What shall we call this massacre, so reckless and senseless, even before the major operation begins?
By Gideon LEVY
About 70 people from dawn to noon on Wednesday. Almost double the number killed in the massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz. 22 of them were children and 15 were women. Last night, 23 were killed in a hospital. Operation “Genocide Chariot” has not yet fully begun. What shall we call this massacre, so reckless and senseless, even before the big operation begins? 23 killed in the bombing of a hospital – one of the worst war crimes – just to try to kill Mohammed Sinwar, the latest devil, with nine bunker bombs – all to satisfy Yedioth Ahronoth’s lust for the headline: “In His Brother’s Footsteps.” Readers loved it, Israelis loved it, no one objected on Wednesday.
They made peace in Riyadh, and massacred in Gaza. It is hard to think of a starker contrast between the scenes in Riyadh and those in Jabalya on Wednesday. The bodies of children being held by their parents, the bulldozer trying to clear a path for an ambulance that is blown up from the air, people digging through the rubble of a hospital looking for their loved ones – all this in the face of the lifting of sanctions on Syria and the hope of a new future.
Nothing, not even the elimination of another Sinwar, can justify the indiscriminate bombing of a hospital. This unshakable truth has been completely forgotten now. Everything is normal, everything is justified and approved, even the attack on the intensive care unit at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis. There is no choice but to shout again: You cannot attack hospitals – nor schools that have been turned into shelters – even if Hamas’s strategic air command is hiding under them. Even if Sinwar is there, whose killing is so senseless. Is there anything left that we can do in Gaza that will be seen in Israel as morally and legally unacceptable? 100 dead children? A thousand women for Sinwar, the brother? It was necessary to eliminate him, they explained, because he was an “obstacle to a hostage deal.”
We have also lost our shame. The only obstacle to a hostage deal is in Jerusalem, his name is Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his fascist partners, and no one can conceive that it is legitimate to harm them to remove the obstacle.
What happened on Wednesday in Gaza is just a preview of what will happen in the coming months if no one stops Israel. As Donald Trump’s colossal campaign in the Gulf progresses, the gun that will stop Israel has yet to be seen. When it was assumed that there was still a purpose, when the goals seemed clear, when the human need to punish and avenge October 7 was still understandable, when it still seemed that Israel knew what it wanted; it was still possible to somehow accept mass murder and destruction. But not anymore.
Now, when it is clear that Israel has no purpose and no plan, there is no longer any way to justify what happened in Gaza on Tuesday evening.
No Israeli leader opened his mouth, none. The hope of the left, Yair Golan, on a good day calls for an end to the war, and like him, tens of thousands of determined protesters. They want to end the war to bring the hostages home. They are also worried about the lives of the soldiers who will die in vain. What about Gaza? What about its sacrifice? How did we get to a situation in which no Zionist politician can come to the defense? Not a single righteous man in Sodom, not a single one. The scenes from there seared the soul again on Wednesday, again the carts with corpses, again children in a long line with body bags on the floor, here their bodies lie, and again the piercing wails of parents for their daughters and sons.
About 100 people were killed in Gaza on Wednesday. Almost all of them innocent, except they were Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. They were killed by Israeli soldiers. And we remain silent. (Haaretz)
