800 Days of Genocide in Gaza: The Equivalent of 3,500 9/11s Or Ten Million Dead Americans

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Sunday, December 14, marked 800 days of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and yet you could be forgiven for not knowing anything about what is, by any objective measure, an unforgivably grim milestone, because no news network or newspaper in the western world could be bothered to report it.

If you’re reading this because of the headline, then yes, the death toll of the genocide is equivalent to 3,500 9/11s, or the equivalent of ten million Americans having been killed, but I’ll be discussing that in more detail at the end of the article, after running through every aspect of how the last two months of the “ceasefire” don’t constitute any meaningful kind of conclusion to Israel’s atrocities at all.

Since Donald Trump, to his credit, managed to stop Israel’s relentless carpet-bombing of Palestinian civilians two months ago, in return for Hamas handing over the last 20 surviving hostages seized on October 7, 2023, and, subsequently, all but one of the 28 dead hostages, most of the countries of the west, many of whom had started to become a little uneasy about Israel’s naked genocidal intent, have been behaving as though the genocide — or the “war”, as they manipulatively prefer to call it — is over, even though that is patently untrue.

Since the ceasefire deal took effect on October 10, Israel has violated it on 813 occasions, killing nearly 400 Palestinians. That’s an average of six Palestinians a day, down from at least 60 a day before the ceasefire began, but only Israel can treat a ceasefire in such a cavalier manner, and get away with it, as it has in Lebanon for the last year.

As UN experts warned in October, “Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to strike Lebanese territory almost daily”, in attacks that have “resulted in a mounting toll of civilian deaths and injuries and destruction and damage of infrastructure, housing, the environment and agricultural zones vital to civilian livelihoods.” In Gaza, too, the attacks have occurred on almost a daily basis.

Israel’s persistent obstruction of humanitarian aid

In addition, although the ceasefire deal stipulated that 600 trucks of humanitarian aid would be allowed to enter Gaza daily, that has not happened. On December 15, Olga Cherevko of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Gaza (OCHA), warned that “humanitarian assistance in Gaza is being delayed because aid cargo is routinely deprioritised in favour of commercial goods”, while also “pointing to the limited volume of supplies entering the Strip and a growing list of items which continue to be blocked by Israeli authorities, including heavy machinery, equipment and spare parts needed to repair damaged infrastructure.”

Those “blocked items” were also discussed on December 15 by the EU’s humanitarian aid commissioner Hadja Lahbib at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. Reporting on a visit two weeks ago, she said that she saw “hundreds of trucks full of items, essential supplies, medicines, shelters, tents, sleeping bags” waiting at the Rafah Crossing with Egypt.

“Too many trucks are refused” entry into Gaza, she said, because they are “full of items considered as dual use: sleeping bags because of their colour green, wheelchairs because of the wheels.” The National, which reported on the meeting, explained that dual use items consist of anything that the Israeli authorities might consider “to have both civilian and military purposes”, and cited a report last month by the UN, stating that Israel “had rejected more than 100 requests by aid groups to deliver materials including blankets, winter clothes, and tools to operate water, sanitation and hygiene services”, which Israeli spokespeople described as decisions “taken on security grounds.”

The huge need for substantial and significant humanitarian aid has expanded remorselessly in recent days, as cruel winter storms and significant rainfall, brought by Storm Byron, have created apocalyptic scenes of destruction in Gaza. As the OCHA reported, “more than 1.3 million Palestinians in the territory are without proper shelter” — all as a direct result of Israel’s destruction of their homes and their repeated and blatantly illegal evacuation orders, which have led to the majority of the population, for the last 26 months, being shunted from place to place, and living, for the most part, in makeshift tents in ruinously unsanitary conditions, and with no protection against extreme weather.

