ISRAEL learnt WRONG LESSON from HOLOCAUST

70 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 71

allow, the murder of innocents, in any cause.

The critical lessons have not been learnt

One of the most profoundly depressing realities

revealed by the Israel-Gaza war is that the

countries that seemed to have learnt most from

genocide, Israel and Germany, have learnt

nothing. Think about it: nothing.

The harshest truth is that their ﬂ ippancy on

international law, on pointless and

disproportionate industrial-scale killing of

innocents suggests, tragically, that many of the

Israelis would not have stood in the way of the

Nazi Holocaust, except that it was focused on

Jews.

For several reasons, Ireland has not subscribed

to this ﬂ ippancy.

Imagine unserious Ireland being more

The deﬁ nitive lessons of the Holocaust are

not about Jews, they are not to treat any race

as inferior and not to treat any group as of no

signiﬁ cance

The Victory of Joshu over the Amlekites,

by Poussin Nicols: brought to you in 2024

by the government of Isrel

The lessons of the Holocaust

The biggest evil in history is the Holocaust. A

modern industrial country killed six million Jews,

two thirds of their total number in Europe.

One of the lessons from the Holocaust is to

recognise the vulnerability of Jews because of the

potency of Anti-Semitism, but the deﬁ nitive and

transcendent lessons are not about Jews, they

are: not to treat anyrace as inferior and not to treat

any group of civilians as of no signiﬁ cance.

Another lesson is to be vigilant and willing to

condemn crimes against humanity as they arise.

Vigilance is not optional and it poses a real

burden on those who might incline to give Israel

the beneﬁ t of the doubt over its conduct of the war

in Gaza which followed the massacre by genocidal

Hamas of 1200 people in Israel on 7 October.

Lesson the Holocaust did

not teach

One lesson it did not teach was to perpetrate, or

The Victory of Joshu over the Amlekites,

by Poussin Nicols:

ISRAEL learnt

WRONG LESSON

from HOLOCAUST

The main

lesson of

history is to

avoid war

crimes and

genocide

By Suzie Mélange

serious-minded than Germany and Israel, about

genocide.

How to attribute blame for

breach of humanitarian laws

in Israel/Gaza

Village takes the line that justice and blame

always must be determined on the facts.

It is important to recognise that it is, for

example, entirely possible for a government to

behave well historically but to be behaving badly

now: for the underdog to behave like an overdog.

Justice and blame are rooted in the behaviour

of the parties — not on the tribe they are from.

According to an article in the October edition of

INTERNATIONAL

70 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 71

the Economist — citing political scientist Yascha

Mounk — turning tumultuous issues into simple

clashes of good and evil, confers a halo of virtue

on those who pick the right side. In this schema,

the powerless can do no wrong, least of all to the

powerful—and nobody can be both.

In a polarised age, lots of people infer their

opinions from their political allegiance rather than

the other way round. This, thinks Mr Mounk, is

part of the appeal of a voguish new ideology: it

furnishes an all-purpose vocabulary to apply to

any conﬂict.

In essence, some of the politics of the Israel/

Gaza war are replicating the terms of American

debates over race.

“This philosophy is tailor-made for the

posturing and character-limits of social-media

posts, perhaps one reason it is gaining adherents.

But it prohibits the balance and nuanced

judgments that intractable real-world hostilities

demand. In particular, because the Palestinians

are cast as powerless, and Israel is classed as

powerful, it follows that Israelis cannot qualify as

victims. Never mind the exile of Mizrahi Jews from

Arab countries to Israel. The Holocaust is ancient

history”.

While the commentary on this war is indeed

borderline tribal, the conservative Economist sold

itself short. It certainly has seen no need to

analyse the problem in terms of actions, facts,

international humanitarian law or morality. Or

even the possibility that anyone else would.

Israel and Palestine

Anyone trying to get to grips with what is going on

in Palestine has long had to be capable of holding

more than one idea at the same time. HAMAS IS

BAD ANwD ISRAEL IS BAD.

Palestinians have been described as the victims

of (Jewish) victims.

