Today, it was good for some of us to see some rulers and heads of states speak at the summit in Riyadh. Many of them raised valid points, but one obvious fact that was not mentioned by anyone in a clear manner was the active involvement of the Biden Administration in the Israeli destructive war on Gaza and the extermination of the besieged and defenceless Palestinians.
What is it that prevents these rulers from saying in unequivocal terms that the carnage and massacres taking place in Gaza are happening with the full support and encouragement of the US? The US is the one who can stop the Israeli war. Many leaders have asked the United Nations Security Council to take steps to stop the genocide in Gaza, but we all know that the United States can veto any Security Council resolution it thinks is against its will and interests. Therefore, the entire process is rendered ineffective. The United States always supports and protects whatever Israel does, and the present genocidal war on Gaza would be no exception.
The international community should call on the United States to stop its support for Israel and its war against the Palestinians, first in Gaza and then in the West Bank, where Israeli forces are also executing and terrorizing the entire populace.
A Palestinian man mourns over the body of his relative who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)
In the face of mass protests involving millions of people throughout the world, the Israeli government is escalating its genocidal assault on Gaza.
Throughout the day Friday, Israel bombed and burned hospitals in Gaza City, which is being invaded by Israeli forces. Israel attacked six hospitals, including two children’s hospitals, in the span of 24 hours.
The head of Al-Shifa Hospital, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, told Al Jazeera, “This day was a day of war on hospitals.” This included the direct strike on the front gate of Al-Shifa hospital, where thousands of refugees are sheltering. Videos shared online show the use of white phosphorus against the hospital, a blatant violation of international law.
The actions of the Netanyahu regime have the active support and are being coordinated with the US-NATO powers, and in particular the Biden administration, which repeatedly and insistently rejects a ceasefire and any limits or conditions on Netanyahu’s actions.
This past week, US President Joe Biden declared that there is “no prospect” of a ceasefire. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby reiterated that there were no “red lines” regarding the killing of civilians by Israel. “That is still the case,” Kirby said. “It’s also true that the airstrikes continue, and it’s also true that civilians are dying in those airstrikes.”
Calls for a ceasefire have been rejected by the entire political establishment, including and not surprisingly the despicable political fraudster, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
The events of the past month are radicalizing millions of people throughout the world, which has found expression in the mass demonstrations against Israel’s genocide. The development of this movement requires an understanding of the underlying causes of the imperialist atrocity.
The universal support by US and NATO for the homicidal actions of the Israeli regime is an extension and deepening of 30 years of unending war, spearheaded by the United States. US imperialism and the NATO alliance saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 as an opportunity to utilize its unrivaled military force to reimpose shackles on the former colonial world. y
All the great historical and political tasks that confronted the working class and the oppressed masses at the beginning of the 20th century are now posed in their starkest form. The savage bombing of Iraq and the virtual destruction of its industrial infrastructure marks the beginning of a new eruption of imperialist barbarism. Capitalism cannot survive without enslaving and destroying millions….
This ongoing and de facto partition of Iraq signals the start of a new division of the world by the imperialists. The colonies of yesterday are again to be subjugated. The conquests and annexations which, according to the opportunist apologists of imperialism, belonged to a bygone era are once again on the order of the day.
Emphasizing this point, in a report to the Special National Congress of the Workers League in 1991, convened to discuss the Gulf War, David North, then national secretary of the Workers League (predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States), concluded:
[The Gulf War] marks the beginning of a new imperialist redivision of the world. The end of the postwar era means the end of the postcolonial era as well. As it proclaims the “failure of socialism,” the imperialist bourgeoisie is, in deeds if not yet in words, proclaiming the “failure of independence” as well.
The first war against Iraq was followed by an eruption of imperialist violence. Throughout the 1990s, the imperialist powers engineered the carve-up of Yugoslavia, culminating in the 1998 bombing campaign against Serbia. The United States then used the September 11, 2001 attacks as a pretext to launch the “war on terror,” including the invasion of Afghanisan and the second war against Iraq, which led to the deaths of more than one million people.
