900 Days of Genocide in Gaza
24.3.26
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The ever-growing shadow of depravity engulfing the world has grown so huge in recent weeks — since the unprovoked and illegal war launched by the US and Israel on Iran, and, simultaneously, Israel’s renewed assaults on Lebanon, and an increase in its violence in the occupied West Bank — that it’s easy to overlook the fact that the original sin that led to this situation — Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip — began 900 days ago today.
It’s also easy to overlook the fact that today also marks the first anniversary of Israel’s targeted assassination in Gaza of Hossam Shabat, the fearless 23-year old Palestinian journalist whose smile, and whose relentless energetic enthusiasm for recording Israel’s crimes, lit up phones and social media reports and news broadcasts around the world.
As he said in his final message to the world, written in anticipation that he would be killed, “If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old — a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents — anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side. By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest — something I haven’t known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people. I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”
These two anniversaries are bound to each other through the debasement of all notions of decency, and of any redeeming qualities within humanity itself, by the State of Israel over the last 900 days.
In response to a single day of murderous violence by militants who broke out of the “open-air prison” of Gaza — maintained as such by Israel since 2007 — Israel eviscerated all notions of restraint or proportionality in wartime by embarking on a sustained military assault on Gaza that was of such ferocity, and was so sweeping and indiscriminate, that almost the whole of Gaza has been destroyed, and at least 150,000 people have been killed in direct attacks, or indirectly, through the destruction of healthcare services and critical infrastructure, with the probability that even this almost unthinkable number is an undercount. [see note at end].
Israel’s relentless and barbaric depravity — uninterrupted between October 2023 and the start of a ceasefire deal in January 2025 (except for a six-day pause in November 2023) and again from March 2025 to October 2025, when another ceasefire was declared — was such that it’s difficult to even remember a fraction of the horrors visited on the Palestinian people.
Here, however, is a partial list: the sustained aerial attacks on every neighbourhood, from the north to the south, from October 2023 to May 2024, when apartment block after apartment block was destroyed, and, every day, photos and videos of slaughtered children, women and men, nearly all civilians, provided live-streamed evidence of a genocide, mostly on social media; the siege on all supplies of food, water, fuel and medical supplies, on the basis that the people of Gaza were “human animals”; the sustained war on Gaza’s hospitals, which were bombed and shut down, besieged and invaded, with summary executions taking place and victims buried in mass graves; the snipers and the endlessly buzzing armed quadcopter drones picking off targets, mostly children, shot in the head or the chest; the ground invasion, which led to the rounding-up of men and boys, stripped to their underwear and mostly “disappeared” into Israel’s brutal prisons for Palestinians, where rape and persistent violence are widespread, and where at least a hundred prisoners have been killed; the “genocide within a genocide” of “the Generals’ Plan”, from October 2024 to January 2025, when the whole of the north was besieged, and its remaining 400,000 residents were told to evacuate, or be regarded as “enemy combatants” who could be summarily executed; the resumption of wholesale slaughter after Israel broke the terms of the ceasefire deal after six weeks in March 2025; the renewed siege on supplies, when, for six weeks, no humanitarian aid was allowed to enter Gaza at all; the death traps established by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint US-Israeli operation in which desperate, starving civilians were shot at for sport; and the widespread Israeli-engineered famine that gripped Gaza in the summer of 2025.
Alongside these persistent atrocities are the stories of those killed: entire extended families wiped out; orphans almost beyond number; the largest number of child amputees in human history; the murder of Hind Rajab, of Refaat Alareer, of over 1,700 doctors and healthcare workers, and of world-renowned surgeons like Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, raped to death in a prison; and the systematic targeting and murder of journalists and media workers, with Al Jazeera reporting last August that over 270 had been killed, including, of course, Hossam Shabat, who lives on in the memories of so many of us, and his equally brave colleague Anas Al-Sharif, who was targeted and murdered last August. Both men, and a handful of colleagues, had assiduously covered the “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza from October 2024 until the ceasefire in January 2025, and without them almost nothing about this grotesque aspect of the genocide would have been known.
And in the cases of the journalists, and the doctors and medical workers, Israel compounded its war crimes by relentlessly lying, inventing fake associations with Hamas in an effort to justify their unjustifiable murders, even though, as has been evident since October 7, the official Israeli position, often stated openly, is that everyone in Gaza is “guilty” by association, and they should all be killed, and even though, on occasion, senior officials, like the repulsive far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich, have openly bragged that Israel has been deliberately targeting and killing as many civilian officials as possible, connected to the Hamas government, but not engaged in any kind of military activity.
