2024-01-06
A summary of the ethnic cleansing now underway in Gaza, and the West Bank for that matter
By Beverley Dight, Green Issue Co-editor
"My life, my eyes, my soul" a husband writes on the white shroud wrapped around his wife, after the war devastating Gaza took her life, reported by Reuters on 29 December, 2023.
Israeli Major General Ghassan Allan declared on 18 October: "There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell. You will get hell." And that is what the Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been experiencing.
John Mearsheimer, an American, felt compelled to record what is happening in Gaza, which was reprinted in the article in Pearls and Irritations "Death and Destruction in Gaza". I am repeating what he said verbatim, as I believe he captures the horror unfolding in Gaza.
"What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population ‒ with the support of the Biden administration, is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster is nearly unfathomable. Let me elaborate.
First, Israel is purposely massacring a huge number of civilians, roughly 70% of which are women and children. The claim that Israel is going to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties is belied by statements from high level Israeli officials. For example, the IDF Spokesman said on 10 October 2023 that "the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy". That same day Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced: "I have lowered all the restraints ‒ we will kill everyone we fight against, we will use every means".
Moreover, it is clear from the results of the bombing campaign that Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians. Two detailed studies of the IDF bombing campaign, both published in Israeli outlets, explain in detail how Israel is murdering huge numbers of civilians. It is worth quoting the titles of the two pieces, which succinctly capture what each has to say:
"A Mass Assassination. Israel's Calculated Bombing of Gaza"
"The Israeli Army has Dropped the Restraint in Gaza and the Data shows Unprecedented Killing".
Similarly, the New York Times published an article late November 2023 titled "Gaza Civilians under Israeli Barrage are Being Killed at a Historic Pace". Thus, it is hardly surprising that the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said that "We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since" his appointment in January, 2017.
Second, Israel is purposely starving the desperate Palestinian population by greatly limiting the amount of food, fuel, cooking gas, medicine and water that can be brought into Gaza. Moreover, medical care is extremely hard to come by for a population that now includes approximately 50,000 wounded civilians. Not only has Israel greatly limited the amount of fuel in Gaza, which hospitals need to function, but it has targeted hospitals, ambulances and first aid stations.
Defense Minister Gallant's comment on 9 October captures Israel's policy: "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
Israel has been forced to allow minimal supplies into Gaza, but the amounts are so small that a senior UN official reports that "half of Gaza's population is starving". He goes on to report that "nine out of ten families in some areas are spending a full day and night without any food at all".
Third, Israeli leaders talk about Palestinians and what they would like to do in Gaza in shocking terms, especially when you consider that some of these leaders talk incessantly about the horrors of the Holocaust. Indeed, their rhetoric has led Omar Barton, a prominent Israeli scholar of the Holocaust, to conclude that Israel has "genocidal intent". Other scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies have offered a similar warning.
To be more specific it is commonplace for Israeli leaders to refer to Palestinians as "human animals", "human beasts" and "horrible inhuman beasts". And as Israeli President Isaac Herzog makes clear these leaders are referring to all Palestinians, not just Hamas. In his words, "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible". Unsurprisingly, as the New York Times reports, it is part of normal Israeli discourse to call for Gazans to be "flattened", "erased" or "destroyed". One retired IDF general, who proclaimed that "Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist", also makes the case "severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer". Going even further a minister in the Israeli government suggested dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza. These statements are not being made by isolated extremists, but by senior members of Israel's government.
Of course there is also much talk of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, in effect producing another Nabka. To quote Israel's Agricultural Minister, "We are now rolling out the Gaza Nabka". Perhaps the most shocking evidence of the depths to which Israel sank is a video of very young children singing a blood-curdling song celebrating Israel's' destruction of Gaza. "Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields".
Fourth, Israel is not just killing, wounding and starving huge numbers of Palestinians, it is also systematically destroying their homes as well as critical infrastructure, including mosques, schools, heritage sites, libraries, key government buildings and hospitals. As of December 2023 the IDF had damaged or destroyed almost 100,000 buildings, including entire neighbourhoods, that have been reduced to rubble. Consequently, a stunning 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes. Moreover, Israel is making a concerted effort to destroy Gaza's cultural heritage; as NPR reports "more than 100 Gazan heritage sights have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks".