Village would be inclined to hold Israel’s

strategic breaches of international law and its

illegal occupations against it, historically, dating

back to the instigation of Zionism and the 1948

foundation of Israel which resulted in the Nakba

or expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (half the

then population), whose descendants have

mostly remained as refugees.

Amnesty International says it bluntly: “In its

“previous wars on Gaza Israel has a horriﬁc track

record of committing war crimes with impunity”.

Forget history and look at

behaviour in the current war

But let’s give Israel the beneﬁt of the doubt for the

moment here, (we wouldn’t be unique in so

doing), and leave history out of it. It will make our

case even clearer.

Facts

So…getting to the precise facts.

The total number of Palestinians killed in Gaza

since 7 October now stands at 28,000, while

occording to the UN about 100,000 in Gaza have

been killed, injured or are missing. More than

12,000 children have been killed and 1,000 have

had their limbs amputated. Almost 1.9 million

people – 85 percent of Gaza’s population – are

displaced, nearly two thirds crammed inside

Rafah, the enclave’s southernmost governorate,

to which Israel has encouraged desperate

refugees to retreat. Yet as Village went to press,

Israel was on the verge of a ground oensive in

Rafah, which it was bombarding.

70% of homes have been destroyed. 122

ambulances have been damaged, 337 healthcare

workers have been killed, 154 UN sta killed, 9 of

36 hospitals in Gaza are only partially functional,

and they suer from outages and major shortages

of medical supplies. 70% of schools and 12 higher

education institutions in Gaza have been

damaged or destroyed, completely disrupting

university education. More than 200 heritage and

archaeological sites have been destroyed,

schools, universities, The World Health

Organization (WHO) reports that 93% of Gaza’s

population is experiencing crisis-level hunger,

with a surge in infectious diseases. Delivery of aid

has been restricted by Israel worsening the crisis.

In summary, leading human rights

organisations have found that Israel has inﬂicted

“collective punishment” (Human Rights Watch)

as part of a “criminal policy of revenge” (B’Tselem),

employed “[s]tarvation…as a weapon of war”

(Oxfam), and carried out “unlawful…attacks,

including indiscriminate attacks, which caused

mass civilian casualties” (Amnesty International).

South Africa has submitted a case to the

International Court of Justice saying Israel has

committed genocide: “acts committed with intent

to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical

[sic], racial or religious group”.

Legal and ethical imperatives

As the gauge on which these Israeli actions must

be measured we can usefully look to the UN

Charter (which allows self-defence) and

resolutions, humanitarian law including the

Geneva Conventions and the 1948 Genocide

Convention.

Some of the crimes mentioned — intentional

killing of civilians, collective punishment,

permanently moving civilian populations,

genocide are crimes in themselves: without

possible justiﬁcation.

Justiﬁcation for less clearcut actions depends

on self-defence which requires

— proportionality.

Proportionality

Until the 1980s, the central view of self-defence

in both national and international law was that it

was limited, a shield and not a sword, that

depended on the ‘imminence’ of the danger.

Revenge (where the threat is past not imminent),

anticipatory pre-emption and even deterrence

were not self-defence, and were aorded fewer

protections from the normal laws prohibiting

violence. Unfortunately, the parameters have

changed. In international law it has become

customary to downgrade both the nature of the

remedy and the importance of a measured

approach to its intensity, allowing revenge, pre-

emptive actions and deterrence — especially by

the strongest international powers and by allies

of the US.

Revenge looks to the past not the future and

does not aim for ecacy.

A variation on revenge is deterrence which may

look similar but has a dierent future-looking

motivation centred on the mentality of the

potential aggressor.

Pre-emption is a sword in self-defence. And

does not depend on prior action by or the

mentality of the potential aggressor.

All self-defence must be limited by

proportionality.