The United States launched an unremitting campaign of assassination, torture and kidnapping throughout the Middle East, the most horrible expression of which was the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. This was followed, under the Obama administration, with the war against Libya and the CIA-backed civil war in Syria.
In justifying its own crimes against the population of Gaza, Israeli officials have pointed to the precedent set by the United States under the “war on terror.” The war crimes of the past are being used to justify the war crimes of the present.
At the same time, the open support for genocidal actions is intended to set the precedent for the future. In the context of the US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine and the preparations for war against Iran and China, the imperialist powers are making clear that there are no “red lines” that they will not cross.
War abroad is at the same time a war against the working class at home.
In his 1916 work Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Lenin defined imperialism as “reaction all down the line.” In both war and domestic policy, he explained, “finance capital strives for domination, not freedom. … The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated precisely because they are both rotting alive.”
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is accompanied by an open turn to state repression and censorship. Last month, Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution accusing students opposing Israel’s actions of “antisemitism” and “solidarity with the terrorists.” In Florida, Palestinian student groups have been banned, and Columbia University announced Friday that both Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace would be disbanded as student groups and prevented from holding events on campus.
Germany, France and the UK have all attempted to ban demonstrations and carried out mass arrests. German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck threatened Muslim immigrants who make statements opposing Israel’s genocide with arrest and deportation.
These measures are directed not only at protests over Israel’s crimes but all opposition to the policies of the ruling elite. Confronted by a growing strike movement, the ruling classes of the imperialist powers are turning to war and domestic repression.
The eruption of war, genocide and political repression are not an aberration. Imperialism, as Lenin noted, is not merely a policy but rather a specific historical stage of capitalist development. Opposition to imperialism is, therefore, a revolutionary question.
It is not a matter of appealing to the capitalist governments responsible for these crimes to alter course but rather turning to the working class, fusing the struggle against war with the developing struggles of workers all over the world against inequality and exploitation. This includes strike action to stop the shipment of weapons to Israel and the development of a movement for a political general strike to demand an end to the slaughter in Gaza.
The logic of these struggles is the conquest of political power by the working class, the expropriation of the capitalist oligarchs and war criminals, and the socialist reorganization of economic life on a world scale.
Editor’s remarks: In this message, Mohammed Hamood from Yemen states some historical facts about fraternal relations between Jews and Muslims in Arab countries over the course of centuries. He also states that the oppression of Palestinians in occupied Palestine by Israel has a long history. Hamas, contrary to the false and misleading propaganda, is a freedom movement struggling to break the illegal siege of Gaza by Israel and achieve freedom for an occupied people by a colonial power. His words are true and put in a straightforward way for all. His message needs to be publicised at a time when Israel is once again destroying Gaza and indiscriminately killing defenceless Palestinians in thousands.
Please read my entire message. I might be among the dead after that. This is a story you should know. Regardless of my religion, identity, or country, please read it with the principle of your humanity in mind. I will reveal everything inside of me, and it is possible that my message will be deleted, and perhaps my account deleted as well.
Over the years, Israel, the United States, Great Britain and many other countries have embarked on a massive propaganda drive to portray Hamas as a terrorist organization, which is a complete fabrication. Hamas is a group of Palestinian residents whose fathers and mothers were killed in previous wars with Israel. Israel occupied their land, kicked them out of their homes, and made people move away.
For the past 75 years, Israel has been committing war crimes and genocide, killing men, the elderly, women, children, and everyone living in Palestine for the duration of its war against them. The citizens of Palestine did not have weapons. Rather, they were armed with stones that children, men, and women were hurling at Israeli armoured vehicles, tanks, and soldiers. Israel killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians. Hamas didn’t exist at that time. Subsequently, it encircled the remainder within a circumference of not exceeding 500 square kilometres.
Hamas was born from this hell. Hamas is the organization of the same children who were throwing stones at Israeli occupation tanks. Their fathers and grandfathers were killed, and they were displaced from their homeland. They grew up, made their own weapons, and pledged to restore their state, which Israel had snatched from their fathers and grandfathers.
Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Hamas is a resistance movement like any resistance movement in the world. It is a movement of liberation and struggle for freedom. They didn’t just attack Israel mistakenly. They’re just looking forward to reclaiming their ancestral lands, fields, and dwellings, which they’ve been stripped of for the past 75 years. Furthermore, they only demanded the release of Palestinian civilian prisoners, who number more than 6,000 and have been languishing in Israeli prisons for 50 years.
This war is not a religious one, as some media outlets claim. Muslims have never been anti-Semitic; they are not now. Jews have lived with us and in our country for hundreds of years. We have embraced the Jews in the past and have sheltered them after they fled to us. We gave them lands to cultivate and houses to live in. There was no difference between a Muslim and a Jew, and Jewish rabbis attest to this. It has now become clear that this war is a Zionist political war between two parties, one of which wants to liberate its homeland from colonialism with individuals whose number does not exceed hundreds.
The objective of the opposing side is to eradicate all living organisms within their territory, utilizing tens of thousands of soldiers and an extensive army equipped with a diverse range of weapons, including numerous aircraft, tanks, and armoured vehicles. It is led by leaders devoid of all moral and human values. America and all European countries provide them with unlimited money and weapons.
This war is not equal in any way. Where are the human rights that they clamour and proclaim in their name, in light of the current events? The utmost injustice that the world has witnessed, on the one hand, and the genocide that is currently occurring to innocent individuals, on the other hand. What a barbaric conflict that targets hospitals and schools that take care of people who have been displaced and sick, and kills hundreds of them. It is a barbaric war in which innocent people are crushed and burned with internationally prohibited white phosphorus. Where is justice when there are 4,000 children and 3,000 women who have been killed in Gaza? Where is mercy when food, medicine, electricity, and water are cut off and then the water tanks that citizens maintain are bombed? They also bomb solar panels. They also bombed ambulances transporting the wounded. Furthermore, they target doctors in order to ensure that the wounded die. Is there any humanity when we witness the systematic destruction of innocent displaced individuals through bombing and extermination without any remorse?
Do we live on this planet called Earth? Is it possible to believe this is happening in the 21st century? How long will the international community remain silent regarding the current events? Don’t you feel human? Doesn’t the human conscience move within you? Don’t you doubt that God will hold accountable everyone who failed them and accepted this injustice? History will never forget that. We are all responsible for that. We will all pay the price for our silence but with the time difference.
Don’t let this message stand still. Spread it to all the people of the world and in all languages. Let the whole world know what they are hiding from you. Thank you all!
A NATO and an Israeli table side flags on a blurred buffet table and two military officers talking. Photo: NATO Maritime Command/File photo.
By Fra Hughes, Orinoco Tribune – Oct 31, 2023
As we witness daily the barbaric carpet bombing of Gaza by the Zionist apartheid regime, as the deaths and horrific injuries of civilian men women and children rise exponentially, we must ask, who is behind this murderous campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing?
Obviously it is the Zionist Israeli soldiers who are spearheading the near total destruction of Northern Gaza.
The continued pulverising of over 25,000 residential homes, the murder of 900 entire families and the ongoing targeting of hospitals, community centres, and UN schools now used as shelters for some of the 1 million plus displaced souls, the deliberate attacks on ambulances and rescue workers is at the hands of Netanyahu and his right-wing fascist cabal of religious fundamentalists, quoting biblical threats to destroy all men women and children as enemies of Israel and to show no mercy. It is prudent to ask: who are the other players in this macabre dance of death?
America has, for decades, tried to portray itself as an honest broker in an intractable conflict between Muslims and Jews, between Arab and Israeli.
With American naval battle groups now in the region and with credible reports that the American administration is not only rearming the Zionist regime in support of its efforts to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population, it now appears American planes are flying bombing sorties over Gaza and have Special Forces boots on the ground .
$14.6 billion of war aid has been promised to Israel by the American administration, while the EU has suspended aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave.
