As Israel seeks to erase Palestinians from existence, their mere survival has become a form of resistance. Since October 7th of last year, Israel has killed at least 31,923 Palestinians,[i] 29 times the number of people that Hamas has killed. An additional 74,096 Palestinians have been wounded. Nearly half of those killed were children[ii], making the total number of children killed by Israel 388 times greater than the number of children killed by Israel’s supposed sole target, Hamas, (36 total).
One in four Gazans are starving, [iii] and 90 percent regularly go without food for days at a time.[iv] Sixty percent of all homes and half of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed.[v] 1.2 million people are without shelter, and more than 85 percent of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced.
Most hospitals in Gaza that haven’t been destroyed by Israeli bombs are no longer functional due to Israel’s evacuations and blockade of fuel, electricity, water, and food.[vi] Dr. Ashraf Al-Qidra, of the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported last month that Israeli forces have murdered 340 medical staff since October 7, arrested 99 others, and destroyed 123 ambulances.
Israeli politicians and military brass attempt to justify their bombing of medical infrastructure and personnel by inventing increasingly flimsy and obviously specious connections to Hamas, claiming, for example, Hamas has “tunnel networks” underneath Gazan hospitals. Were this even true, such tunnels would be unaffected by Israeli bombs. Bomb shelters are built underground for a reason. Further, it is truly tragic when it needs saying that bombing hospitals under any circumstances is unjustified. These actions are quite clearly motivated by a desire to exterminate Palestinians and inflict as much physical and psychological suffering as possible. Their genocidal intentions are overt in their rhetoric and propaganda. In fact, Law for Palestine, a human rights and legal advocacy organization, has documented “at least 500 instances of Israeli lawmakers, officials, and officers inciting genocide.”[vii]
An American doctor who volunteered in Gazan hospitals reported on February 16th, “On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head.”[viii] This is not by accident. This is not isolated. This is a systematic genocide perpetrated by a profoundly sick military and political establishment.
In an effort to stop Israel’s onslaught, South Africa brought Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges of genocide. In their argument, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, a lawyer for South Africa quoted Israeli PM Netanyahu’s invocation of the biblical tale of the destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, which Israeli soldiers took quite literally. Netanyahu told them:
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our holy Bible. And we do remember.”
The Book of Samuel he referred to describes God commanding Israel to “attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”[ix] This parallel was made in an attempt to justify the same annihilation in Gaza. Just weeks after Netanyahu’s statement, Israeli soldiers were recorded in Gaza dancing and chanting, “May their village burn, may Gaza be erased,” and “We know our motto: there are no uninvolved civilians,” and “to wipe off the seed of Amalek.”[x]
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, another lawyer representing South Africa, cited figures from Save the Children, stating everyday “10 Palestinian children will have one or more limbs amputated, often without anesthesia; more mass graves will be dug, cemeteries bombed, and bodies exhumed. People will be bombed in places they have been told to evacuate to; whole families will be obliterated.” For the first time in history, we are able to witness an ongoing genocide livestreamed from our phones and computers, and while most of the world supports a ceasefire, the killing continues because wealthy and powerful parasites want it to continue.
The ICJ found on January 26th that it’s “plausible” that Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza and ordered Israel to take all measures to avoid genocide but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire. The Biden administration was also taken to court for its military support of Israel’s genocide. 77 legal and civil society groups from around the world backed the lawsuit in a briefing to the court. But while the judge expressed sympathy towards Palestinians, he told the plaintiffs he did not have the jurisdiction to rule on foreign policy.
41 per cent of the Gaza Strip has been asked to evacuate.[xi] Israel has repeatedly told Palestinians to evacuate to “safe areas,” such as Rafah, and then proceeded to bomb them. Israel has pushed Palestinians from North Gaza all the way to the southernmost city in Gaza where they have yet again been told to evacuate, leaving them nowhere to go.
Rafah borders only Egypt, which is clandestinely building a wall to prevent a mass exodus of refugees,[xii] making the state complicit in this genocide. Human smugglers in Egypt are asking for $10,000 per person to bring them across the border but very few have the means to pay. Rafah’s population is normally 280,000 but has swollen to 1.3 million due to the influx of internally displaced Palestinians seeking safety.
