One-quarter of the infants in the Gaza Strip are acutely malnourished, and Israel refuses to let in thousands of trucks carrying emergency aid. The armed forces shoot at anyone who enters the buffer zone; they bomb hospitals and tent camps. For the umpteenth time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government ordered many Palestinians in Gaza to leave their homes; his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announces that Gaza will be “completely destroyed” within a few months; and Moshe Saada, a fellow Likud member, proposes to starve and expel all Gazans. Israel has already killed 53,000 Palestinians, including at least 15,000 children.
The conclusion that Israel is committing genocide is no longer restricted to activists. The UN International Court of Justice has ruled it “plausible”; Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese used the term “genocide”; now even the Director of Netherlands Institute for War Documentation speaks of “genocidal violence.”