The “slower” genocide since October 10, 2025
Although a ceasefire began on October 10 last year, the genocide has not stopped, but has, instead, merely slowed down. Although the relentless aerial bombing has been brought to an end, which was generally responsible for an average of a hundred violent deaths a day throughout most of the first two years of the genocide, 673 people have been killed over the last five months in almost-daily betrayals of the terms of the ceasefire deal.
Just as significantly, Israel continues to occupy 60% of the Gaza Strip, behind a heavily-militarized “Yellow Line”, where it continues to demolish every remaining building still standing, while killing anyone who approaches.
The remaining Palestinian population is hemmed into the remaining 40% of land, where, crucially, they are still subjected to an ongoing siege of essential supplies, with medical supplies, in particular, severely restricted by Israel to ensure that secondary deaths continue to rise.
In addition, no mobile homes have been allowed in to replace the makeshift and inadequate tents in which most people are forced to live, and no clearance or reconstruction equipment has been allowed in to begin to clear the almost incomprehensible amount of debris from destroyed buildings, to remove the mountains of poisonous waste that have built up across the territory, to fix destroyed water and sewage supplies, or to rebuild homes or any other aspects of Gaza’s shattered infrastructure.
In its latest situation report, on March 19, OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported that, of the more than 16,900 pallets of humanitarian aid that were collected from the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Israel (the only aid route open) between March 6 and 16, “73 per cent were food supplies, followed by WASH [water, hygiene and sanitation] items (15 per cent), shelter (8 per cent), nutrition (3 per cent) and health assistance (1 per cent).”
Yes, you read that correctly. Just one percent of the humanitarian aid deliveries allowed into Gaza last week consisted of medical supplies, even though multiple health crises urgently need addressing.
As the situation report noted, “Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs remain acute. As of 16 March 2026, approximately 572,000 women and girls of reproductive age required SRH services across Gaza, including an estimated 50,000 pregnant women. Health partners estimate 130 to 160 births occur daily under extremely constrained conditions.”
The report also noted that, “Since June 2025, 158 cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome – a rare autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the nerves, usually triggered by a viral or bacterial infection – have been identified across the Strip, 87 of which require specialized rehabilitation services. Currently, 63 patients are receiving rehabilitation support, while 24 remain on waiting lists due to insufficient capacity.”
In total, “more than 18,500 patients, including approximately 3,800 children, still require urgent medical evacuation for life‑saving treatment unavailable in Gaza”, but, although Israel reluctantly reopened the Rafah Crossing with Egypt on February 2, allowing some urgently ill patients to leave for treatment (although not in the numbers promised), the crossing was shut again after the US and Israel launched their illegal and unprovoked war on Iran on February 28, and only reopened again on March 19, when just nine severely ill Palestinians were allowed to leave, in what Reuters described as “an effort to safeguard the Gaza ceasefire”, following discussions between envoys from Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” and Hamas officials in Cairo.
As for progress towards an enduring peace, that is in a state of limbo. Just before this latest unprovoked war began, Trump presided over the first meeting of the “Board of Peace” that he established when he took credit for the ceasefire deal that came into effect in October, when a parade of vampiric vulture investors gathered in Washington, D.C. to salivate over the illusory prospect of a “New Gaza” of beach resorts and tech hubs rising up on the corpses of murdered Palestinians, in an expansion of the ghoulish presentation made by Trump’s son-in law, Jared Kushner, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland in January.
While the Gaza “regeneration” plans are morally repugnant — the equivalent of building a luxury resort at Auschwitz — the main obstacle to their implementation was, until three weeks ago, the impossibility of establishing the peace and security necessary for billions of dollars of inward investment while Hamas and other Palestinian factions were, understandably, refusing to hand over all their weapons, making themselves unacceptably vulnerable to Israel’s endless hunger for their extermination.
Now, however, the plans are in disarray not because of Hamas, but because of the actions of Israel and the US, igniting a conflagration that threatens to engulf the whole of the Middle East.
Expanding the Gaza template of genocidal extermination to Lebanon
While we must all keep our eyes on Gaza, we must also constantly reiterate how every aspect of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, and the increasing violence in the West Bank spring from the same poisonous genocidal well that Israel dug for itself in Gaza — a well of persistent dehumanization, of targeted assassinations, and of relentless attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in which Israel no longer even pretends to conjure up fake excuses involving military necessity.
While the US has been Israel’s primary backer throughout the 900 days of its genocide in Gaza, the war on Iran marks its first foray into openly behaving as Israel does — engaging in extermination for its own sake, not for any coherent strategic purpose.
For Israel, the mere existence of the “other” — on its borders, or in the wider Middle East — is an anathema to the security that it claims to constantly crave, but which is an illusion. Peace and security can only come through negotiation and ceding ground — literally in the case of the Palestinians’ internationally recognized claims to the whole of the Occupied Palestinian Territory of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, stolen from them in 1967.
