There’s no doubt about it: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
Never in our lives have we (Israelis) been in a situation where such a serious, and so well-founded, argument is being made against us for our own actions. We must refuse, resist, support international pressure, do everything possible to stop this horror
By Haggai Matar • Translated by Sol Salbe
I was invited to speak last night [July 30] at an event for members of the (Israeli) Democrats Party, who are trying to pressure their leadership to begin opposing the genocide in Gaza and to call for a refusal to serve in the military. Almost a hundred people turned up to the event and sat around for two and a half hours in a serious intense discussion. This is a welcome initiative, and I wish them a lot of success.
In preparation for the event, I collected some facts and figures on what we are doing in Gaza. There is nothing new here, but I thought there was value in presenting them altogether in a single place, and here they are:
• Since the beginning of the war, Israel has killed at least 60,000 people in Gaza, including at least 18,000 children, about a thousand of those children in the last month alone. A little fewer than a thousand did not reach the age of one year. According to various estimates, the numbers are much higher, but between the bodies that are still rotting under the rubble of homes and the difficulty of calculating deaths from related causes (lack of access to medical care, complications of hunger, etc.) — it is difficult to know an exact number.
• Israel’s assassination policy in Gaza has changed so that instead of prioritising the targeting of Hamas members when they are on their own, with minimal harm to innocent people, the AI system of Military Intelligence unit 8200 decide who Hamas members are, and order them to killed actually when they are at home, with all their extended families and neighbours, with the approval for “collateral damage” ranging from 20 (!!) to 300 (!!!!) deaths for each person targeted for assassination. Thus, over 1200 entire families, spanning several generations, were completely wiped off the face of the earth, and over a thousand more families lost 3, 7, 16 family members and more.
• The bombing policy killed thousands more, including through the use of toxic gases inside the tunnels. Live fire, bombs, and gas also killed several of the captives. Among other things, the army has a policy called “double tap” that aims to prevent the rescue and rescue of bomb victims, and so neighbours, relatives, first responders and journalists who come to try to help those buried in the rubble are bombed again and killed.
• Side by side with the killing, there is also destruction. 92 per cent of residential buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or severely damaged. All universities have been destroyed, and 90 per cent of schools have been damaged by the bombings, so there has been no schooling for almost two years, and it is unclear how and when they will be able to resume. 33 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been severely damaged by the bombings, and today there are only 2000 hospital beds for a population of 2.3 million people in a condition of war and malnutrition.
• The devastation is totally deliberate, self-declared, and is intended to advance the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, and from the perspective of a significant part of the government and the army, also the renewal of settlement there. Today, 85 per cent of the already small and densely populated Gaza Strip is off-limits to Palestinians, and Israel has a policy of shoot to kill any Palestinian found there, including the elderly, children, and women, as many soldiers have testified. Entire cities have been razed to the ground and simply no longer exist.
• Thousands of Palestinians have been arrested in Gaza, held in torture camp conditions, barely receiving food or medical care, and suffering severe violence. Many are eventually released without charge, reduced to mere skin and bones and a shadow of their pre-war selves. Dozens have already died as a result of torture in Israeli detention facilities.
• Israel has killed over 200 Gazan journalists so far, making this war the deadliest violent conflict for journalists in decades worldwide. Some were killed in double-tap bombings, some as targets of the army because of alleged links to Hamas, some because they flew drones to take pictures. At the same time, Israel prevents foreign journalists from entering the Strip to report on what is happening there.
• On top of all this, there is the deliberate starvation. The systematic prevention of the entry of sufficient quantities of food, of its circulation and distribution, and also of local food production. According to the latest UN report, about a quarter of Gaza’s population, 500,000 people, are suffering from hunger, one in six children is malnourished, thousands of children are hospitalised with severe malnutrition, about 150 people have already died of hunger, and nearly a thousand were shot to death by soldiers and GHF personnel at the “Hunger Games” sites.
• All of this, it is important to say, is backed up by testimonies from Palestinians, international aid workers, independent organisations, and soldiers. Explicit statements by government ministers, often by members of the opposition as well, not to mention as soldiers and officers of almost all ranks — indicate that these things are deliberate policy. Not a mistake.
All of these things are horrifying in themselves, prohibited by international law by themselves, and there is no way to legitimise or justify them, even in light of Hamas’ crimes, and they constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to a long list of researchers in the field, Palestinian and international human rights organisations, and as of this week, Israelis as well — the cumulative meaning of these actions, which are done intentionally to prevent the ability to sustain a humane Palestinian society living in the Gaza Strip, is that this is actually genocide. Never in our lives have we been in a situation where such a serious, and so well-founded, argument is being made against us for our own actions. We must refuse, resist, support international pressure, do everything possible to stop this horror.
