As Jews, we condemn what Israel is doing in Gaza. Any mass slaughter will not just be on Israel’s hands, but on the hands of America.
Ellen Brotsky and Ariel Koren
It is now impossible for US politicians to ignore the slaughter in Gaza: more than 3,500 Palestinians have been killed in the 12-day barrage, including the 500 reportedly killed Tuesday at Al-Ahli Arabi Baptist hospital. Some 50 entire families have been wiped out — every living relative, including children and babies, gone. And Israel has issued a directive to those remaining that amounts to an ultimatum: leave northern Gaza, all 1.1 million of you, “for your own safety” — in other words, evacuate or risk death in the impending blitz and ground invasion.
The United Nations says such a mass evacuation is “impossible” and has potentially “devastating humanitarian consequences,” pleading with Israel to rescind the order. A UN special rapporteur was clear, calling the order “a crime against humanity and a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”
We call it something else: unfolding genocide.
There is no other word to describe the pageantry of death embraced by Israel’s politicians. Under international law, genocide requires two things: an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” and then the attempted destruction of that group. Without intent, these actions amount to ethnic cleansing. If deliberate, they are considered genocide.
Israel seems to be laying the groundwork for destroying Gaza and its residents: President Isaac Herzog on Friday said Gazans are not innocent civilians: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.” This contradicts international law that prohibits collective punishment and the targeting of civilians, both of which amount to war crimes. It also suggests that Israel will show no restraint in its attacks on Gaza.
Forced displacement, which Israel has begun, is an established precursor to extermination — the last step, in fact, in the 10 stages of genocide cited internationally by genocide scholars and institutions, including by Holocaust museums across the world. These steps, which can occur simultaneously, include “dehumanization,” acts that deprive groups of water and food, and the false labelling of military operations as “counter-terrorism.”….
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/18/israel-gaza-hamas-palestinians
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After the truth-shower 