In the West Bank, illegal Israeli settlers have increased their attacks upon rural, isolated, and defenceless Palestinian villages, murdering farmers collecting their olive harvest and distributing leaflets stating “leave now while you can.” As “Death to Arabs” graffiti appears near Palestinian towns, it is becoming obvious that a third wave of expulsions by the Zionist regime against their neighbours is taking place, following in the footsteps of 1948 and 1967.
An off-duty Israeli soldier who is also an illegal settler was arrested in the West Bank for the murder of a Palestinian man, in front of his wife and two daughters, who was simply tending to his olive grove. The man was shot twice in the chest.
Less than 3% of all Israeli settler violence against Palestinians results in conviction.
At least 115 Palestinians have been murdered in the West Bank since October 7, with two prisoners dying while under interrogation and over 1,600 arrested.
America does not only give Israel political cover in the United Nations, it is also continuing to supply weapons of mass destruction to the Zionist entity which is destroying Gaza from the land, sea, and air. America, along with the British and the French, appears to be playing a more active role in the conflict.
As NATO has already lost its proxy war against Russia in Donbas and the Crimea, they are determined not to lose in Gaza.
This war of terror on the innocent is, in my opinion, now being directed by America and, by extension, other NATO members.
Because it is concerned about regaining its place as the world’s only superpower, it is encouraging the Israelis to continue their war on Gaza as an extension of American hegemonic foreign policy and as a veiled threat to any nation that considers joining the new fledgling multipolar world order.
They want to expel Gazans into the Sinai in Egypt and the population of the West Bank into Jordan to complete the Zionist dream of conquering all of Palestine by expelling its inhabitants.
Beware, Israel will not stop there, as the illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan heights and Lebanese Sheba Farms is testament to the greater Israel project that covers lands much larger than that which they have stolen so far.
Palestinians will not go meekly into that good night. They will die before they allow another Nakba to take place.
While parents write their children’s names on their bodies so they can be identified in the event of their being slaughtered by American munitions, while people collect body parts of the dismembered dead around the blast sites, we cannot for one minute imagine the fear and despair felt by 2.2 million people hopelessly corralled into an area 12 miles by six.
Israel hopes to occupy Northern Gaza and then expel the refugees into Egypt.
It is a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing which is supported unconditionally by NATO, the EU, and America.
Britain created the problem with the secret Balfour Declaration of 1917, allowing for a Jewish state to be created in Palestine combined, with the Sykes Picot agreement of 1916 that carved up the Ottoman Empire after the first World War to give imperialist colonial giants France and Britain the opportunity to exploit and militarily occupy West Asia.
Every death today in the region is at the hands of the British and French foreign policy to divide and conquer the region, a tactic subsequently employed by America in the last 40 years.
A younger Joe Biden, when he was in full command of his faculties, stated that “if Israel did not exist America would have to create it.”
It is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends that the Gazans may remember after the deluge. Those who are lucky enough to survive.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine that started in 1948 has continued in occupied Palestine – Gaza and the West Bank. Since 2007, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza, making it the largest prison in the world. It attacked and destroyed Gaza and killed its people many times. With overwhelming military power and aerial bombardment, it reduced Gaza to ashes a few times before the present war of total destruction and the annihilation of the besieged and defenceless people of Gaza. It is more like the ‘final solution’.
Hamas represents a national liberation movement, and it has ruled Gaza under Israeli siege in extremely difficult situations. It was legitimately voted into this position, while some of its leaders were assassinated by Israel. It wants an end to the illegal siege of Gaza and the brutal occupation of their land by a colonial power, Israel. Israel is unconditionally supported and weaponised by the ruling establishment of the United States, Britain, and many other allies of the US.
The two-state solution was a hoax all along, and over the decades it meant it was nothing more than a camouflage for Israeli expansion and the elimination of the Palestinians as an entity. As long as Israel remains a Zionist state, the question of a two-state solution will remain a joke.
The news comes as Gaza’s death toll surpasses 10,000
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, November 6, 2023
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Biden administration is planning a $320 million transfer of precision-guided bomb kits to Israel, a show of support for the Israeli onslaught despite the growing civilian death toll.