Instead, however, while Israel has noticeably stepped up its policies of annexation in the West Bank, through increasing settler violence coordinated with government forces, designed to take over the whole of the West Bank at an ever-increasing pace, in Lebanon it is directly replicating the policies of mass extermination that it undertook in Gaza, issuing evacuation orders for over a million people, and announcing its intention to destroy the whole of southern Lebanon, and to permanently occupy it militarily, as it also bombs Beirut, targets hospitals, and threatens other “targets” in the north. As of March 18, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, at least 1,029 people have been killed, including 118 children and 40 medical workers.
Ironically, it should be noted that, although Israel assassinated key Hezbollah leaders last year, when it also bombed and invaded Lebanon, and initiated the horrific “pager attacks” that killed 42 people and injured up to 4,000 others, including children, Hezbollah has not been destroyed, because, as with resistance in Gaza, it is primarily an idea — of people resisting murderous settler-colonialism — which, almost by definition, cannot be killed except through the complete extermination of an entire population. And even then, I have to say, the ghosts of resistance would almost certainly migrate and take root in others still alive elsewhere.
On March 6, Steve Cutts, the CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), said of the situation in Lebanon that what we are witnessing is “the unmistakable extension of the Israeli military playbook used in Gaza – collective punishment, forced displacement, and the deliberate terrorizing of civilian populations.”
And yesterday, Human Rights Watch issued a news release, “Israeli Officials Signal Stepped-Up Atrocities in Lebanon”, in which they spelled out that “forcible displacement, wanton destruction and attacks deliberately targeting civilians are war crimes”, and warning that “countries that continue to provide Israel with arms and military aid risk complicity in the Israeli government’s serious violations in Lebanon.”
Human Rights Watch also highlighted the horrific comments made by Israel’s defense Minister, Israel Katz, noting how, on March 22, he issued a statement announcing that he and Benjamin Netanyahu had “ordered the acceleration of the demolition of Lebanese houses in the border villages in order to thwart threats to Israeli communities — in accordance with the Beit Hanoun and Rafah models in Gaza”, both of which involved complete annihilation.
Human Rights Watch also noted that, on March 16, Katz said that “hundreds of thousands of Shiite residents of southern Lebanon will not return to their homes south of the Litani area until the safety of Israel’s northern residents is guaranteed”, also noting that “displacement orders issued by the Israeli military to residents of the southern suburbs of Beirut between March 11 and 15 further stated that the Israeli military ‘will not hesitate to target anyone who is present near Hezbollah members, facilities, or means of combat.’”
As with Gaza, the distinction between combatants and civilians is being flagrantly discarded, as though proportionality in warfare means nothing, so long as it is undertaken by the State of Israel.
The extraordinary hubris of attacking Iran
In Iran, in a war of destruction that Netanyahu has personally declared to have been a dream of his for 40 years, the same template has also been followed — of high-level assassinations, indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, on schools and hospitals (as with Gaza, always portrayed as “nests of terror” where combatants hide, using children and doctors as “human shields”), and indiscriminate attacks on industrial targets.
Donald Trump is surrounded by pro-Israeli sycophants, who share the mad Zionists’ enthusiasm for permanent apocalyptic destruction in the Middle East as the only “solution” to the perceived “problem” of people who won’t die willingly, or, at the very least, cower in medieval squalor in tent cities, as in Gaza, as punishment for their refusal to submit to total domination, and the relinquishing of all notions of all resistance. However, Trump himself is, I’d suggest, an unwilling participant in genocide repackaged as religious fervor.
Instead, for Trump, caught between lifelong narcissism and ever-increasing dementia, other people don’t really exist, and while he appears to enjoy annihilation, he isn’t personally invested in it the way that the fanatical Zionists are, who, emboldened by 78 years of indulgence — and, particularly, indulged spectacularly by the west over the last 900 days — have descended into unprecedented depravity that seeks the death of their “enemies” at every moment.
Trump was talked into the war on Iran via the promise that the regime would be decapitated and the Iranian people would rise up, allowing him, yet again, to falsely claim that he had secured a victory that had eluded all the inadequates who preceded him, confirming him as the greatest human being who ever lived.
Unfortunately, for befuddled Donald, the war has not gone according to plan. Iran, fully prepared for renewed attacks after the “12-Day War” last June, weathers assassinations, and has proven itself more than capable of striking back at Israel, and at US targets across the region, seeking to expose to the US’s Gulf allies that the protection that they thought they were buying through their indulgence of the US has evaporated on contact with reality, as the US demonstrates that it serves only Israel.
Most importantly, Iran’s resistance, particularly through the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has paralyzed the essential flow of fossil fuels on which the entire global economy depends, with knock-on effects on every aspect of civilization and survival in the third decade of the 21st century — from fertilizers to microchips, promising higher energy prices for consumers, food shortages, and the possible collapse of the entire energy-hungry data center-driven AI revolution — although the latter, of course, would be a boon for humanity as a whole.