Industrial-scale killing

of innocents including

12,000 children, suggests,

tragically, that many of

the Israelis would not have

stood in the way of the Nazi

Holocaust, except that it

was focused on Jews

Tents in Rfh, 12 Februry: wo hirds of

he rumised populion of Gz hve

ﬂed here

72 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 73

There must be a ceiling on proportionality and

a recognition that once it is breached the evil

starts to ﬂow from whoever was originally the

victim.

Pre-emption and deterrence will also be

circumscribed by the need for ecacy: ineective

deterrence and pre-emption serve no purpose.

An overall calculus for Israel’s

actions

If you had the time and the evidence you could

devise a formula for Israel’s actions: adding in on

one side the massacre of 1200 on 7 October, the

need for security where all Israel’s neighbours are

set against it, Hamas’ psychopathy towards

Israel, and the lessons of the Holocaust; and on

the other the deaths of 28,000 people and the

injuries of 68,000 more, the traumatisation of at

least 2.2 million people and the domicide of a

majority of them, illegal destruction of schools,

mosques, universities and even hospitals, the

Nakba, and the ongoing breaches of UN

resolutions on return of illegally occupied land

and treatment of the Palestinians.

You might also note that a remedy could be

sought by Israel for the 134 people kidnapped by

Hamas who remain in captivity. That would

obviously be their release.

You would weigh the present and the future,

and all of this, and you would come up with a

calculus for Israel’s optimal reaction as if it were a

+ b = c where c is the gain.

You would note the following:

•

First of all, a policy of vengefulness is achieving

less than nothing; inciting more Hamas than it

is killing, storing up untold bitterness,

pathologising its own people and murdering

and bulldozing tens of thousands of

neighbouring innocents into its memory.

•

There is a false premise that slaughter and

razing a city serve as deterrents because they

somehow create obsequious citizens. They

wouldn’t in Ireland, they wouldn’t in most

places and they won’t in Gaza.

•

A lesson from worldwide modern history is that

you cannot pre-emptively ensure security by

aggression without dialogue. Sadly this is a

lesson Israel, led by fetishistic securocrat

Netanyahu, a corrupt man oering nothing but

security, has not learnt, despite 7 October.

•

Israel notably has no ‘day after’ strategy — a

vision of how it will live peaceably with its

neighbours to stabilise any gain. This suits

Netanyahu who will be defenestrated as soon

as the war is over.

•

Israel has no plausible strategy to destroy

Hamas. It implausibly claims that a third of the

people it has killed are ‘Hamas’ though a better

estimate is 10%. It is clearly identifying nearly

all men as militants: this reﬂects longstanding

Israeli prejudice: 40% of Palestinians have at

one time been jailed in Israel. The reality is that

Hamas operatives will not be identiﬁable

anyway, with few of them wearing uniforms.

•

Presumably it will get more dicult to kill

Hamas as the easiest targets escape though

Israel claims to have demilitarised North Gaza.

If it aims to kill all 30,000 members of Hamas,

we must assume a toll of at least 60,000,

perhaps up to 200,000. That toll will not be

tolerated internationally.

• Moreover, Israel is negotiating an exchange of

300 Palestinian prisoners for the Israeli

hostages. What is to stop this number being an

embryonic new force against Israel?

• If there is a moral and lawful resolution of the

‘war’, with remedies for both sides, Israel will

be obliged to rebuild two million homes in Gaza

and pay reparations for tens of thousands of

innocent deaths, which will bankrupt it.

• Israel’s actions in Gaza risk extraneous wars —

with Hezbollah and with Iran.

•

Israel is losing international support, respect

and sympathy — traditionally vastly valuable

resources for the Jews, and for Israel.

The calculus is negative

It seems Israel, while certainly achieving orgiastic

revenge, is achieving little by way of deterrence or

pre-emption, very little by way of remedy and is

notably at risk of a backlash.

The calculus is hopeless for Israel because the

gain to it is outweighed so self-evidently by the

losses.

Substance of the calculus

The guiding principle of Village magazine is that

all people are equal. For purposes of the Gaza

situation we’ll concede, as does international law,

that at least all innocent people are equal.

This is the premise of this magazine, and of the

UN, and of most religions. If many others have

some other premise, it is worth asking what is

their ethical compass and whether there views

across the range hold any ethical value.

