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A short history of Gaza’s destruction

Just when we thought Israel’s genocide was the final straw in Palestine’s tragic story, Donald Trump again exposes his own, and Netanyahu’s, disregard for standards of humanity. We must also not forget Joe Biden’s role in this tragedy.

Just take a moment to consider what suffering these old men have inflicted on Palestinians since October 7, 2023. Most of us in the West fully understood the rage and hurt that Israelis felt in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack.

Israel’s response was as many expected: It was fierce and all-consuming, and to most of us in those early days, it was appropriate. Hamas did itself no favours that day, attacking unarmed civilians on a religious holiday.

Their savagery was revealed over the next month, and if all of it was true, it invited a full throated response. Over time, and as the civilian death toll in Gaza rose, it became clear that Israel was intent on inflicting as much death and destruction on the Palestinians as possible.

There does come a time when the thirst for vengeance is satisfied, however. Many in the international community felt that the retaliation had run its course when the numbers climbed up into the thousands. Members of Israel’s right wing nationalist government were quoted making it clear that all Palestinians were considered culpable, and being civilians provided them no excuse.

The government’s rhetoric hardened, and old themes like ‘Greater Israel’ emerged. The government tacitly approved the escalation of violence, and the accompanying brutality, exercised by the Israeli soldiers. The dehumanisation of the Palestinians was everyday more obvious, and the word “genocide” was spoken, mainly by international law experts, but gradually it became more widespread.

Netanyahu’s legal problems became relevant to the bigger picture

Another reason cited for the continuing obliteration of Gaza’s people and infrastructure was the ongoing need for Netanyahu to divert attention away from his upcoming criminal trial on corruption charges.

Whatever Israel’s military and security aims were at the beginning of the retaliation, they could have been more than achieved without the callous destruction, and the indifference to the suffering of civilians. As day followed day, more schools and hospitals were bombed, the civilian death toll rose much too quickly against a seemingly defeated Hamas, and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) started to produce meaningless and hollow statements of regret for the indiscriminate shelling and bombing.

It was disturbing also that aid workers and journalists became fair game. This was a case of the leadership, with their coded descriptions of Palestinians as barely animals, unloosing the IDF from the bonds of the Geneva Convention, and any other conventions.

Of course most of us still trusted the good will and humane intentions of the Americans. As Israel’s arms supplier and backer, we believed that America had the power to pull Israel into line by invoking international law, and the basic rules of conflict.

Joe Biden let the world down, and it appeared that Netanyahu would continue his so-called ‘war’, unrestrained. Biden looked weak from the first time Netanyahu defied his calls for moderation. And yet he continued to supply Israel with seemingly illimitable munitions, including the huge bombs which could so easily demolish residential buildings alongside refugee areas and even kindergartens.

After the bombing, the starvation

We have all seen the pictures of starving children, the mourning families, the skeletal appearance of the survivors. We have heard Israel’s denials that people are being starved to death. We have seen cease-fires which fizzle out after a week or two. We have seen the revolting smugness of Netanyahu, and after Biden’s hapless replacement by Trump, the shattering of hope that the isolationist, anti-war Trump would stop the destruction.

Then the ethnic cleansing …

He seemed to have Netanyahu’s measure, but it was more like a re-union of opportunistic gangsters, looking anew at fresh opportunities. Trump is possibly the only world leader in modern history with the gall to even voice a plan to turn a war-torn territory into a beach resort. His stunning lack of even a modicum of respect for the dead, his naked greed and his shamelessness are there for all to see.

Of course Netanyahu is totally on board. They want to follow through with the obscene plan to turn Gaza into a beachside resort. They want Palestinians to ‘voluntarily’ and ‘temporarily’ re-locate, when of course their choices range from being shot, or bombed or being starved if they don’t agree.

There is no place to go. How many more would die on the trip to where? Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria? Mass deportation, and should they own land now, they would be permitted to return to a piece of land of 30 square metres, which is the size of a small bedroom.

One small comfort is that it will probably never be done, because it is simply too difficult, and too unpalatable for the rest of the world to tolerate. The plan has been described as insane, and a smokescreen for ethnic cleansing, which is of course another crime against humanity. Like the Nakba, but even bigger. Two million people made homeless, to add to their misery.

They even have a marketing name for the new venture: “GREAT”; the initials of Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust. Very grandiose, just like the two old sociopaths.

Talking about sociopaths, “the proposal was reportedly developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation with financial planning contributed by Boston Consulting Group.” The Guardian

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is the outfit which has recently been handling food distribution in Gaza. Their work has led to the deaths of hundreds of men women and children, whose only crime was to queue for food, at a food distribution centre.

It is hard not to blame the Americans en masse, for their lack of foresight in choosing Trump as their president. But Biden was equally hopeless, seemingly afraid to upset the American Zionists back home.

Trump’s venality is icing on the cake for Netanyahu. Biden he could safely work around. Trump has extended the possibilities, by suggesting a joint venture in profiting from genocide.

Trump could have stopped this immediately, and yet he blithely continues to arm the Israelis, who continue to kill women and children, without a backward glance. The Americans are paying for this humanitarian catastrophe with their taxes.

Israel will be shunned for centuries for this calamity

Even without looking at the Palestinian individuals’ personal suffering, the damage to families and communities, to neighbourhoods, to schoolyards, to friendship groups, is beyond comprehension.

There is no coming back from this. The damage already inflicted on the entire culture of a people will not wash away. Israel will never be trusted again, while there is a single person on earth who remembers this carnage, this wanton punishment.

Israel will never be respected again either, not if it produces hundreds of humanitarian heroes, not if it wakes up one day and becomes a ‘penitent nation’. It has inflicted too much needless pain, and worst of all, it has seemingly enjoyed inflicting it. Even we in Australia, so far away, can see the cruelty and the self-justification. It drips with self-serving hypocrisy.