Unlike his fanatical friends and colleagues in the US and Israel, who can shout whatever genocidal filth they want from the sidelines, Trump still relies on the American people to support him, and as their opposition grows — to increased living costs, and to the prospect of a ground invasion that will lead to massacres of US soldiers, slain for no discernible reason except to defend Israel’s permanent genocidal derangement — it may well be that he is looking for an off-ramp, a way to declare the victory he craves, without being wiped out in the midterm elections, having created the worst economic crisis in all our lives.
Time is running out for Trump to pull the plug on his foolish complicity in Israel’s profound existential sickness, and in the meantime, while every sensible fiber of my being wants this inferno to be extinguished, a part of me is, I admit, enjoying the fact that, for the first time, Israel is finally feeling a fraction of the impact of what, for 900 days, it has inflicted on the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, as Iranian weapons keep breaking though its defense systems, and its citizens are obliged to cower in shelters at all times of the day and night.
With increasing opposition within Israel to this karmic revenge, because this pampered, genocidal, European settler-colonial state has become accustomed to wallowing in the safety and sense of entitlement that an artificially-maintained state of domination through permanent oppression brings, it’s almost worthwhile hoping that this entire hubristic endeavor continues until Israel’s collapse, but that would mean that the extermination continues for the Palestinians, the Lebanese and the Iranian people, none of whom deserve what is happening to them.
Without the demise of Israel, however, it is impossible to see how there can ever be peace again — not only in the Middle East, but throughout the whole world, almost all of which has been horribly contaminated by the extraordinary genocidal mania of an entire nation that lives only to kill.
NOTE: The estimate of 150,000 dead is my extrapolation from figures reported by Al Jazeera on February 16, and produced by the Gaza Mortality Survey (GMS), a population-representative household study published in The Lancet Global Health. With the results interpreted in conjunction with analysis by medical researchers for scientific papers and medical journals, the report assessed that at least 75,200 violent deaths took place between October 7, 2023 and January 5, 2025 (including 22,800 children and 16,600 women), a figure that was 34.7 percent higher than the 49,090 “violent deaths” reported by Gaza’s Ministry of Health for the same period.
The report also assessed that there had been what Al Jazeera described as “16,300 ‘non-violent deaths’, including 8,540 ‘excess’ deaths caused directly by the deterioration of living conditions and the blockade-induced collapse of the medical sector.”
To reach my figure of 150,000, consisting of around 110,000 violent deaths, and around 40,000 non-violent deaths, I scaled up these figures based on the latest assessments by Gaza’s Ministry of Health — that, as of February 16, 72,063 people have been killed. In all reporting, the proportion of children, women and seniors killed has been remarkably consistent, at around 56%.
As I have also previously reported, however, even these figures may be a serious undercount. See my articles, Horror Beyond Comprehension: Gaza Death Toll Realistically Assessed At 186,000, But Could Be As High As 600,000 and Gaza Horror: IDF Admits 83% of Those Killed Were Civilians, But the True Total May Be 95%.
* * * * *
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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38 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Today marks 900 days since Israel began its genocide in the Gaza Strip, a sustained assault of such naked and self-glorifying depravity, shamefully supported by most of the west, that it has left billions of us struggling to cope with what the very notion of our humanity means.
It also marks the first anniversary of Israel’s targeted assassination in Gaza of Hossam Shabat, the fearless 23-year old Palestinian journalist — one of over 270 journalists murdered by Israel — whose smile, and whose relentless energetic enthusiasm for recording Israel’s crimes lit up phones and social media reports and news broadcasts around the world.
To mark these grim anniversaries, I cycle though Israel’s atrocities, almost unbroken for two years, with the exception of a six-week ceasefire in January and February last year, noting how every red line regarding appropriate conduct in war has been eviscerated, and how Israel’s crimes are so numerous that it’s hard to even remember them all.
I also update the story of Gaza since a supposedly permanent ceasefire was declared on October 10 last year. This brought to an end Israel’s relentless carpet-bombing, but in every other respect the genocide has continued, albeit more slowly. Crucially, humanitarian aid — and especially medical supplies — are still severely restricted, and Israel has retained complete control of 60% of the Gaza Strip, hemming the surviving Palestinian population into the remaining 40%, where they largely live in subsistence-level squalor.
As I stated, “no mobile homes have been allowed in to replace the makeshift and inadequate tents in which most people are forced to live, and no clearance or reconstruction equipment has been allowed in to begin to clear the almost incomprehensible amount of debris from destroyed buildings, to remove the mountains of poisonous waste that have built up across the territory, to fix destroyed water and sewage supplies, or to rebuild homes or any other aspects of Gaza’s shattered infrastructure.”
