[News] Israel is preparing to commit genocide

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/israel-is-preparing-to-commit-genocide/>
Israel is preparing to commit genocide
Yumna Patel - October 13, 2023
------------------------------

Israel is planning on carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

The motions have been underway for days, as Israel has relentlessly bombed
the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on earth.

In six days, Israel has dropped 6,000 bombs
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-drops-6-000-bombs-in-gaza-in-6-days-nearly-matching-us-total-in-afghanistan-in-1-year-report/3017833>
on the besieged coastal enclave, which is home to 2.3 million Palestinians.
Half of them are children. This falls just short of the highest number of
bombs dropped by the US in a year in the war on Afghanistan.

Over the past week, Israel has dropped internationally-prohibited white
phosphorus on civilians in Gaza
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/12/israel-white-phosphorus-used-gaza-lebanon>.
It’s leveled entire residential neighborhoods. Wiped out families off the
population registry, and killed more than 1,500 Palestinians. A third of
the death toll are children.

Palestinians have been screaming at the top of their lungs for days that
Israel is carrying out a genocide on them. Israeli leaders have only
supported those fears, calling Gazans “human animals” and pledging to “wipe
Hamas off the face of the earth.”

Today, everyone’s worst fears were confirmed.

On Friday, October 13, Palestinians in Gaza woke up to the news that the
Israeli army was demanding that the more than 1.1 million Palestinians who
live in the northern Gaza Strip “evacuate” to the southern part of the
strip in the span of 24 hours.

Let that sink in. This is half of Gaza’s population. The northern part of
Gaza includes Gaza City – the most densely populated area within the Gaza
Strip. It also includes two of Gaza’s eight refugee camps, the Jabalia and
al-Shati refugee camps. Both have been bombed over the past few days. Both
are home to hundreds of thousands of refugees. They were made refugees by
Israel, 75 years ago.

The Israeli military reportedly sent a direct warning to residents of Gaza
City <https://x.com/lalarian/status/1712759125640183983?s=20>, who number
around 750,000, ordering them to leave the city
<https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1712707301369434398>, as it plans to
destroy what it claims is an “extensive infrastructure” of underground
tunnels used by Hamas beneath the city.

But the United Nations said it received a different, much broader order
<https://twitter.com/michellenichols/status/1712661125643264504>, saying
Israel was given 1.1 million civilians in northern Gaza 24 hours to flee
south. A UN spokesman called the order “impossible” to achieve “without
devastating humanitarian consequences.”

The Israeli army reportedly ordered Gazans not to return to the north until
the army says they are allowed to go back.

But will they ever be allowed to go back? And will there even be a Gaza
left to go back to?

No one knows what Israel’s plans are when the 24-hour deadline expires.
Will they launch a ground invasion? Or will they simply pummel Gaza from
the skies, as they have been doing for the past 16 years?

Whichever way Israel decides to go about it does not matter.

What matters is that Israel, with the support of the United States, is
committing genocide right before our eyes. It has been ongoing, a slow
genocide and ethnic cleansing, for 75 years.

75 years of global inaction and Israeli impunity have led to this moment.
The moment where we see one of the most vulnerable populations on earth,
77% of whom are already refugees, being displaced as one of the world’s
strongest military powers goes on a genocidal warpath.

Many Gazans are vowing to remain, saying they refuse to be displaced yet
again. Many Palestinians are saying it’s psychological warfare, akin to the
Zionist radio broadcasts <https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/38640>
of 75 years ago, that spread fear amongst the population and caused many to
flee their homes out of fear of the Zionist atrocities that would await
them if they stayed.

But the images are already flooding in as people in Gaza begin to flee
their homes in fear of what comes.

Men, women, and children, walking through the rubble of their destroyed
land, holding onto whatever bags and belongings they can carry. A march to
the south, not knowing if tomorrow, the south will be next.

A death march.

Palestinians have said for 75 years, that the Nakba of 1948 never ended. It
has continued for 75 years, every single day. In the crowded refugee camps
of Gaza, the alleyways of Jerusalem, the hills of Haifa, and the corners of
Jenin.

But today feels different. As millions of Palestinians in the West Bank,
Jerusalem, ‘48, and across the diaspora watch their people in Gaza be
expelled en masse while Israel destroys their homes and slaughters those
who remain, the only words that people can muster, is “it’s happening
again.”

A second Nakba.
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