Culpability

Because Israel has killed 23 times more innocent

people than Hamas did and devastated the living

conditions for 2 million people it is therefore at

least ten times more culpable.

The intent behind killings on this scale, when

the imperatives of pre-emption, remedy, are

failing, revenge is gratuitous and deterrence is

elusive, is dubious.

War criminality

A big component in the facts of war criminality and

genocide is the ascertainable intention of the

parties.

Anyone trying to get to grips with what is going on in Palestine has long had

to be capable of holding more than one idea at the same time. HAMAS IS

BAD AND ISRAEL IS BAD

Reliory Isreli ir srikes hi Khn Younis, Gz Srip

Quesions subsis over Gz Al Ahli Hospil Ack. The Anglicn

diocese repored 200 ded – no cler if source ws Isreli ir srike

or filed Hms rocke lunch

72 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 73

Nobody can dispute that Hamas’s massacre

was a war crime: the murderous carnage of

civilians.

Israel is destroying a city with little impact on

Hamas. It must know this. It is destroying Gaza

to no purpose. This suggests the destruction

must be the purpose.

Intent

Language betrays intent and there is a lot of

hateful rhetoric about Hamas which slides into the

rhetoric about the people of Gaza. The

International Court of Justice emphasised this in

its interim ruling on 26 January.

How does Israel see Gazans?

Netanyahu has said that Israelis are “committed

to completely eliminating this evil [Hamas] from

the world: you must remember what Amalek has

done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do

remember”. What they are remembering is that,

in the Old Testament’s ﬁrst Book of Samuel, God

commands King Saul to kill every person in

Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel. These are

the verses Netanyahu turned to, as Israeli forces

launched their ground invasion and they have a

long history of being used by Jews on the far right

to justify killing Palestinians.

Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant described

Hamas (not Gazans) as “human animals” and

“beasts”, “I have released all the restraints, we

have [regained] control of the area, and we are

moving to a full oensive”, Gallant exhorted his

troops on the Gaza border. “We are imposing a

complete siege on Gaza. There will be no

electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything

will be closed”. The defence minister’s perspective

is important as he instructs the military.

Addressing sceptics he said, “Those who dare

accuse our soldiers of war crimes are people

imbued with hypocrisy and lies who do not have

a single drop of morality”. He couldn’t be more

wrong. A UN Committee on racism made speciﬁc

reference to the remarks and said such language

“could incite genocidal actions”.

And the hostility goes across the range to the

hundred doctors who on 6 November signed a

letter noting that: “After the IDF repeatedly warned

the hospitals to stop the cynical use made of them

for terrorism, and after all citizens were asked to

evacuate the area in light of the presence of

terrorists, there is an obligation to destroy the

wasps’ nests and the hospitals they use to shelter

them, the sooner, the better”.

Israel’s incendiary ambassador to the UK, Tzipi

Hotovely, claimed that there is “no humanitarian

crisis” in Gaza at a time when Israeli attacks on

the strip continue.

Asked about photos that show the humanitarian

crisis, Hotovely replied: “Would you expect your

government to think about those Nazis

committing those crimes? Israel is in charge of the

safety of Israelis, Hamas is in charge of the safety

of Palestinians”.

Asked what she thinks about the “collateral

damage” done to innocent civilians, she said that

“those people created crimes that (are) worse

than ISIS”.

Culpable enough to justify

collective punishment

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett

erupted at a presenter for Sky News for asking him

about the suering of Palestinians in Gaza. Asked

about the civilian deaths in Gaza from Israeli

attacks, Bennett said Israeli forces do not target

civilians but are “ﬁghting Nazis”. “Are you

seriously (going to) keep on asking me about

Palestinian civilians? What’s wrong with you?” he

said, following a question on the dire situation in

Gaza hospitals.

Some idea of ocial thinking comes from

President Isaac Herzog who suggested that the

innocent civilian population of Gaza, 2.3 million

people, half of them children, “weren’t so

innocent…because they could have risen up

against Hamas”.