Fifth, Israel is not just killing and terrorizing Palestinians, it is also publicly humiliating many of their men who have been rounded up by the IDF in routine searches. Israeli soldiers strip them down to their underwear, blindfold them, and display them in a public way in their neighbourhoods ‒ sitting them down in large groups in the middle of the street, for example, or parading them through the streets ‒ before taking them away in trucks to detention camps. In most cases the detainees are then released as they are not Hamas fighters.
Sixth, although Israelis are doing the slaughtering they could not do it without the Biden administration's support. Not only was the United States the only country to vote against a recent UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, it has also been providing Israel with the weapons necessary for this massacre. As one Israeli General (Yitzhack Brick) recently made clear, "All of our missiles, ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it's all from the United States. 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.". Remarkably, the Biden administration has sought to expedite sending Israel additional ammunition, bypassing the normal procedures of the Arms Export Control Act.
Seventh, while most of the focus is now on Gaza, it is important not to lose sight of what is simultaneously going on in the West Bank. Israeli settlers, working closely with the IDF, continue to kill innocent Palestinians and steal their land. In an excellent article in the New York Review Books, describing these horrors, David Shulman relates a conversation he had with a settler, which clearly reflects the moral dimension of Israeli behaviour towards the Palestinians. "What we are doing to these people is actually inhuman", the settler freely admits. "But if you think about it clearly, it all follows inevitably from the fact that God promised this land to the Jews and only to them". Along with its assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has markedly increased the number of arbitrary arrests in the West Bank. According to Amnesty International there is considerable evidence that these prisoners have been tortured and subjected to degrading treatment.
As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left with one simple question for Israel's leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?"
Aid organizations, such as UN agencies and the World Health Organization have been appalled by what they are witnessing in Gaza. Doctors Without Borders, the French volunteer organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), wrote a letter to the United Nations Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as hospitals are being turned into "morgues". They took this step after Israeli troops deliberately destroyed MSF rescue vehicles by tank fire.
They wrote "Words fail us to describe the absolute horror being inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel as it carries out incessant and indiscriminate warfare in Gaza for all the world to see". They say that Israel's war is a total war on noncombatants, "waged at any cost", and not a precision strike on Hamas fighters.
MSF reported that hospitals are being bombed, shot at by tanks and guns, encircled and raided, killing patients and medical staff. Physicians have been having to amputate badly burned children's hands, arms and legs without anaesthesia or the ability to sterilize their scalpels.
MSF calls Israel's campaign "a flagrantly excessive reprisal". Northern Gaza is being "erased from the map", and the health system has collapsed. They accused the Israeli Authorities of showing a total and blatant disregard for the protection of clinics and hospitals. One of the reasons for the apparent Israeli hoax that medical facilities in Gaza were Hamas command centres was to allow them cover for destroying health care in Gaza's north as a way of forcing the population to relocate to the south. MSF complain the population is then forced to move even further south, but are bombed in the south as well.
The Commissioner General of the UN Agency for Palestinian Rights said that he believes Israel is trying to clear Gaza of its Palestinian population through its military operations and evacuation orders. He wrote in the Los Angeles Times that he came to this conclusion due to "the developments we are witnessing now, and its attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt, regardless of whether they stay there or are resettled elsewhere.
In fact, a document from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, had been leaked to an Israeli news site, recommending that Palestinians be transferred from Gaza to Egypt. Gaza has been made uninhabitable to encourage Palestinians to leave.
Hayom Daily reported that on 25 December 2023 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at The Knesset that he was working towards what he referred to as a "voluntary migration" of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.
"Our problem is the countries that are willing to absorb them, and we are working on it."
An Israeli real estate company is so confident that Palestinians will no longer be in Gaza in the near future, that it is advertising beach houses for Israelis it is planning to build on the coast. Sketches have already been made where these houses will be located.
Header photo: Amal, 7 years old, contemplates her neighbourhood after neighbouring homes were levelled to the ground. No words can describe the devastation she sees. Credit:UNICEF UNI448902 Mohammad Ajjour
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]