Crucially, I note how the template of Gaza’s extermination — the relentless killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure — has now expanded to Iran, since the US-Israeli “war” began three weeks ago, while Israel also seeks to replicate the Gaza model in Lebanon, and has also stepped up its violence in the West Bank.
Where we go from here is still unknown. While Israel has very clearly descended into a psychotic mania that seeks the death of their “enemies” at every moment, I suggest that Trump’s supreme folly was allowing himself to be talked into joining Netanyahu in his deranged 40-year dream of destroying Iran, and wonder if there can be an “off-ramp” before he is held responsible for what, through the massive disruption to oil and gas supplies, is looking like a looming global economic crisis on an unprecedented scale.
...on March 24th, 2026 at 5:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Please join me on Substack to get links to all my work in your inbox. Free or paid subscriptions are available, although the latter ($8/month or $2/week) are absolutely essential for a reader-funded writer like myself, and if you can help out at all it will be very greatly appreciated.
Here’s my new post, promoting my article above: https://andyworthington.substack.com/p/900-days-of-genocide-in-gaza
...on March 24th, 2026 at 6:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anna Giddings wrote:
And no one will face justice at a war crimes tribunal or pay for this. 900 days! Wow it’s shameful.
...on March 24th, 2026 at 6:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Beyond imagining, Anna. Israel has broken the world, and has come perilously close to destroying all notions of humanity as anything other than ravening beasts.
...on March 24th, 2026 at 6:16 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I continue to wonder, Anna, why it is taking the International Court of Justice so long to officially condemn Israel for its genocide, after the damning advisory opinion they issued in January 2024, followed by two updates later that year: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2024/01/26/international-court-of-justice-israel-must-cease-all-activities-that-may-constitute-genocide-punish-genocidal-officials-and-allow-humanitarian-aid-into-gaza/
A Guardian article last year cited experts noting that the ICJ was being “really cautious because of the political climate”, and also that it was “known for its slow deliberation”, but it’s disappointing, to put it mildly, that the court hasn’t recognized the negative impact on its credibility of failing to do anything substantial to stop a genocide while it’s actually happening: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jul/27/why-the-icj-is-delaying-a-gaza-genocide-verdict
Then again, I’m sure that judges have watched what happened to Karim Khan and the ICC judges who issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in November 2024 – subjected to punitive sanctions by the US, and, in Khan’s case, fake sexual misconduct allegations. As I noted a few days ago (in a startlingly popular post that, for a change, was presumably promoted by the algorithms here), Khan has been cleared of all wrongdoing by a review panel of three judges, although, as I stated, “Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant are still fugitives from justice, and no effort has been made to arrest them by any of the countries that, unlike the US and Israel, are signatories to the Rome Statute that established the ICC.” https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10165129891908804&set=a.10150687732288804
...on March 24th, 2026 at 6:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anna Giddings wrote:
Thank you Andy and I’ll have a look. It’s so wrong.
I was so glad about Karim Khan but it should never have got that far obviously.
...on March 24th, 2026 at 8:21 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Denise Monaghan wrote:
It has forever darkened our days on earth.
...on March 24th, 2026 at 8:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
You’re right, Denise. A malevolent shadow over us all that should never have been allowed to happen.
...on March 24th, 2026 at 8:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Steve Fryburg wrote:
The statistics don’t lie. This is genocide.
Confirmed deaths: just over 72,000
Estimated true toll (including indirect deaths): well above 80,000 for earlier phases, likely higher now
Children: roughly one‑third of all deaths (~20,000+)
Starvation & indirect mortality: hundreds confirmed dead, with thousands more estimated indirectly
This reflects the most up‑to‑date consensus across Gaza Health Ministry reporting, WHO/UNICEF data, and major international news coverage as of March 2026.
...on March 24th, 2026 at 8:30 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Steve, but it’s even worse, as I report in my article, drawing on research published in February in The Lancet Global Health, which assessed that the Gaza health ministry’s figures for violent deaths were an undercount by nearly 35 percent, and that there were also nearly 25,000 non-violent deaths “caused directly by the deterioration of living conditions and the blockade-induced collapse of the medical sector.” The figures were based on the health ministry’s count up to January 2025, and so, via a similar scaling-up process, I reached the conclusion that, as of now, the death toll is around 150,000, consisting of around 110,000 violent deaths, and around 40,000 non-violent deaths.
There are also other assessments indicating that the death toll could be much higher, as I discussed here: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2025/08/26/gaza-horror-idf-admits-83-of-those-killed-were-civilians-but-the-true-total-may-be-95/
...on March 24th, 2026 at 8:31 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Rick Staggenborg wrote:
Even if the US and Israel got out now, it wouldn’t stop the collapse of the Empire. All the King’s weapons and all the King’s men, won’t put the machine together again.
https://consortiumnews.com/2026/03/23/hedges-report-mangling-the-global-economy/
...on March 25th, 2026 at 12:27 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the link, Rick.