Israel’s Heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu of

the Otzma Yehudit party, was quoted by the Times

of Israel on 5 November as saying that the

Palestinian people “can go to Ireland or deserts,

the monsters in Gaza should ﬁnd a solution by

themselves”, adding that those who wave a

Palestinian or Hamas ﬂag “shouldn’t continue

living on the face of the earth”.

A few days earlier Eliyahu, whose grandfather

was Israel’s chief rabbi, mocked: “North Gaza,

more beautiful than ever. Blow up and ﬂatten

everything, delightful…”.

Israel’s main television station promoted a

video of sweet young Israeli children supporting

genocide in Gaza; “within a year we will annihilate

them all”.

Much of the government seems unconcerned

about innocent casualties, though since the ICJ

interim judgment ﬁnding a plausible case that

Israel has engaged in acts of genocide this has

become predictably less demonstrable.

Eliyahu also said that dropping a nuclear bomb

on the Gaza Strip “is one of the possibilities”, and

that humanitarian aid to the population should be

restricted, saying: “we wouldn’t hand the Nazis

humanitarian aid. There is no such thing as

uninvolved civilians in Gaza. All of the places

which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating

in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble.

I say to the residents of Gaza: leave now because

we will operate forcefully everywhere”. He was

“suspended” from government for his nuclear

outrage.

Israeli army spokesperson, Daniel Hagari made

it clear, “in attacking Gaza “our focus is on

(creating) damage, not on precision”. That

ocially misplaced focus, acknowledging a

[future] approach heedless of proportionality or

care, is a humanitarian crime.

IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari, has stated:

“[Hamas’ leader Yahya] Sinwar’s house is the

[entire] Khan Younis area”.

Israeli military analyst Yossi Yehoshua,

describing statements by “the top echelon of the

IDF”, declared on 22 December: “the IDF wants to

burn a mark onto the conscience of the residents

of Gaza: this is the price tag for those who

massacre us and also for the public who stand

behind them and cooperate with them. The army

and Netanyahu are in agreement on this issue”.

A policy of vengefulness is achieving

less than nothing: inciting more

Hamas than it is killing, storing up

untold bitterness, pathologising its

own people

IDF pilo dmis he my hve killed civilins

74 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 75

Inevitably after the ICJ ruling in January leaders

have tempered their language.

From December the rhetoric turned to removing

the Palestinians from Gaza: ethnic cleansing.

The law on ethnic cleansing

The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits

“individual or mass forcible transfers”, as well as

deportations from occupied territory to the

territory of the Occupying Power or any other

country “regardless of their motive”.

Nevertheless, for example, the Jerusalem Post

published an opinion piece on Christmas day

titled ‘Why moving to the Sinai peninsula is the

solution for Gaza’s Palestinians’.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on

19 December: “We must not allow the million

Gazans who are in the south of the Strip return to

the north. This is one of the main sources of

leverage we have to achieve our goals”.

Netanyahu gave an insight into his casualness

on relations with Israel’s neighbour on Christmas

Day 2023: “Regarding voluntary immigration — I

have no problem with that. Our problem is not

allowing departure, but [ﬁ nding] countries which

are willing to take in [the refugees]. And we are

working on it. This is the goal we are coalescing

around”.

Netanyahu’s two senior far-right partners in

government have also both endorsed the

rebuilding of settlements in Gaza and

encouragement of “voluntary emigration” of

Palestinians.

Bezalel Smotrich, Finance Minister, stated on

New Year’s Eve that: “The best option for Gaza

would be for the Palestinians to voluntarily

immigrate to other countries, leaving only a small

Arab minority that supports Israel. If in Gaza there

will be 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs and not two

million, the entire conversation on ‘the day after’

will look di erent. Let’s think out of the box”, he

stated — taking care to state the option should be

voluntary but no doubt aware that Israeli actions,

as it advances on even the last refuge of the

ﬂ eeing Gazans in Rafah, are closing the options

for their enemy.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said

encouraging the migration of the residents of

Gaza was “a correct, just, moral and humane

solution”.

