Before our eyes. In real time. With videos, photographs, data and testimonials. Israeli soldiers show it on their own social networks. Massacres, destruction of infrastructure, looting of civilian homes, displacement orders, bombings against schools, medical centers, refugee camps, bakeries, blocking of humanitarian aid, sniper fire against families who tried to flee, threats against journalists and public statements demonstrating a deliberate intention to cause damage and destruction.
In recent days, new conclusive data have become known. There are at least 902 families from Gaza who have been exterminated, and there is no one left, not a single member who can protect the memory of what they were. Of 1,364 others, only one member survived. At least 17,000 minors lost their fathers, their mothers or both. Official figures put 42,000 dead – including more than 14,000 children – and 97,700 injured, but the most conservative calculations by medical staff put the death toll at more than a hundred thousand.
902 families were exterminated by Israeli attacks: no member remained alive
Among the victims of Israeli attacks are at least 986 doctors and health workers, 135 journalists, more than 500 teachers and 220 United Nations employees. Large mass graves containing unidentified bodies were discovered. 85% of schools have been damaged or destroyed, 80% of arable land is unusable, all universities have been razed – with Israeli soldiers recording their bombings and celebrating on camera – and more than 80% of hospitals are damaged or unable to operate. function. according to data from international organizations and the United Nations. Israel dropped more than 80,000 tons of bombs on Gaza.
The vast majority of the population faces a lack of food, clean water and medicine due to the Israeli blockade of needed humanitarian aid, causing hunger, disease and death. Doctors had to carry out “operations without anesthesia and see children die in hospitals due to lack of resources”. Patients with diabetes, cancer or hepatitis do not have access to the most basic treatments. Attacks on hospitals and orders for forced displacement and evacuation of medical centers caused the collapse of the health system, leading to more deaths.
Two of the most prominent genocide experts, Omer Bartov and Aryeh Neier, denounce Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza
A new phase of destruction in the north
Added to this is the new phase of destruction against northern Gaza. Since October 1, Israel has prevented the entry of humanitarian aid, launched daily attacks against civilians and encouraged a forced displacement of the population towards the south, with orders to expel the only three hospitals that remained operational, which seriously affects the sick and injured. . In just twelve days, the Israeli army killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians, including children, women, medical personnel and journalists. The start date of this operation coincides with the Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, so much international attention has been diverted from the Gaza Strip.
Among the targets attacked in northern Gaza are schools, refugee camps, the only large bakery still open in the area and a malnutrition care center, where several women and children died while queuing for their food. turn, according to UNICEF reports.
The World Health Organization reported that Israel denied supplies have entered hospitals in the north seven times in a row, and the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees warns that “at least 400,000 people are trapped in the region.” The UN says some of its agency’s shelters and services have been forced to close for the first time and that “hunger is spreading and worsening again.”
From the Jabalia region, Dr. Ezzideen Shehab reports that “the Israeli army forced us to flee for the third time. People walk in the streets without knowing where to go, as if they are heading towards the gallows, full of fear. The hospital where he worked has completely closed its doors due to the continuous bombing of everything that moves. “What is happening here is a real organized genocide. »
Added to all this is the announcement of a new Israeli plan to ban the presence and activities in Gaza and the West Bank of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), which supports medical and educational services , essential to the survival of the population. population. “These projects are unacceptable,” denounced the director of the World Health Organization. “It would be a catastrophe,” warned United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
In statement this week, 30 UN rapporteurs reaffirm that Israel is ‘committing genocide’
More denunciations of the genocide from expert voices
The evidence of the genocide in Gaza continues to grow, as do the voices of experts who insist on this point. The statements of Israeli leaders expressing a desire for destruction constitute in themselves evidence which was presented before the International Court of Justice, as part of the genocide trial against Israel.
In recent months, two leading experts on the subject, highly respected in their sectors, have emphasized that we are facing a genocide, which has marked a before and after in the circuits linked to human rights and international law. They are the historian Omer Bartov, Jewish Israeli, university professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, and Arieh Neier, Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, co-founder of the organization Human Rights Watch and one of those responsible for the creation of the International Criminal Court. . In November 2023, both believed that there was not enough evidence to speak of genocide. The passage of time and repetition of patterns made them change their minds.
Bartov denounced Israeli attacks on Rafah launched last May as “genocidal actions.” He considers that these bombings demonstrate “a total disregard for any humanitarian norms and clearly indicate that the ultimate objective from the beginning was to render the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable and to weaken its population to the point of extinction or flight. Furthermore, it asserts that Israel acted “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part” the Palestinian population of Gaza, “by killing, causing serious harm or inflicting living conditions designed to result in the destruction of the group. This is precisely the legal definition of genocide in the United Nations Convention.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention also warns that we are facing genocide in Gaza.
For his part, expert Aryeh Neier wrote in June that “Israel is involved in a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.” His accusation relates to the “repeated obstruction” of the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip by Israel, with a “cumulative effect” which caused the collapse of the health system and a context of hunger and disease.
Other specialists have expressed themselves in the same sense, such as Amos Goldberg, professor of Holocaust history at the Hebrew University, author last May of an article entitled “Yes, it is a genocide”, Raz Segal, professor of genocide and Holocaust at Stockton University. , who speaks of a “classic genocide” or Professor Francis Boyle, the first lawyer to obtain protection measures against genocide in court (Bosnia case, 1993). Also the genocide expert Martin Shaw, with a multidisciplinary perspective, emphasizes that in Gaza there is). “social destruction with a genocidal element”.
Thirty United Nations rapporteurs spoke in the same direction this week, in a statement in which they denounced that Israel “permits genocide”, with “genocidal attacks, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment”. For months, the UN rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has been talking about genocide. In his report presented in March, titled “Anatomy of Genocide,” he detailed the evidence and highlighted the blockage of aid and the context of hunger and disease as proof of intent.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention – named after the Jewish lawyer who created the legal concept of genocide – also warns that we are facing the development of genocide in Gaza.
Political complaints are not forceful enough, nor are pressure measures
All of this is being investigated as part of the genocide trial against Israel at the International Court of Justice, from which precautionary orders have been issued demanding the entry of sufficient aid into Gaza, which ‘Israel continues to fail to comply today, as this increases the damage caused to the civilian population.
Here in Spain, the Dèlas Center for Peace Studies also uses the term genocide in its latest report on Gaza, in which it explains that it uses it in the sense given to it by the Royal Academy of Language – “extermination or systematic elimination of a group.” “human because of race, ethnicity, religion, politics or nationality” – without having to wait for a court decision that may never arrive.
In human rights circles, hundreds of lawyers try to ensure that international law is respected. But in other spaces, the killings, the blockage of aid and new Israeli forced displacement orders continue to be downplayed, in an attempt to downplay the seriousness of what is happening. Political denunciations are not strong enough, nor are pressure measures. Thus, at this stage, between ambiguity and euphemisms, the genocide continues and impunity progresses.