I have to say that there’s a powerful sense of karmic justice about the collapse precipitated by Israel and the US. The extent of the support for Israel and its genocide is, quite simply, morally intolerable, and the US feeding it so relentlessly, under both Biden and Trump, is an unforgivable betrayal of nations’ obligations not to put another nation’s interests above their own. Additionally, of course, Trump’s particular derangement provides another compelling reason why he should precipitate a US collapse. No sensible country would have sidestepped every opportunity to keep him from power after having to endure him for four years previously.
I can’t see any reason for Israel to survive this, and as for the US, any future will need to involve ending the corrupt duopoly of power, ridding the world of Trump, exterminating what remains of both Project 2025 and the neocons, and waking up to a new reality quickly. The same goes for most of the rest of the west too.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 12:29 am
Andy Worthington says...
Doctora Zunzun wrote:
Don’t look away. Read. Stay with your humanity. Protect the integrity of your soul.
https://ifamericansknew.org
https://www.btselem.org
...on March 25th, 2026 at 12:42 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Doctora Zunzun. Sound advice. What Israel in particular has been doing, and, unforgivably, with the full support of the US and most of the rest of the west, is the most soul-curdling assault on our shared humanity that most of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes. Those values demand our continued and relentless non-compliance, and the bravery to stand for a better future.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 12:43 am
Andy Worthington says...
Harriet Heywood wrote:
Life will never look the same for anyone with a soul. We will all pay for the Banality of Evil as Hannah Arendt describes it.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 12:50 am
Andy Worthington says...
Well said, Harriet. Some thoughts on Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil here: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/hannah-arendts-lessons-for-our-times-the-banality-of-evil-totalitarianism-and-statelessness/
She was, of course, talking about Eichmann at his trial in 1961, but it’s fascinating to imagine what Israel’s leaders, and the western leaders supporting them, would say in their defence if they were ever to be put on trial, although one thing is certain – stripped bare of a platform, their monstrous depravity would be horribly exposed, however much they sought to justify their words and actions.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 12:50 am
Andy Worthington says...
Many thanks to Zanzibar9CH, a subscriber on Substack, who called the article “brilliant and necessary”, and translated it into French, posting it on his Substack page here:
https://zanzibar.substack.com/p/gaza-900-jours-de-genocide
...on March 25th, 2026 at 10:01 am
Andy Worthington says...
John Mason wrote:
The western world leaders are greedy and soulless, and most are complicit.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 10:17 am
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, John. Yes, that’s certainly the case, and while it’s rare for any of us to be led by people with principles, it’s been noticeable to me, throughout the profound darkness of the last two and a half years, quite how spectacularly corrupt and soulless almost all of them have been.
With a few exceptions (in Spain, most noticeably, but also in a few other European countries), any sense even of nuance, or of proportionality in wartime, has been completely expunged from public life, and the mainstream media have been just as complicit, persistently refusing to provide a platform of any kind for experts on the history of Israel and Palestine, or even experts on military history, who would have provided a powerful counterpoint to the persistent pro-Israeli propaganda.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 10:18 am
Andy Worthington says...
Anita Tuesley wrote:
Every country whose media is selectively reporting on this to show “our ally” Israel as justified in its actions is complicit. For example, where is the reporting and investigation on the allegation of torture of a toddler in front of its father – reported widely in Asian media, but not at all in the West?
...on March 25th, 2026 at 4:13 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, the complicity of the western mainstream media is absolutely unforgivable, Anita. It’s like living under occupation.
As for burning a toddler with cigarettes and piercing him with a metal spike in an attempt to secure a confession from his father, I can’t find an analogous example of depravity, even in the tortured depths of the “war on terror.”
I recall that, when the US and Pakistan were trying to locate Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, they seized two of his children, aged 6 and 8, beforehand, to try to exert pressure on them to give up their fathers’ whereabouts. A witness said that, while in Pakistani custody, they were “denied food and water” and “were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding”, but that’s not the same as burning them with cigarettes or inserting a spike into them.
Later, in US custody, after KSM had been captured, they continued to be questioned, and were regarded as leverage to secure their father’s cooperation, but a US official stated, “We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children … but we need to know as much about their father’s recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care.”
KSM later alleged, at his Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantanamo in 2007, that they had been “arrested for four months” and “they had been abused”, but it seems to me that they were probably treated better than this Palestinian toddler.
https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/ct0607/5.htm
...on March 25th, 2026 at 4:14 pm
Andy Worthington says...