Videos from Gaza in recent days have shown horrific levels of flooding and the destruction of tents, and, as Olga Cherevko said, “When the storms came, many people lost everything — it washed away everything that they had.” OCHA also warned that “winter conditions continue to pose serious health risks, particularly for infants”, and, as Ms. Cherevko said, “The risks of hypothermia are heightened, and babies are in very high danger.” Just yesterday, the health authority in Gaza confirmed that two infants have died from the cold.

The deprivation of almost everything necessary for survival in Gaza is deliberate, of course. Just 12 days after the ceasefire took effect, on October 22, the International Court of Justice, which delivered stern warnings about Israel’s complicity in genocide and the illegality of its entire occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2024, delivered another powerful opinion, ruling unanimously that Israel was required “to ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies and services”, and also, amongst other trenchant criticisms, dismissing Israel’s claims that UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, had been infiltrated by Hamas.

Just five days ago, on December 12, the UN General Assembly overwhelming endorsed the ICJ opinion, with 139 countries backing a resolution calling on Israel to ensure that the population of Gaza has access to “essential supplies of daily life”, and urging Israel “to agree to and facilitate ‘by all means at its disposal’ relief schemes for the Palestinian population ‘so long as that population is inadequately supplied’, explicitly citing conditions in the Gaza Strip.”

The resolution also affirmed that Israel “is not entitled to sovereignty over or to exercise sovereign powers in any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory on account of its occupation”, and also called on Israel “to respect and protect humanitarian and medical personnel and facilities, and to comply with international law prohibitions on forcible transfer and deportation in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

Shamefully, the only countries to vote against the resolution (12 in total) were the US and Israel, the far-right outliers Argentina and Hungary, and a handful of minor vassal states, while 19 other countries abstained.

Israel’s “yellow line” as its “new border”

Furthermore, although the first phase of the ceasefire deal required Israel to withdraw to an arbitrary “yellow line” which gave them control over 53% of Gaza, and with further withdrawals meant to take place as negotiations regarding Gaza’s future continued, there is no sign of when or how this next phase will take place.

Instead, Israel has arbitrarily expanded the “yellow line” to encompass 58% of Gaza, with many of the nearly 400 Palestinian deaths since October 10 taking place close to the line, which has become an execution zone, monitored by 40 Israeli military outposts, including one described by Al Jazeera as “a new advanced military outpost in Tal al-Za’atar in northern Gaza, with new tents and equipment added” in recent weeks.

Even more significantly, high-ranking Israeli spokespeople have openly declared that the “yellow line” is not temporary, but actually represents a line marking Israel’s permanent occupation of over half of Gaza. On December 7, Al Jazeera reported that the Israeli military had affirmed that the current line of demarcation was a “new border.” Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Chief of the General Staff of the IDF, stated, “We have operational control over extensive parts of the Gaza Strip, and we will remain on those defence lines.” He added, “The yellow line is a new border line, serving as a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity.”

The day before, at the Doha Forum, a gathering of more than 6,000 participants from over 150 countries “to advance dialogue, cooperation, and practical pathways toward global stability”, the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani advanced a position that was starkly at odds with Israel’s typical arrogance. He warned that the truce in Gaza “was at a ‘critical moment’ and could unravel without rapid movement towards a permanent deal”, adding that “a true ceasefire ‘cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal’ of Israeli forces, alongside restored stability and freedom of movement for Palestinians, which has so far not transpired under phase one of the plan.”

In addition, as well as treating the “yellow line” as a “new border”, illegally annexing 58% of Gaza in what is a grotesquely illegal land grab, Israel has also continued to destroy every structure that remains in the 58% of Gaza under its control, another wilfully illegal manoeuvre. As was also reported by Al Jazeera yesterday, “Satellite images reviewed by [its] Sanad fact-checking agency show that the Israeli military has continued to demolish buildings in areas of Gaza it has occupied” since the ceasefire began.

As Al Jazeera reported, “Satellite images showed the latest demolitions took place between November 5 and December 13, with most concentrated in the Shujayea and the Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City”, and with further “demolitions in the southern city of Rafah as well as the apparent destruction of agricultural facilities east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.”