Rafah on October 24 2023
Rafah on January 14th 2024
Israel (right) What is left of Gaza (left) on January 30th 2024
The US government has repeatedly vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire and a release of hostages once on December 8th and again on the 12th. One the same day of the first veto, the Biden administration asked Congress to approve the sale of 45,000 tank shells worth $500 million to Israel to use on Gaza.[xiii]
At least 152 relief workers from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East have been killed since October 7th. As the agency panics to find resources for Gazans under siege and survives themselves, the US cut its funding completely. Meanwhile, the Biden administration attempted to pass a $118 billion bill, that would have provided billions more for Israel’s military and $20.23 billion to increase racist US immigration restrictions and enforcement.
In a desperate attempt to combat the growing awareness of Israel’s war crimes, the US government is doing everything it can control the narrative and misrepresent anti-Zionists and Pro-Palestinian activists as “antisemites.” House Resolution 894 is an example, which “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.”
These attacks on free speech have affected Ivy League Universities where some students are taking a stand against Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing often with great personal costs. On December 5th, US representative, Virginia Foxx, of North Carolina ironically led a Mccarthyist inquisition of Ivy League presidents about discrimination on campuses. The focus was entirely on antisemitism, which Foxx aimed to define as any speech in favor Palestinian rights, and no mention was made of the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate that has resulted in far more violence. Several of the university presidents who were questioned have since been forced to resigned.
The strategy to misdirect and incite “antisemitism” when criticized in an attempt to conflate the Jewish identity with their genocidal settler colonial project to take Palestine has been effectively used by Israeli politicians for years. But the veil for many people is beginning to be lifted.
It is evident in the disregard Zionists and the Israeli state show for all lives, including Jewish ones, that Zionists support Zionism not because they care about Jews but because they want land and power, and they don’t care who they have to kill to get it. This was made particularly apparent on October 7th, the day Hamas attacked Israel. In Kibbutz Be’eri, for example, Israeli Brigadier General, Barak Hiram, told Israeli forces to shoot indiscriminately and without warning into an Israeli home with hostages inside, killing several Israelis, including Liel Hatsroni, a 12-year-old girl, who they claimed was killed by Palestinians. Lieutenant Colonel, Salman Habaka, testified that General Barak Hiram commanded him to fire a tank shell into the house with Israeli civilians inside.
On the day of the attack, American-built Apache helicopters sold to Israel fired indiscriminately on Palestinian fighters and Israeli civilians alike. Nof Erez, an Israeli air force colonel, called Israel’s response to the October 7th attack, a “mass Hannibal,” claiming that the state preferred to kill their own people than let Hamas take them hostage to use them for political leverage.[xiv] Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, reported, the Israeli military admitted to killing their own people on October 7th but claimed it would not be “morally sound” to investigate their deaths.[xv] Further, since October 7th Israel has bombed Gaza indiscriminately without regard to the locations of Israeli hostages in Gaza, killing many of them. Israeli hostages with white flags who had escaped their captors have even been shot by Israeli forces. All of this begs the question why Hamas still holds onto Israeli hostages when Israel has made it abundantly clear in their actions, they do not care about them. Hamas has successfully negotiated the exchange of some humanitarian supplies for a few hostages, but this was a mere band aid for the devastating Israeli reaction they invoked by taking the hostages in the first place.
Like Zionists Hitler made it clear he did not care about his own people either when at the end of WWII knowing he was defeated, ordered the destruction of Germany. Zionism and Nazism are both extreme forms of colonialism. Their aim is control, land, and power. It matters not which ethnic group or religion they claim is superior. Their leaders throw their own under the bus when they feel it is necessary in their quest for more of the same.
Calling opponents of Zionism antisemites is akin to calling opponents of Nazism “anti-white”. Nazism and Zionism are both ideologies rooted in supremacy of one ethnicity and religion. But opponents of these ideologies do not hate the ethnic group and religion they claim to represent. Millions of Jews oppose Zionism, and many supporters of Zionism are outright antisemites. For some simple Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate is disingenuously masqueraded as politically expedient “support for Jewish people”.
