Israel’s renewed Gaza slaughter
It was a relief when, in December, Israel finally agreed to a ceasefire. It didn’t guarantee Palestinians access to aid and construction materials to rebuild their shattered homes. It didn’t address the structural injustice of millions of Gazans being unable to travel to see their families in the West Bank. It wasn’t going to liberate the thousands of Palestinian hostages being tortured in Israeli prisons.
Yet it was impossible not to be moved by scenes of Gazans rejoicing at what was supposed to be the end of this historic slaughter, of hundreds of thousands commencing their slow march back to Gaza’s devastated northern region.
Yet in just a few weeks, Netanyahu has taken any hope that Gaza could return to some semblance of normality and smashed it to pieces. Once again, the bombs are dropping on defenceless refugees. Israel made its intent clear by kicking off with a massacre of 400 people, nearly 200 of them children.
Israel’s military has now directly killed more than 50,000 people, according to the Gaza Ministry for Health. A figure that includes preventable losses due to sickness, starvation and other issues associated with the war and decades-long siege would be far higher, potentially over 200,000.
In typical form, much of the Western media repeated Netanyahu’s lies that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefire. But the truth is clear to anybody who cares to see, and has been discussed widely within Israel’s own press. Netanyahu needs the genocide to continue to keep his governmental coalition together.
In any case, the ceasefire was never real. Israeli forces killed at least 155 Gazans throughout the truce period. The ceasefire also brought a brutal escalation in Israel’s colonial efforts in the West Bank, with Jenin, Tulkarem and other villages besieged. This represented a crescendo of activity that began in the days after 7 October. A report released by the UN Human Rights Office on 18 March revealed that more than 20,000 new Jewish homes have been approved for construction in occupied East Jerusalem since that time, with another 10,000 more planned for the occupied West Bank.
The same report also estimated that an unprecedented 49 new illegal outposts have been established, part of the steady integration of the West Bank into Israel. While former US President Joe Biden liked to pretend that these illegal activities are unrelated to official Israeli policy, the report also found that “the line between settler and state violence [has] blurred to a vanishing point”.
The resumption of the war means attention will return to Gaza, where the possibilities for Israeli barbarism are endless. Well-informed commentators were speculating late last year that Israel was planning to occupy permanently at least some parts of Gaza, if not the whole strip. The topic was openly discussed in Haaretz newspaper, for instance.
It’s possible that the ceasefire was always conceived of as a momentary pause designed to give Trump a small boost, appease some of the pro-hostage sentiment in Israel and allow for serious preparations for a new attempt at ethnic cleansing.
The US is certainly no barrier to this fascistic project. Indeed, not long after taking office, President Trump declared himself in favour of the total cleansing of Gaza, later re-posting a psychotic AI-generated video of the territory re-imagined as a holiday resort. Such a move would fit with Trump’s imperial vision of the world, where might makes right.
The rest of the world has reacted to the renewal of Israel’s genocidal onslaught with utter indifference. Arab and Muslim leaders have said nothing, and done even less. Turkey’s Erdogan is too busy arresting opposition leaders and whipping up anti-refugee racism to speak up for Gaza. In any case, Turkey is part of the US global war machine via its membership of NATO, which makes his government utterly complicit in all that has taken place.
The European powers are in a similar boat. They are hypocritically using Trump’s undermining of Ukraine to justify a historic boost in military spending while remaining unmoved by an actual genocide in Palestine.
Here in Australia, the establishment has chosen to ignore the resumption of war. The media have run dead on the issue, and the political class are silent. On one level, it’s understandable, as recent events have made open promotion of Israel’s talking points somewhat difficult.
It was a bit embarrassing (though unsurprising) when police revealed that the much-hyped surge of antisemitism in NSW was a total hoax. And now their darling Israel has broken yet another peace agreement, preferring to reopen a campaign of mass destruction.
Yet this silence confirms their despicable complicity.
In light of that, it was heartening to see a substantially increased turnout at the demonstrations against the war across Australia last weekend. It’s never been clearer that it will take an international grassroots movement to win justice for the Palestinians. Each and every act of protest and resistance is important; each one of us can and must play our part.
