THE problem with writing about Gaza is that words can鈥檛 explain what鈥檚 happening in Gaza. Neither can images, even the most gut-wrenching and heartbreaking. Because what needs to be explained is the inexplicable. What needs to be explicated is the silence in the face of horror.
Israel has been brazenly upfront about its plans to subdue Gaza, depopulate it of Palestinians, and seise the Strip for itself. Israel will not change. It hasn鈥檛 deviated from this genocidal course since October 8, 2023.听 For 19 months, every Palestinian has been a target because Israel wants Gaza cleansed of Palestinians. Therefore, everyone can be bombed. Everyone can be starved. Everyone can be denied medical care and the mere essentials of life.
Those who make distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate targets, between Hamas and civilians, between adults and children, themselves become targets. Humanitarians are targets because they insist on seeing Palestinians as humans. And even their deaths, their systematic slaughter, evokes silence from the countries they came to Gaza from, many killed by weapons made and sold by their home nations.听 Anyone who associates with a Palestinian is treated as a Palestinian, as someone to be silenced, one way or another: Banned, gagged, exiled, deported, jailed, killed.
Silence over one atrocity serves to legitimise all those that came before and those that follow. After Israel got away with bombing its first hospital in Gaza, it knew it could get away unscathed with bombing all hospitals and clinics in Gaza. And it did.
It鈥檚 clear, Israel will not yield to public opinion; it can only be constrained by those more powerful than it. By its funders and weapons suppliers. Yet nothing changes. No one intervenes. Not the US, certainly, not the UK, not Germany, not China, not Russia or Saudi Arabia, not Turkey, India, or France. Only silence, a silence that amplifies and isolates the screams of burning children. This collective silence invalidates the West鈥檚 exalted concept of itself, exposing the monstrous hypocrisy beneath the shimmering veneer of human rights laws and fatuous rhetoric about the sanctity of civilian lives.
I鈥檓 not convinced there are any 鈥榡ust wars,鈥� but there are unjust ones. There are wars that traduce every cherished notion of civilised conduct, every rule combatants have been meant to abide by since 1919. And this war, if you can call it a war, has violated all of them: not only killing, but targeting, civilians; blowing up non-military infrastructure; bombing schools, universities, churches and mosques; burning agricultrual fields, slashing down orchards, cementing wells, poisoning and gunning down livestock; killing doctors, nurses and rescue workers; murdering aid workers; using chemical weapons; detaining 1000s with without warrants; inflicting torture and sexual abuse on prisoners; using human shields; practicing perfidy during raids; assassinating diplomats and journalists; shooting children in the head.
The rules of war are set by the winner. What will the new rules look like after Gaza, where what was once forbidden became standard operating procedure?
Biden wanted credit for working toward a ceasefire he never pressed the Israelis to enact. Rafah was flattened on Biden鈥檚 watch, after he publicly said (but didn鈥檛 mean) that an Israeli invasion of the city would cross a red line. Cross one red line, cross them all. Trump wants credit for a temporary ceasefire and the swift resumption of a total war designed to empty Gaza of Palestinians. But the end result for both Biden and Trump was always going to be the same: mass slaughter of civilians, destruction of Gaza鈥檚 liveable spaces, displacement of two million people and eventual Israeli annexation of large swaths of the Strip. In a word: genocide.
Members of the Israeli war cabinet vowed this week that its military will pulverise every building with more than two stories if Hamas, whatever is left of Hamas, doesn鈥檛 surrender. Who are they saying this to? The people who don鈥檛 know that Israel has already pulverised more than 80 percent of the buildings in Gaza? What is the purpose of saying this other than as a kind of unabashed triumphalism, a declaration of impunity to commit the worst of crimes and not only get away with it but have those institutions that outlawed genocide and land theft say nothing about it.
Silence breeds silence.
Israel no longer fears any international institutions: not the UN, not the International Criminal Court, not the International Court of Justice, not NATO, not the Arab League, not BRICS, not Interpol. As Israel itself breaches international laws, knowing there will be no consequences. Netanyahu travels freely, knowing the charges and warrants against him will never be enforced.听 Israel has humiliated the Western powers and has been embraced by many it humiliated for doing so.
In this time of silence, many of the words that are spoken have lost all meaning. In fact, their meaning has been inverted, twisted inside out. Humanitarian zones are tent cities, whose populations of refugees are deprived of water, food, clothing, sanitation, and heating. Humanitarian zones are where you are forced to flee in order to get starved, sickened, become hypothermic or get firebombed as you sleep with your kids in a tent made of garbage bags and rotted cloth. A humanitarian zone is where humanitarians aren鈥檛 allowed to go. A humanitarian zone is where inhuman acts take place in plain view.
Gaza鈥檚 population of two million people, most of them women and children, isn鈥檛 鈥榮tarving.鈥� They鈥檙e being starved. We鈥檙e conditioned to think of famines as natural events, caused by prolonged drought, floods, earthquakes. That鈥檚 not what is happening in Gaza. What鈥檚 happening in Gaza is an unimaginable thing. Except we don鈥檛 have to imagine it, because it鈥檚 taking place before our eyes. The famine in Gaza is completely engineered. This is famine as a weapon, designed quite literally to 鈥榮tarve out鈥� the entire population of Gaza.
Palestinian mothers are so malnourished that they can鈥檛 breastfeed their newborns. This is appalling enough, but Israel has also blocked the entry of infant formula into Gaza.听 But there is no shortage of food. Food is within sight of Gaza, inside trucks backed up for miles at the entry points Israel has blocked. If one can鈥檛 draw the line at the intentional starvation of newborns, where will one draw the line?
How many Palestinians has Israel killed in Gaza? 100,000?听 200,000? Could Ralph Nader be right in saying the total will grow to 500,000 or more? We won鈥檛 for years.
The death toll in Gaza defies human comprehension. Viewed through a statistical lens, each new death becomes less and less significant. The first image of a Palestinian baby decapitated by an Israeli quadcopter provoked disgust, anger, and sorrow. Now, eight or 10 babies similarly slaughtered in a day barely rate a notice in the media. Our voices are silent, our revulsion has been numbed, our capacity for human empathy muted. We are dehumanizing ourselves.
The first deaths hit the hardest. The most recent deaths slip by us. We can鈥檛 think of them without condemning ourselves for doing nothing to slow the killing since seeing those first shocking images more than a year and a half ago.
According to Unicef, more than 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or seriously wounded by Israeli military attacks in Gaza. They鈥檝e been burned, eviscerated, decapitated, had their limbs blown off, their eyes seared shut, their skin flayed to the bone and their lungs charred.
The murdered children of Gaza weren鈥檛 collateral damage. They were targets to be eliminated, just as much as their parents, their mass slaughter justified by the likes of. Avigdor Lieberman and Galit Distel Atbaryan, of Netanyahu鈥檚 own Likud party: 鈥楾here is no such thing as