All you need to commit genocide is a good excuse. The Nazis pinned the Jewish people as the cause of Germans’ problems to commit the Holocaust, the Hutu in Rwanda held hatred against the Tutsi for their higher treatment by the German colonizers, and now Israel has killed about 45,000 Palestinian people in Gaza under the public intent of solely targeting the Hamas members responsible for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Despite this claim, the Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, have destroyed 70 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure, induced widespread famine in Northern Gaza, cut off civilian resources such as water, electricity and fuel, repeatedly attacked hospitals and taken medical staff prisoner (such as renowned doctor Adnan Al-Bursh, who was reportedly tortured and killed in an Israeli prison), and bombed “safe zones” and refugee camps (one such being Shaaban al-Dalou, a Gaza university student, who was photographed burning alive during an attack on Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital’s courtyard camp).
These are clear breaches of international law, yet Israel seems practically exempt from it, especially with the United States behind its back. In fact, after the Biden administration issued a 30-day deadline for Israel to get the humanitarian state of Gaza under control through increased aid. Israel failed to meet the demands listed according to aid groups and has continued to block aid into Gaza, yet the U.S. took no restrictive action whatsoever on military aid to Israel. Despite talks of improvements made by Israel after this ultimatum, it had since banned United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from its humanitarian relief activity in Gaza and other occupied Palestinian territories starting in January 2025, which has been aiding displaced Palestinians for about 75 years since their forced removal from now-Israeli territories.
However, what is happening in Gaza is more than just a “humanitarian crisis” as many sources tend to put it. It is a deliberate genocide on the Palestinian people, and the United Nations, among other organizations, has said so. The International Criminal Court, or ICC, has recently put out arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their crimes against humanity. When Netanyahu publicly addressed the ICC charges, he stated that they were an act of antisemitism, comparing the situation to “a modern-day Dreyfus trial.” He deflected the genocide accusations, essentially claiming that Israel could not be commiting genocide if it was aiding the Palestinian people, while Hamas is stealing the humanitarian aid and oppressing civilians. For instance, he cited that Israel had recently vaccinated Gaza’s children against a polio outbreak. The vaccination story is true, but who was responsible is deliberately false: it was actually a joint-effort by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and UNRWA, which, again, Israel is banning, due to accusations of Hamas members being employed. The state of Israel was not the one providing the resources nor funding.
The tactic of antisemitism and Hamas-blaming has been repeatedly used in attempt to cover Israel’s war crimes and genocide against Palestinians. Just several days ago, three World Central Kitchen aid workers, alongside two others, were killed in a targeted airstrike on a car in Khan Younis. The IDF had claimed that one of the workers was a Hamas member who took part in the Oct. 7 attacks, and the World Central Kitchen is now temporarily halting its work in Gaza because of the attack and accusations. In another recent atrocity, an Israeli drone deliberately targeted, shot and killed Mahmoud Almadoun, head of the Gaza Soup Kitchen and father of seven children, in Beit Lahiya. There was no public reason made for his murder, and after having arbitrarily detained him twice already in the past, the IDF assassinated him while trying to provide fresh food and ingredients to civilians in Northern Gaza, serving as evidence to why he was targeted. Outside of humanitarian aid workers, at least 128 journalists have been killed in Gaza in one year since Oct. 7, 2023. Almost no outside journalists have been allowed to enter Gaza, hence leaving only domestic Palestinian journalists to report on the war, many of whom were killed or targeted in the process, at least three while wearing press insignia. In addition, the IDF listed in October six prominent journalists for Al-Jazeera as Hamas terrorists without publicly revealing any evidence. These details have led to the belief that Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian journalists to reduce media coverage of their genocide in Gaza.
The stories shared in this article have become present in many mainstream news outlets, but the violence in Gaza goes much deeper. With the media blackout in Gaza and the staunch support of Israel in the West, the only people that can consistently document its genocide are the Palestinian civilians themselves. That is how most of the stories mentioned have been spread, especially through their use of social media, which has become effective as a direct means of coverage due to the existent bias of Western journalism towards Israel’s account of events. In addition, aid volunteers who have traveled to Gaza, such as medical professionals, have recently provided gruesome testimony of the IDF’s war crimes against Palestinians. Professor Nizam Mamode, a surgeon from England, had spoken before the United Kingdom Parliament on witnessing Israeli drones descending to shoot children after bombings in the hospital he worked at. Other volunteer medical workers described having taken child patients who had bullets in their heads or chests almost daily. More recently, reports by Palestinians and human rights monitors have detailed quadcopter drones using “audio lures” of crying children, screaming women and more to lure out Palestinian civilians to then shoot them. All of this comes with talks in Israel of a “Generals’ Plan,” which would involve ethnically cleansing Northern Gaza to make way for Israeli settlements, an idea which has been considered by Netanyahu and supported by far-right Israeli politicians and citizens.
Israel has already breached the terms of its ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon over 100 times, according to UNIFIL. Meanwhile, a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages seems nowhere close, especially after four attempts of a UN Security Council-mandated ceasefire being vetoed by the United States, despite the conditions of a hostage release being included. The U.S. lauds itself as an “international stronghold for human rights” and praises Israel for being “the only democracy in the Middle East,” yet it refuses to acknowledge the genocidal situation on the ground in Gaza, continuing to supply Israel with over $20 billion in deadly military resources to commit these war crimes, all while the Biden administration openly rejects the application of genocide by the UN and ICC. When the world said “never again,” it was a lie.
