The anatomy of a genocide: Gaza one year later

For more than seven decades we have witnessed the dehumanisation of Palestinians, in Gaza and the West Bank, but nothing compares to the campaign of terror wrought on the people of Gaza over the past year. 

The Hamas attacks, the 1 100 Israeli lives lost, the thousands of people injured and the taking of about 250 hostages on 7 October 2023 was illegal and should be condemned and the hostages released. 

But the Israeli response — to destroy a people and the entire Gaza Strip — can never be justified, either morally or legally. 

One year on, about 41  802 Gazans have been killed in the carnage, including more than 16  700 children, and about 96  844 injured, while thousands more are lying dead under the rubble unaccounted for, according to the Middle East Monitor.

It is widely accepted that the world has been witnessing a genocide in Gaza, with the intent to destroy a people, in whole or in part, for concrete reasons. The overwhelming body of evidence indicates that Israel wants to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and this intent is stated and not hidden. 

As the senior deputy director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza said: “There are few parallels in recent history of the extent and pace of killing, destruction, evacuation and displacement that the people in Gaza have had to go through in the past 12 months. Civilians have been left with life-changing injuries and mental health consequences, with no place to live.” 

There has been no humanity for the victims or children displaced, orphaned, sick, starving, or for the many who have had their limbs amputated without anaesthetic. 

United Nations secretary general António Guterres has called Gaza “hell on Earth”. Israel has carried out one of the most intense punishment campaigns in history, dropping 2  000-pound bombs on civilian areas — on schools, hospitals, universities, bookstores, bakeries, libraries, mosques, churches, refugee camps, apartment buildings and cemeteries. 

Israel has destroyed more buildings in northern Gaza than the allies destroyed in World War II in Dresden, Germany, reducing Gaza to 42 million tonnes of rubble. Dropping bombs on six-storey apartment buildings with hundreds of people inside can never be justified. 

Civilians who were told to leave their homes and go to safe zones were then bombed as they fled. There have been ongoing deadly airstrikes in areas the Israeli military said were designated as safe zones. Gazans feel abandoned by the world and helpless with regard to what they have had to endure. 

Gaza has been turned into what the UN has called a graveyard for children. According to Save the Children, there were more children killed in the first three weeks of the war than were killed globally in the past four years. In one instance, an Israeli tank gunner fired 335 bullets into a car that two young girls were in and killed the two paramedics who tried to rescue them. This type of barbarism has become the norm.

Israel has also killed a record number of aid workers in Gaza, targeting them systematically. According to chef José Andrés, an explicitly marked World Central Kitchen aid convoy was targeted, killing seven aid workers. 

The past year has also been the deadliest period for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists began gathering data in 1992. At least 128 journalists and media workers have been killed in targeted attacks in the past year.

It has been recognised internationally that Israel has been starving the people of Gaza, using food and water as a weapon of war. Israel has blocked aid trucks from going into Gaza simply because they carry things such as crutches, nail clippers and chocolate croissants. 

USAid said earlier this year that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza. According to the USAid memo, Israel has interfered with aid efforts; including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks with food and medicine.

The memo also states that lifesaving food was stockpiled less than 50km across the border in an Israeli port, including enough flour to feed about 1.5 million Palestinians for five months. But in February the Israeli government prohibited the transfer of flour. 

The UN has declared a famine in parts of Gaza and many Palestinians go days without eating. Dozens of children have starved to death. Samantha Power, who heads USAid, said the looming famine in Gaza was the result of Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction and impediments of US humanitarian assistance”. USAid concluded that it is “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world”. 

There has also been the emergence of polio in the past few months. 

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are being pursued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, they are simultaneously being welcomed by many powerful countries and leaders. Sadly, many of them are complicit in these crimes through continued trade with Israel in consumer goods and military weaponry, among others.

While the world talks about the options of a binational, single or two-state solution, the third path has been well under way — Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide that has seen the mass killing and expulsion of Palestinians from their land. 

Zionist organisations have been organising trips to watch the bombing of Gaza and holding conferences to prepare for Jewish settlements there, choosing who will be the first settlers to take land in Gaza. For these Zionist organisations, Gaza must be completely Jewish, because they believe it to be God’s will. 

All the above dangerous patterns emerging, and evidence amassed of mass deaths and injuries by bombings and starvation, among others, prove that what the world has been witnessing is the anatomy of a genocide.

Alvin Botes is the deputy minister of international relations and cooperation.