The report said the administration notified congressional leaders on October 31 that it intended to transfer Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies, which turn unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions that can be fired by Israeli warplanes.
The bombs will be transferred from weapons manufacturer Rafael USA to its Israeli parent company, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It’s unclear what funds will be used for the transfer or if Israel is purchasing the equipment.
Israel receives $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the US, and the Biden administration is looking to provide another $14 billion to support the Gaza campaign. In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the US began immediately shipping new military equipment to Israel.
According to the Journal, the Pentagon has refused to say how much weaponry, equipment, and other types of aid it has provided Israel since October 7. Besides the material support, the US is flying drones over Gaza, has special operations forces in Israel, and has deployed an enormous amount of firepower to the region.
The news of the $320 million bomb transfer came as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 10,000, including over 4,000 children. US officials claim they are pressing Israel about the civilian casualties, but the administration refuses to condition military aid or use other leverage it has.
Israeli soldiers take their positions during a campaign to arrest Palestinians in the village of Shweika, near Tulkarm, in the northern West Bank on Nov. 3, 2023.
(Photo by Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
This ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was recently pilloried by Israel because he stated a truism, observing that the 7 October Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”
Guterres was calling the world’s attention to Israel’s long record of severe criminal provocations in occupied Palestine, which have been occurring ever since it became the occupying power after the 1967 war.
The occupier, a role expected to be temporary, is entrusted in such circumstances with upholding international humanitarian law by ensuring the security and safety of the occupied civilian population, as spelled out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel reacted so angrily to Guterres’s entirely appropriate and accurate remarks because they could be interpreted as implying that Israel “had it coming” in view of its severe and varied abuses against people in the occupied Palestinian territories, most flagrantly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
After all, if Israel could present itself to the world as an innocent victim of the 7 October attack – an incident that was itself replete with war crimes – it could reasonably hope to gain carte blanche from its patrons in the West to retaliate as it pleased, without being bothered by the restraints of international law, UN authority, or common morality. Indeed, Israel responded to the 7 October attack with its typical skill in manipulating the global discourse that shapes public opinion and guides the foreign policies of many important countries. Such tactics seem almost superfluous here, as the
U.S. and E.U. swiftly issued blanket approval for whatever Israel did in response, however vengeful, cruel, or unrelated to restoring Israeli border security.
Guterres’s UN speech had such a dramatic impact because it punctured Israel’s balloon of artfully constructed innocence, in which the 7 October attack came out of the blue. This exclusion of context diverted attention from the devastation of Gaza and the genocidal assault on its overwhelmingly innocent, and long-victimized, population of 2.3 million.
Extraordinary lapses
What I find strange and disturbing is that, despite the consensus that the Hamas attack became feasible only because of extraordinary lapses in Israel’s supposedly second-to-none intelligence capabilities and tight border security, this factor has rarely been discussed since that day.
Instead of the morning after being filled with vengeful fury, why wasn’t the focus within Israel and elsewhere on taking emergency action to restore Israeli security by correcting these costly lapses, which would seem to be the most effective way to ensure that nothing comparable to 7 October could happen again?
I can understand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctance to stress this explanation or advocate this form of response, as it would be tantamount to a confession of his personal co-responsibility for the tragedy traumatically experienced by Israel when Palestinian fighters flooded over the border.
In effect, the Palestinian people are being victimised by two convergent catastrophes: one political, the other humanitarian
But what of others in Israel, and among its supporting governments?
Undoubtedly, Israel is in all likelihood devoting all means at its disposal, with a sense of urgency, to close these incredible gaps in its intelligence system, and to beef up its military capabilities along Gaza’s comparatively short borders.
It is not necessary to be a security wonk to conclude that dealing reliably with these security issues would do more to prevent and deter future Hamas attacks, than this ongoing saga of inflicting devastating punishment on the Palestinian population of Gaza, very few of whom are involved with the military wing of Hamas.
Genocidal fury
Netanyahu has lent further plausibility to such speculation by presenting a map of the Middle East without Palestine included, effectively erasing Palestinians from their own homeland, during a September UN speech, where he spoke of a new peace in the Middle East amid the prospect of Israel-Saudi Arabia normalisation. His presentation amounted to an implicit denial of the UN consensus on the two-state formula as a roadmap for peace.