This was the post on X that first alerted me to the torture of the toddler, Anita – from Abdulruhman Israel, a journalist who is only still with us because, along with Abubaker Abed, he managed to secure asylum in Ireland: https://x.com/a_abdulruhman/status/2035695296101941511
...on March 25th, 2026 at 4:18 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yesterday, as I was marking 900 days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, two UN Special Rapporteurs issued an urgent call for the immediate release from Israeli custody of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, after they received credible new information that he has been subjected to “severe torture.”
Everyone who has been paying attention to Israel’s genocide in Gaza over the last 900 days knows who Dr. Abu Safiya is. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, he bravely kept the hospital — the last functioning hospital in the north — open for three months during the “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza that began in October 2024 and that only stopped with the implementation of a ceasefire in January 2025.
Under “the Generals’ Plan”, the whole of northern Gaza was occupied and besieged, in an attempt to kill or to force out the remaining residents — up to 400,000 in number — who had failed to respond to previous evacuation orders, either because they were too ill or too infirm, or because they refused to abandon their homes and obey orders that were blatantly illegal. Israel planned to make the whole of northern Gaza into a sterile militarized “buffer zone”, and declared that anyone who didn’t leave would be regarded as an “enemy combatant” who could be summarily executed.
The horrors of this period of intense attacks on civilians, both in their homes and on the streets, were bravely chronicled by a handful of surviving Palestinian journalists, especially Hossam Shabat and Anas Al-Sharif, although Israel eventually took its revenge, killing them both in targeted assassinations in March and August 2025.
Dr. Abu Safiya, meanwhile, despite the murder of his son, and incessant and diabolically illegal military attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital, held out until December 27, 2024, when he finally surrendered, walking, in his doctor’s coat, towards a waiting Israeli tank in a defining image of bravery in the face of intolerable brutality that will forever be an iconic photo of the Palestinian resistance to genocide.
He then subsequently disappeared into Israel’s horrendous network of torture prisons for Palestinians, where he has been held in intolerable conditions for over 450 days, and where, it seems certain, Israel has been subjecting him to torture to try to get him to confess to their false claims that he was a Hamas military officer, and that the hospital was a front for Hamas’ military actions.
Dr. Abu Safiya is held in Ofer Prison, without charge or trial, as an “unlawful combatant”, under a 2002 law that, as Amnesty International explained in a news release in July 2024, “grants the Israeli military sweeping powers to detain anyone from Gaza that they suspect of engagement in hostilities against Israel or posing a threat to state security for indefinitely renewable periods without having to produce evidence to substantiate the claims.”
At the time, over 1,400 Palestinians were detained as “unlawful combatants”, and, as anyone who is aware of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay will realize, the passing of the Israeli law in 2002 coincided with the Bush administration’s declaration that those held at Guantanamo were “enemy combatants” who could be held indefinitely without charge or trial.
His lawyer was only allowed to visit him for the fist time in February 2025, and, after this visit and subsequent visits, reported that he had been subjected to various forms of torture and abuse, was held in solitary confinement, had lost a significant amount of weight, and had been denied access to medical treatment.
On October 16, 2025, an Israeli court extended his “administrative detention” for a further six months.
In their urgent call for action yesterday, Tlaleng Mofokeng, the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and Ben Saul, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, stated that Israel “must immediately release” Dr. Abu Safiya “and ensure he is granted access to medical examination and treatment.”
The experts stated, “We have received reports that Dr. Abu Safiya has been subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment, and that his health condition remains dire”, adding, “The conditions of his detention appear to be flagrantly arbitrary and manifestly inconsistent with the Mandela Rules, which establish the obligation of states to ensure prisoners have access to healthcare.”
Criticizing his imprisonment under Israel’s unlawful combatant law, “despite his status as a civilian medical practitioner”, the experts also stated that they have “repeatedly stressed” that this legislation “violates human rights and humanitarian law.”
They also stated that Dr. Abu Safiya “has been systematically denied critical medical examination and treatment, and deprived of essential care to such an extent that his life, health, and wellbeing have been gravely endangered”, adding that, despite being “a highly respected Palestinian medical administrator and paediatrician”, he “has suffered an arbitrary deprivation of liberty, violation of his human rights, including the right of every human being to be free from torture and ill treatment, and his right to health is being eroded.”
They called on Israel to “release Dr Abu Safiya and all health care workers” — with Al Jazeera reporting last October that 95 Palestinian doctors and healthcare staff are still held in Israel’s prisons — and to “ensure they have access to appropriate medical care.”
The experts also reminded other states that they “have the power to end his torment, and we call on them to use it”, adding, “It is incumbent upon states with influence on Israel and the international community to use all avenues to ensure prevention, recourse and justice.”