Accusing Palestinians themselves of antisemitism for resisting occupation is akin to Nazi Germany claiming the Polish hated Germans because they resisted invasion and genocide. Furthermore, Israel’s tactics and rhetoric are comparable in many ways to those used by Nazi Germany. Nazis referred to Jews as “rats” and “Untermensch” (subhuman) just as Israeli politicians refer to Palestinians as “human animals,” and Israel’s apartheid “justice” system does to Arabs and Muslims what Nazis did to Jews.
Coverage of Israel’s genocide by mainstream news outlets like MSNBC, CNN, and Fox has reinforced this misdirection about antisemitism. They reframe the genocide as a “war” that they attempt to justify. All of them are furthering the Israeli / US narrative that is nearly every other country recognize is not reality. The blood of dead children is on the hands of these news outlets that dehumanize Palestinians and sweep Israeli terrorism under the rug justifying their most barbaric acts.
Even when mainstream news outlets report deaths in Gaza, they frequently leave out who is responsible. For example, BBC reported a 6-year-old Gazan girl, Hind Rajab was “found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”. The headline misleads readers into believing that she was missing when, in fact, she was murdered by the IDF, as were the Palestine Red Cross medics who attempted to save her. This tactic is reminiscent of news outlets reporting murders by police as “officer involved shootings” instead of murders, thereby obscuring the identities of the guilty parties in the same way.
This constant stream of pro-Israeli propaganda that dehumanizes Palestinians broadcast from the US is responsible for real world violence. As just one example on November 25th of last year, Palestinian American students, Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ali Ahmad were all shot unprovoked walking to Hisham’s grandmother’s house for dinner. As long as millions of Palestinians are portrayed as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers on major US news outlets, hate crimes such as these are inevitable.
It’s no secret that states give news outlets access to information and allow them interviews when these platforms implicitly agree to further the state’s official narrative. This is what makes their business successful. If they counter the state’s narrative, they risk losing access to that information, thereby risking a loss in viewership and profit, which is their bottom line. The owners of billion-dollar news outlets share the same aims as states to increase their wealth and power, which is why they collude with states. This is why they will never tell the truth and can never be reformed.
If these major corporate news outlets were forced to shut down, autonomous collective journals and citizen journalism could rise in their place. More people would be informed about the reality of not just Israel’s occupation but of ongoing colonialism and imperialism more broadly, and the rest of the world’s most powerful institutions would either be next, or they would at the very least be forced to radically change. Propaganda produced by the rich and powerful is the engine that drives this nightmare. Stronger resistance against those in power, as well as a decline in the number of people willing to work for them, is the only hope for change. Educated veterans and soldiers such as U.S. Air Force airman, Aaron Bushnell, who immolated himself to protest Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, must serve as a wake up call for those who are enlisted in militaries that aid this genocide and others. Bushnell wrote before his death, “I have been complicit in the violent domination of the world and I will never get the blood off my hands.” But it is never to late to change course and be on the right side of history.
Citations:
[i] Israel’s war on Gaza live: Israel ‘negative’ on Hamas truce proposal | Israel War on Gaza News | Al Jazeera
[ii]Gaza media office says 14,000 Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks since Oct. 7 (aa.com.tr) and https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2024/israel-war-on-gaza-10000-children-killed/
[iii] Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel | Flash Update #73 [EN/AR/HE] – occupied Palestinian territory | ReliefWeb
[iv] 77 Groups Worldwide Back Genocide Lawsuit Against Biden in U.S. Court (theintercept.com)
[v] Israel-Hamas war: Analysis shows destruction along Gaza Strip’s border with Israel | AP News
[vi] https://theintercept.com/2024/01/10/biden-israel-genocide-lawsuit/
[vii] Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated – occupied Palestinian territory | ReliefWeb
[viii] Opinion: I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. I saw annihilation, not war – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
[ix] The U.S. Is the Unnamed Co-Conspirator in Genocide Case Against Israel (theintercept.com)
[x] 77 Groups Worldwide Back Genocide Lawsuit Against Biden in U.S. Court (theintercept.com)
[xi] https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-107-enarhe
[xii] “Where Can We Go?”: Terror, Panic Set In as Israel Readies to Invade Rafah (theintercept.com)
[xiii] Exclusive: Biden administration presses Congress to approve tank shells for Israel’s war in Gaza -sources | Reuters
[xiv] Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 October | The Electronic Intifada
[xv] Israeli general killed Israelis on 7 October then lied about it | The Electronic Intifada
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