Meanwhile, the genocidal fury of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack is enraging people across the Arab world, and indeed the world over, even in western countries. But after more than three weeks of merciless bombardment, total siege and mass forced displacement, Israel’s discretion to unleash this torrent of violence on Gaza has yet to be challenged by its western supporters.
The U.S. in particular is backing Israel at the UN, using its veto as needed in the Security Council, and voting with almost no solidarity from major countries against a ceasefire at the General Assembly. Even France voted for the General Assembly resolution, and the UK had the minimal decency to abstain, both likely reacting pragmatically to the populist pressures mounted by large and angry street demonstrations at home.
Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession.
It has also been forgotten in reacting to Israel’s tactics in Gaza that from day one, the extremist government has initiated a shocking series of violent provocations across the occupied West Bank. Many have interpreted this undisguised unleashing of settler violence as part of the endgame of the Zionist project, aimed at achieving victory over the remnants of Palestinian resistance.
There is little reason to doubt that Israel deliberately overreacted to 7 October by immediately engaging in a genocidal response, particularly if its purpose was to divert attention from the escalation of West Bank settler violence, exacerbated by the government’s distribution of guns to “civilian security teams.”
The Israeli government’s ultimate plan seems to be to end once and for all UN partition fantasies, lending authority to the Zionist maximalist goal of annexation or total subjugation of West Bank Palestinians.
In effect, as morbid as it seems, the Israeli leadership seized the occasion of 7 October to “finish the job” by committing genocide in Gaza, under the guise that Hamas was such a danger as to justify not only its destruction, but this indiscriminate onslaught against the whole population.
My analysis leads me to conclude that this ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical.
Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession. Whether it is called “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” is of secondary importance, although it already qualifies as one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes of the 21stcentury.
In effect, the Palestinian people are being victimised by two convergent catastrophes: one political, the other humanitarian.
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. In 2008 he was also appointed by the UN to serve a six-year term as the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
If Nazim Hikmet had seen how Israel has killed more than three thousand Palestinian children in Gaza in four weeks, he would have written about 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 as he did about Hiroshima child.
A march in support of the people of Gaza, in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, 26 October 2023 (AFP)
On 25 October, when confronted with the escalating Palestinian death toll and asked if Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ignored his requests to minimise civilian casualties, President Joe Biden took the opportunity to casually cast doubt on Palestinian death statistics and declared: “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”
Biden’s comments suggest he is completely unconcerned by the scope and scale of Palestinian civilian harm as a result of Israeli military attacks in Gaza, or the fact that, day by day, he is actively becoming evermore complicit in an Israeli military campaign where Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children with impunity, constituting the crime of genocide.
During the past 24 days of hostilities, Israeli forces have killed at least 3,542 Palestinian children in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, with estimates of over 1,050 children reported missing and presumed to be trapped or dead under the rubble, awaiting rescue or recovery.
During this same time, Israeli forces have killed 36 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank.
To put the intensity of the current Israeli bombardment into context, Israeli forces in the past 24 days have killed more than two times the number of Palestinian children killed in Gaza in all previous Israeli military offensives combined from January 2006 to 6 October 2023.
Prior to 7 October, my colleagues and I at Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) had documented and verified a total of 1,171 Palestinian children killed in Gaza.
Grave violations against children
I first worked with DCIP in the summer of 2009, just after the Israeli military offensive on Gaza during December 2008 and January 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead, where DCIP documented and verified 353 Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks.
I pored over documentation collected by our DCIP field researchers in Gaza to draft evidence-based reports on Israeli attacks on schools and hospitals, civilian homes, and direct attacks on civilians.
The high water mark for Israeli war crimes against Palestinian children in Gaza was reset during the 50-day Israeli military offensive in July and August 2014, known as Operation Protective Edge. Our investigation into Palestinian child fatalities found overwhelming and repeated evidence that Israeli forces committed grave violations against children amounting to war crimes.