As Al Jazeera also stated, “Legal experts and United Nations officials have said throughout the war that the destruction of civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime”, and, in an email, Adil Haque, a professor of law and armed conflict at Rutgers Law School, confirmed that, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, “any destruction by an Occupying Power of private property is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”

He added, “The exception is extremely narrow. The destruction must be absolutely necessary, not merely convenient or advantageous. And the absolute necessity must arise from military operations, that is, from combat or direct preparations for combat. With a general ceasefire in place, and only a few sporadic exchanges of fire, it is not plausible that such significant destruction of civilian property has been rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”

Trump’s floundering “Peace Plan”

Meanwhile, every aspect of the next phase of Trump’s “Peace Plan”, which was shamefully endorsed by the UN Security Council on November 17, despite numerous members states’ profound misgivings, appears to be floundering.

The hopes, expressed in the “Peace Plan”, for a second phase establishing a post-genocidal future for Gaza, involving an International Stabilization Force, working alongside a neo-colonial “Board of Peace” led by Donald Trump, overseeing a supposed “Palestinian technocratic, apolitical committee of competent Palestinians from the Strip”, have not materialized at all. No country wants to risk its troops’ lives in Gaza, which would be inevitable while the occupation continues, as Hamas and the other Palestinian factions refuse to countenance relinquishing their weapons without a full Israeli withdrawal. In addition, both the board and the committee appear to be completely spectral, a phantasm of Trump’s imagination.

Instead, a recent report by the New York Times portrays a US presence on the ground in Israel that is flailing around in an effort to establish future plans. On November 25, the Times reported that, fundamentally, rather than pushing its own agenda, the Trump administration was, whether knowingly or not, dancing to Israel’s tune, planning redevelopment on the Israeli side of the “yellow line”, while not allowing any on the side controlled by Hamas, in what would essentially be a fulfilment of the “concentration camp” plan that Israel first floated earlier this year when it discovered new depths of depravity in its genocidal assault on Gaza after scuppering the first ceasefire deal that had prevailed for six weeks in January and February.

The plan is for new compounds in Israeli-controlled Gaza, identified as “Alternative Safe Communities”, consisting of “a string of model compounds — more permanent than tent villages, but still made up of structures meant to be temporary”, to “provide housing for as many as 20,000 or 25,000 people alongside medical clinics and schools”, according to US officials and European diplomats.

The plans are being overseen by Aryeh Lightstone, formerly “a top aide to former Ambassador David M. Friedman”, Trump’s first envoy to Jerusalem, whose team, apparently, “includes an eclectic, fluctuating group of American diplomats [and] Israeli magnates” as well as officials from Elon Musk’s DOGE, all operating out of two luxury beachfront hotels in Tel Aviv, “brainstorming ideas and sketching out diagrams of what the new Gaza compounds should look like”, and largely ignoring the implications of horrific suggestions that Palestinians would be allowed to enter, but not leave the compounds, and that they would be subjected to sweeping surveillance and screening.

Despite the evident confusion regarding the future, the US made clear just yesterday that it has no interest in the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, when, in the UN General Assembly, they, Israel, Argentina and, again, a handful of minor vassal states (eight countries in total) voted against a resolution that was passed by 164 countries, including every country in the EU.

The shameful return of pro-Israeli propaganda throughout the west

While Israeli-engineered death still stalks Gaza, and future plans are startlingly ephemeral, Israel itself has taken advantage of western countries’ craven retreat from their mounting pre-ceasefire criticisms to push for a new clampdown on legitimate dissent, aimed at stemming the world’s revulsion at their actions over the last 800 days.