For the UN experts’ statement, see: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/03/un-experts-demand-immediate-release-dr-abu-safiya-after-reports-severe
For Amnesty’s report, see: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/israel-must-end-mass-incommunicado-detention-and-torture-of-palestinians-from-gaza/
And for Al Jazeera’s article, see: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/22/who-are-the-95-palestinian-healthcare-workers-held-captive-by-israel
...on March 25th, 2026 at 4:24 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
It’s so f*cked up all of it where are we as a species?
...on March 25th, 2026 at 5:59 pm
Andy Worthington says...
We’re in the End Times, sadly, Damien, at least when it comes to our leaders. As I’ve discussed before, I think the entire leadership class of the west was fundamentally deranged by two developments in particular: firstly, in 2018-19, by the realization that man-made climate collapse was real and that all their illusions about the greatest times for humanity ever, nurtured though 40 years of neoliberalism that were actually sickening for most people, and for the planet; and secondly, by the premonition of the collapsed neoliberal reality that haunted them through the Covid lockdowns. They then reverted to barbaric archetypes, as human leaders so often do when their reality collapses, embracing all-out war as an alternative to doing anything meaningful to transition to a low-carbon future, portraying Putin as the devil incarnate in February 2022, and then proceeding to do the same with Hamas in October 2023, aided in this latter course of action by their complete takeover by Israel over many years.
https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2024/09/01/if-we-should-live-our-scribes-will-record-2024-as-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-humanity/
The good news is that the majority of people around the world don’t share our leaders’ derangement, but we’re unfortunately unable to predict when or if a tipping point will suddenly arise that will see them all crumble. I hope to live to see it.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Barbara Bendzunas wrote:
They are managing to continue this while invading Lebanon and being bombed by Iran. What will get them under control?
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It’s so hard to know, isn’t it, Barbara, although I think being that overstretched might play a part in their collapse. Domestically, they’re haemorraging talented people, as over 100,000 have left since October 7, and they also have a weary military and an increasingly angry populace betrayed by false promises that their vaunted missile protection systems would protect them. Other factors involve the US, and what it will or won’t do, but no one knows the answer to that particular conundrum, because it’s all dependent on a president who doesn’t even know his own mind.
A report on the exodus here: https://www.trtworld.com/article/734992c13554
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:01 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anita Tuesley wrote, in response to 22, above:
Andy, my little grandson is about the same age. There are fresh wounds on everyone with a heart every day because of Gaza, but this one was so close to home for me and mine.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I know what you mean, Anita. It’s a hard time to be a human being with a functioning heart. Perhaps those with no experience of babies don’t care, but when you’ve ever been a parent or a grandparent or have spent any time at all with babies, it’s so sickeningly skewed to realize that so many people with power, and so many twisted onlookers, don’t care that the babies are our flowers, our future.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I’m pleased to note that there is now an Italian translation of my article, available here: https://comedonchisciotte.wordpress.com/2026/03/25/900-giorni-di-genocidio-a-gaza/
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:24 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote, in response to 25, above:
I hope you’re wrong about the end times Andy. I’ve lived, the young people haven’t, these monsters that are running the world must be ****ed so we have a chance. It’s up to the young now, we must try and give them some hope xx
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I think it’s possible, Damien. I don’t see that this endless culture of death, mostly led by sick old men, is a sustainable model for anything except its own demise.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:33 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Catherine Podojil wrote:
“The 900 Days” is the title of the book by Harrison Salisbury about the siege of Leningrad in WW2. A siege that finally ended, which has not happened for the stunningly resistant people of Palestine. We should all hang our heads in shame at this psychopathic excuse for a national leadership.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:51 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Catherine, and thanks for drawing that analogy with the Siege of Leningrad. I note that Hitler, like the Israelis in Gaza, wanted Leningrad and its people completely destroyed. “In this war for our very existence”, he said, “we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population.” Those very words could have been uttered by any number of senior Israeli officials, especially the hysterical exaggeration of framing the hostilities as a “war for our very existence.”
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:51 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Catherine Podojil wrote:
Andy, between 800,000 and over 1 million Russian civilians died in Leningrad of war weaponry and starvation. Is the psychopath in Israel trying to beat that number? And by psychopathic leadership I mentioned above, I also meant the US.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:52 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I sometimes think their target is six million, Catherine, in a twisted competition with their own trauma.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 6:52 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Erdmute Underwood wrote:
I weep for all the victims, boycott Israel’s suppliers of weapons etc., donate money, but never sure who gets it … I am at the end of my life ,but worried sick about my sons, grandsons etc.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 9:40 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Erdmute, and thank you for your comments. We have been rendered deliberately powerless by our leaders, but they cannot stifle our enduring revulsion at what they have supported and enabled. There will, I think, be a reckoning.
...on March 25th, 2026 at 9:40 pm