DCIP independently verified the deaths of 547 Palestinian children among the killed in Gaza, 535 of them as a direct result of Israeli attacks. Nearly 68 percent of the children killed by Israeli forces were 12 years old or younger.
To put the scale of Palestinian children killed into a broader context, Israeli forces have killed more children in Gaza in the past 22 days than the total number killed in armed conflict globally over the course of a whole year, for the last three years.
International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks and requires all parties to an armed conflict to distinguish between military targets, civilians, and civilian objects.
Deploying explosive weapons in densely populated civilian areas constitutes indiscriminate attacks and carrying out direct attacks against civilians or civilian objects amounts to war crimes.
Yet, the near complete impunity delivered by the United States and enjoyed by Israeli officials and armed forces means they essentially know no bounds.
Each Israeli military offensive from Operation Cast Lead to now has been met with little to no international pressure to hold any actor accountable, simply perpetuating systemic impunity as the norm.
The previous failure of the international community to hold Israeli officials accountable for war crimes, and, maybe even more importantly, to sit back and not challenge the United States’ unconditional support for Israel, has led us to where we are now.
Apartheid policies
Children in occupied Gaza account for nearly 50 percent of the total 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Nearly all of them now have grown up under 16 years of Israeli siege and closure and repeated Israeli military offensives that created an increasingly unlivable human-made humanitarian situation prior to 7 October.
In the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Palestinian children experience an unceasingly oppressive and increasingly violent Israeli military occupation where Israel’s leadership is more intent than ever on relying on apartheid policies and intentional lethal force to manage an unjust, oppressive, and entirely unsustainable military occupation.
In addition to the current threat of indiscriminate Israeli air strikes on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, Palestinian children face further imminent threats due to mass internal displacement and Israeli government restrictions on food, water, fuel, and other humanitarian assistance being able to reach them and their families.
The medical system in Gaza is collapsing as Israeli forces continue to escalate their bombardment of Gaza by air, land and sea.
Under international law, genocide constitutes the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group, in whole or in part. Genocide can result from killing or by creating conditions of life that are so unbearable it brings about the group’s destruction.
What we are witnessing, and in the case of DCIP documenting in real-time, is Israeli forces actively committing the crime of genocide against Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, as they carry out unlawful attacks with complete disregard to international law, in an attempt to depopulate Gaza. It is happening with the full and unconditional support of the United States government.
The United States, as a signatory to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, has a duty to both prevent and punish the crime of genocide. Beyond that, Biden and other US government officials should know that the Genocide Convention criminalises not just the commission of genocide, but also attempts to commit genocide and, importantly, complicity in genocide.
Bold US leadership needed
The US is not simply standing by, failing to prevent or punish genocide against Palestinians – it is actively enabling and supporting the gravest crime under international law, making the US complicit.
Israeli warplanes are entirely US-sourced and the munitions killing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are overwhelmingly American-made weapons.
When confronted with the widespread and systematic Israeli military attacks against an overwhelmingly youthful civilian population in Gaza and the routine unlawful killing of Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, the Biden administration has responded with unconditional support to Israel.
It has used its diplomatic support to paralyse the United Nations Security Council to ensure Israeli forces can continue the onslaught, and has pledged another $10.6bn in US taxpayer-funded military assistance and American-made weapons.
This is on top of the $3.8bn in US military assistance already provided annually to Israel.
If Biden is not concerned about the current Palestinian death toll, then I have no illusions that obligations under the Genocide Convention will make him shift his policies.
With no end in sight, there is a dire need for bold US leadership to take immediate action to prioritise the preservation of human life, given the worsening hostilities and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
How many Palestinian children do Israeli forces have to kill before someone steps up to lead in an incredibly urgent humanitarian and political moment?
Brad Parker is an attorney and Senior Policy Adviser at Defense for Children International – Palestine. He specializes in issues of juvenile justice and grave violations against children during armed conflict and leads DCIP’s legal and policy advocacy efforts on Palestinian children’s rights. He is a co-leader of the No Way to Treat a Child campaign.
Peace and Justice Post 