It was recently announced that Israel’s current propaganda spend on what The New Arab called its “overseas influence operations” — $150 million this year — will be more than quadrupled to $729 million next year, but its determination to win back public support was already evident on Sunday, after two gunmen, allegedly linked to Daesh, killed 15 people in attacks on a Hanukkah celebration in Bondi Beach in Sydney.

In what can only be regarded as a massively coordinated response, almost all of the west’s mainstream media editors immediately ran headlines and op-eds that all focused on demonizing the phrase “globalize the intifada”, even though what that particular phrase calls for is to globalize the “uprising” against Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian land, its grotesque system of apartheid, and its ongoing genocide, and not to engage in terrorism. Nevertheless, in countless interviews, these same media outlets amplified Israeli and Jewish voices claiming, falsely, that the attack showed the dangerous and pernicious rise of antisemitism, and called for all manner of punitive responses, including draconian restrictions on freedom of speech.

This was unforgivable for two reasons. Firstly, because 15 Palestinians have been dying every day in Gaza since the ceasefire began, if not through direct Israeli attacks, then through the sustained effects of their ongoing siege on everything needed to sustain life — what the Genocide Convention describes as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” No one, however, has bothered to bring the world grinding to a halt to mourn their deaths.

Secondly, it was unforgivable because there is no rise in antisemitism. Given the scale of Israel’s atrocities over the last 26 months, it is, to some extent, astonishing that there have not been further attacks on those perceived to be responsible. Instead, what the resurgence of pro-Israeli hysteria seeks to establish, as support for Israel has plummeted, never to to be regained, is the viability of its tired and shameful claim that antisemitism means criticism of the actions of the State of Israel, and that anyone supporting the right of the Palestinians not to be subjected to a genocide on their own occupied land is directly encouraging terrorism against Jewish people.

The multitude of anti-Zionist Jewish people worldwide know this to be a diabolical lie, but, throughout the west, pliant people in positions of power in politics and the media are once more being prevailed upon to resurrect October 7-style hysteria, to once more entrench the notion that the only people on earth who can never, ever be criticized — even when committing a genocide — are the people of Israel, and that any criticism of them, and, through a false analogy, all Jewish people worldwide, is an incitement to genocide.

That this mind-meltingly vile inversion of reality continues to assert itself, after 800 days of Israel’s ongoing genocide — and also seeks to sidestep the inconvenient truth that the hero of the day was a Muslim man, Ahmed Al-Ahmed, who prevented further Jewish deaths by bravely disarming one of the attackers, even though it led to him being shot twice — is so sickening that I almost lack the words to describe it fully.

3,500 9/11s or ten million dead Americans

However, I hope that I can accomplish my aim by returning to one of the more pernicious positions taken by the first great facilitator of the genocide, Joe Biden, the 9/11 analogy that he made on his first visit to Israel after the October 7 attacks on October 18.

In an embarrassingly rambling speech, Biden referred to October 7 as equivalent to 15 9/11s.

At the time, Israel had already killed 6,000 Palestinians in Gaza in retaliation, and I noted that, by the same formula, the Palestinians had already suffered the equivalent of 285 9/11s. As I also noted, “if the number of deaths in Gaza were to be scaled up to reflect the US population, what Gaza has suffered in two weeks of bombing is the equivalent of bombing raids on the US mainland that resulted in a staggering 850,000 deaths.”

After 800 days, the scale of Israel’s genocide is now almost beyond comprehension — the equivalent of 3,500 9/11s, as, at the barest minimum, Israel has killed over 70,000 people in Gaza over the last 800 days, most of whom were civilians.

And to update my other analogy, if the number of deaths in Gaza were to be scaled up now to reflect a proportionate death toll in the US, it would mean that ten million Americans would have been killed.

If these figures, which also, without any doubt, involve a massive undercount of the true death toll, are not enough to provide confirmation that an extraordinary evil is still underway in Gaza, undertaken by the State of Israel, and still with the support of most of the west, then I think your heart may be dead.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which ran from 2012 to 2023), 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”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

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. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.

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