change …
...on February 19th, 2024 at 9:10 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
The Genocide will be televised … beyond f..ked up beyond grotesque Israeli snipers intentionally targeting children shooting them in the heads. the zionists are delirious in a mania with bloodlust a frenzied lust for murder and the world with the exception of a few world leaders are supporting genocide. here’s something so dark I watched aljazeera news and it showed protesters blocking humanitarian aid trucks … these were young women teenagers with flowers in their hair singing songs … wanting people to starve to death … just like their ancestors were starved to death … All this horror is a sign of the times god help us
...on February 20th, 2024 at 6:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It’s beyond comprehension, isn’t it, Damien? Not the reality that Israel, more far-right than ever, would do this, but that the west is supporting it so thoroughly and unconditionally – crucially, through still sending weapons, even though there’s no doubt that they’re being used to murder civilians in unprecedented numbers.
I see that the US has, for the third time, vetoed a ceasefire motion in the UN Security Council, while the UK abstained, yet again disempowering the other 13 members, who are all still in touch with some fundamental part of their humanity.
When will this nightmare end?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/20/us-vetoes-another-un-security-council-resolution-urging-gaza-war-ceasefire
...on February 20th, 2024 at 6:46 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Tamzin Jans wrote:
Andy, I think each US President is worse than the previous one! How can Biden veto this ceasefire while so many are dying in such a short time? AND the UK abstained? What’s wrong with the UK too?
...on February 23rd, 2024 at 3:53 pm
Andy Worthington says...
What a depressing state of affairs it is, Tamzin, when we’re having to conclude that, when it comes to US foreign policy, it is difficult to see Trump as worse than Biden. As for the UK, they may as well declare openly that they’re a wholly owned subsidiary of both the US and Israel.
...on February 23rd, 2024 at 3:54 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Abdellatif Nasser wrote:
Dear Andy,
Thank you for sharing this 🙏
I think as a Guantanamo survivor that the United States of America is the source number 1 of all evils that threaten the humanity and justice in this beautiful world.
...on February 23rd, 2024 at 3:54 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It is very hard not to agree with you, Abdellatif, and, as is currently apparent, not to also conclude that most of Europe’s leaders, as well as Canada and Australia, are also complicit in the many threats emanating from the US, especially in conjunction with its unwavering support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
...on February 23rd, 2024 at 3:55 pm