Genocide gathers speed with the world watching and the US fully abetting Israel
As the war on Gaza enters its second year, Israel’s unfolding genocide is barreling towards its climax. Euro-Med Monitor estimates that ten percent of Gaza’s population has been killed, injured, missing or detained. At least 17,000 children have been killed and nearly one thousand families completely wiped out. A recent UN report by an Independent International Commission of Inquiry found that “Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza,” with 498 attacks carried out on health-care facilities by February 12, 2024, and the number rising steadily since then. In a hard-hitting letter to President Biden, 99 American medical workers who volunteered in Gaza state that 62,413 people may have died of starvation by the end of September 2024 and “it is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.”
And worse is to come. Disease is rapidly spreading due to lack of sanitation and clean water, widespread malnutrition and damaged immune systems. A report by Refugees International describes a mass “trajectory towards starvation” as Israel intensifies its obstruction of humanitarian aid and “over 2 million people are sheltering in catastrophic conditions, as these zones continue to shrink due to ongoing evacuation orders.” Families lack funds to buy what little food is available at escalating prices, and Gaza’s agricultural land and fishing industry have been destroyed by 90,000 tons of explosives.
In the north – home to 400,000 people - a bloody 10-day military siege on the Jabalia refugee camp and remaining hospitals accompanied by evacuation orders could be the first phase of the ‘Generals’ Plan’ to seal off the northern third of the Gaza Strip and deny all food and water to those who refuse orders to evacuate. The World Food Program says that it is being prevented from delivering food “in any form” to the north where a “full-blown famine” is taking place. No food has entered the north since October 1 and trucks carrying 100,000 tons of food are now reportedly being blocked by Israel from accessing Gaza. The Knesset is meanwhile fast-tracking two bills that would ban the operations of UNRWA, the main aid organization for Palestinians and the one best positioned to carry out the essential second round of polio vaccinations in Gaza. Israel has recently seized the land on which its East Jerusalem headquarters stands and intends to replace it with 1,440 settler units.
Evidence has emerged that early in the war, Secretary of State Blinken gave the green light to Israel’s plan to bomb aid convoys, ostensibly to keep aid out of Hamas’ hands. According to the Brown University report Costs of War, since the war began the US has spent $22.76 billion on military aid to Israel and its related operations in the region. Jordan, France and Spain have recently called for an arms embargo on Israel. Rather than scale back its weapons supply, the Pentagon announced on October 13 it was sending to Israel its THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery and a US crew to operate it.
Israel’s Gaza playbook is being reproduced in Lebanon, where millions have been forced to flee from their homes. Parts of that country have now been reduced to rubble by Israeli air strikes that have demolished villages, apartment buildings, mosques and health care facilities (including in the center of Beirut) and killed over 2,200 people. Showing its utter defiance of the United Nations and international law, the Israeli army has fired on UNIFIL peacekeepers stationed in southern Lebanon since Israel’s 1978 invasion. Israel appears bent on applying to Lebanon the same “Dahiya Doctrine” that it introduced in its 2006 invasion of the country and has used to destroy Gaza: the infliction of massive destruction on villages, urban neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure with the goal of forcing a surrender of hostile parties.
The Israeli army has warned Lebanese who have evacuated villages in the south not to return, and some Israeli settlers are pressing for Israel to remain in southern Lebanon for good. Settlers are not just planning to re-settle Gaza, but those belonging to Uri Tzafon are now advertising property for sale on their ‘Movement for Settlement in Southern Lebanon’ website. The war is metastasizing, and the international community seems helpless to stop it.
