Do you not see what s happening in Gaza as a genocide ?
Over the past year, Israel has conducted a genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza. This atrocity persists as Israel continues to bombard and deprive almost 2 million defenseless people—half of whom are children—who have nowhere to run or hide:
- Since October of last year, the Israeli military has killed more than 41,870 Palestinians in Gaza, with many thousands more missing and assumed dead, and has injured more than 97,000 others, marking one of the most devastating bombing campaigns in history.
- As of July 2024, an analysis published in The Lancet medical journal estimates that the overall number of Palestinian deaths directly or indirectly linked to Israel's genocide is 186,000 or more, encompassing fatalities from reproductive, infectious, and non-communicable diseases.
- Hunger and disease are rampant as Israel employs starvation, restricting the flow of food, water, medication, and other humanitarian assistance while dismantling health, water, and sanitation systems.
- The Israeli military has displaced approximately 2 million people, or 90% of the population, from their homes, forced them to flee in terror into increasingly confined zones, and subjected them to relentless slaughter by 2,000-pound bombs in areas it labeled as "safe zones" they ordered them to go to.
- Israel has devastated much of Gaza, obliterating entire towns and neighborhoods, effectively depopulating northern Gaza, including Gaza City, systematically dismantling the healthcare system, hospitals, civilian infrastructure, schools, libraries, universities, museums, and other cultural and heritage sites, as well as desecrating cemeteries.
- The International Court of Justice and a U.S. federal court determined that Israel may be guilty of genocide in Gaza, with the former investigating further. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, encompassing the “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and “extermination and/or murder.”
Since October of last year and previously, Israel has been detaining thousands of Palestinians and subjecting them to torture, including rape:
- The U.N., human rights organizations, and journalists have documented that Israel has been detaining thousands of Palestinians from Gaza and subjecting them to torture since October 2023, including doctors and other healthcare workers and children. Israeli soldiers have been caught on camera sexually assaulting Palestinian captives, and multiple testimonies from Palestinians indicate that they have been raped by Israeli soldiers. Since last October, at least 53 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention, including at least three doctors.
- Before last October, Israel's occupying forces detained thousands of Palestinians as political prisoners, including women and children, often without charges or trial, subjecting them to abuse and torture. Since the commencement of Israel's unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, almost one million Palestinians have been incarcerated using a military court system that human rights organizations have denounced as unjust, including tens of thousands of children.
The U.S. government is arming, funding, and diplomatically shielding Israel's genocide in Gaza, constituting a breach of both U.S. law and international law and against the wishes of the majority of Americans:
- President Biden and Congress are entirely complicit in Israel's genocide in Gaza. They are actively facilitating and supporting it with tens of billions of dollars in armaments and diplomatic protection at the U.N. and other international forums.
- The Biden administration's endorsement of Israel's genocide in Gaza violates both U.S. and international law and opposes the wishes of a majority of Americans, who advocate for a ceasefire and an end of arms deliveries to Israel until the violence ends.
President Biden possesses the authority to halt Israel's genocide in Gaza, although he has declined to employ the substantial influence the U.S. holds over Israel to do this. He persists in supplying Israel with weapons, including massive 2,000-pound bombs and guided missiles to kill Palestinians:
“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
- Despite this, Biden continues to approve substantial arms exports to Israel, thereby giving Netanyahu and his far-right government the green light to continue the killing.
President Biden's unconditional support for Israel's far-right government and its genocide in Gaza has empowered Netanyahu to execute extensive assaults and targeted killings in Lebanon, posing a significant risk of igniting a major conflict in the region and beyond:
- President Biden's reluctance to establish any red lines for Netanyahu's genocidal administration has emboldened it to execute significant assaults on Lebanon with U.S.-supplied weaponry, jeopardizing the prospect of a broader regional conflict with potentially disastrous ramifications for the Middle East and the United States.
- In the past two weeks, the Israeli military has killed over 1,000 Lebanese, including at least 87 children, causing widespread devastation and displacing as many as one million people from their homes, similar to the situation in Gaza.
Before October 7, 2023, Palestinians in Gaza endured 56 years of harsh and oppressive Israeli military occupation, alongside a prolonged, illegal Israeli siege and naval blockade for 17 years:
- The majority of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees whose families were ethnically cleansed from their homes in what became southern Israel after the creation of the state in 1948 on Palestinian lands. Since 1967, they have endured oppressive Israeli military rule, which persisted beyond Israel's withdrawal of settlers in 2005, as consistently affirmed by the United Nations, human rights organizations, and the International Court of Justice.
- Since 2007, the U.N. and human rights organizations have consistently denounced the debilitating Israeli siege and naval blockade as collective punishment of the entire civilian populace and deemed it illegal.
Amid global focus on Gaza, Israel initiated a significant escalation of violence and persecution against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, while Israeli settlers intensified their assaults on Palestinians to forcibly displace them from their homes:
- From October 2023 to October 2024, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed at least 742 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, among whom were at least 163 children. The Israeli occupying forces have consistently attacked, besieged, and conducted airstrikes on Palestinian towns, refugee camps, and hospitals, resulting in extensive devastation.
- Simultaneously, heavily armed, fanatical Israeli settlers have been wreaking havoc in the occupied West Bank, assaulting Palestinians and their property, frequently in the presence of Israeli soldiers. From October 2023 to August 2024, the U.N. documented roughly 1,250 assaults by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, with the true figure possibly exceeding this count. Israeli settlers' violence has forced over 1,600 Palestinians from their homes since October 2023.
- Before October of last year, 2023 was already on track to become the most deadly year for Palestinians in the West Bank in decades, attributed to Israeli violence. From January to early October, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed 243 Palestinians in the West Bank, including at least 38 children, which prior to 2024 was the highest number of Palestinian children killed in the West Bank since records began.
Israel's genocide in Gaza has sparked a wave of censorship and repression in the U.S. and abroad, targeting Palestinian-Americans and those who have expressed opposition, as well as a rise in violent hate crimes against Palestinians:
- Politicians such as President Biden, members of Congress, and the media have harshly vilified students and others, including numerous Jews, who have peacefully protested or criticized Israel's genocide in Gaza. They have faced threats—violent assaults, arrests by militarized police, doxxing, fired from their jobs, rescinded job offers, and threats of deportation. Artists and authors have experienced cancellations of exhibitions, musical performances, plays, and book launches.
- The demonization and dehumanization of Palestinians by politicians and numerous media outlets have incited anti-Palestinian racism and a series of violent hate crimes against Palestinians in the U.S., including: the murder of 6-year-old Wadea Al Fayoume, who was stabbed 26 times, and his mother severely injured by their landlord in Illinois in October 2023; the shooting of three Palestinian-American college students, one of whom was left paralyzed, in Vermont in November; the attempted drowning of a three-year-old girl in Texas in June 2024; and the hours-long violent assault by a mob of pro-Israel counter-protesters on students protesting Israel’s genocide at UCLA in May 2024, while police watched and did nothing.
The origin of all of the violence in historic Palestine is Israel's 76-year-old apartheid regime and the oppression of the indigenous Palestinian populace:
- Since Israel was established in 1948 on Palestinian lands through the ethnic cleansing of the majority of the indigenous Palestinian population, it has implemented a racist system of oppression against millions of Palestinians, which has been deemed apartheid by the International Court of Justice , human rights organizations, and various experts. The Jewish colonization of Palestine that began in the late 19th century, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian natives in 1948, and the oppressive apartheid system are the fundamental roots of all violence in historic Palestine. Amnesty International states that:
“Israel must dismantle the apartheid system and start treating Palestinians as human beings with equal rights and dignity. Until it does, peace and security will remain a distant prospect for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”