“We cannot withdraw from any territory we are

in in the Gaza Strip. Not only do I not rule out

Jewish settlement there, I believe it is also an

important thing”, he said.

The “correct solution” to the ongoing Israeli-

Palestinian conﬂ ict is “to encourage the voluntary

migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will

agree to take in the refugees”.

In late January, two ministers from Netanyahu’s

Likud party appeared in a video with settler leader

Daniella Weiss last week urging people to join

them at the “Nation-building Conference for the

Victory of Israel”.

There’s a history of this stu of course.

In an interview in the 1970s with hjstorian Max

Hastings, Binyamin Netanyahu himself said that

“in the next war if we do it right we’ll get all the

Arabs out. We can clear the West Bank…sort out

Jerusalem”. In 2019 Netanyahu said “Israel is the

nation state of the Jewish people – and only it”.

Reactions to the suggestions

of genocide and ethnic

cleansing

Reacting to some of this, in January a group of

prominent Israelis, represented by human rights

lawyer Michael Sfard, wrote to the attorney

general and state prosecutors demanding action

and accusing them of ignoring “extensive, blatant

and normalised” incitement to genocide and

ethnic cleansing in Gaza by inﬂ uential public

ﬁ gures, breaking both Israeli and international

law.

“It is quite amazing the number of criminal

investigations, when it comes to Palestinian

citizens of Israel, most of them completely

anonymous, many of them almost with no

audience”, the group said. “The gap between that

and the freedom and impunity for those who

advocate all kinds of things – ethnic cleansing,

killing civilians, bombarding civilian areas, and

even genocide – doesn’t square up, and that’s

something for the authorities to explain”.

It was the role of the attorney general to make

clear that comments inciting genocide were

unacceptable, gave signals to the military and had

become normalised, the letter said. “We want to

ﬂ ag this and allow the authorities an opportunity

to do something about it”. And this of course pre-

dated the ICJ’s interim judgment.

Anyway…the destruction and displacement in

Gaza are clearly no accident: there is widespread

intent and little caution!

ICJ ruling

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on 26

January that there was plausible evidence of

genocide but the resolution of the plenary case

HOSTILITIES IN THE GAZA STRIP AND ISRAEL - REPORTED IMPACT

The snapshot provides a comprehensive overview of the ongoing

humanitarian crisis in Gaza as of 5 February 2024, including casualties.

Signiﬁcant damage has been inﬂicted upon critical infrastructure and essential

services, affecting people's ability to maintain their dignity and basic living

standards.

This snapshot highlights reported ﬁgures on the impact of hostilities on people

in Gaza, where a major humanitarian crisis has unfolded.

OVERVIEW

5 February 2024 at 22:30

Created: 5 February

2024

Disclaimer: The UN has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures; the current numbers have been provided by

the Ministry of Health or Government Media Office in Gaza and the Israeli authorities and await further verification.Other yet-to-be verified figures are also sourced.

Feedback: ochaopt@un.org

DAY 121

¹º

EGYPT

ISRAEL

Erez

Rafah

* For aid to enter, patients to exit, and aid

workers to cross; subject to screening.

Kerem

Shalom

5 Km

Sufa

Karni

Nahal Oz

DDD

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

GAZA

STRIP

60-Km-long Israeli fence

12.6-Km-long

Egyptian fence

Goods via Israel

People/goods

to/from Egypt

Closed gradually

between 2007 and 2011

Closed since 2010

Closed since 2008 (except Mar-Apr 2011)

People to/from/via

Israel

Permanently Closed Crossing

Crossing

OPEN*

CLOSED

Gaza

Khan Younis

Rafah

Deir al Balah

Wadi Gaza

Gaza

North

ACCESS PROHIBITED

5000

10000

5 FebDaily/cumulative7 Oct

5000

10000

5 FebDaily/cumulative7 Oct

REPORTED CASUALTIES (Cumulative) as of 5 February 2024

Palestinians*

27,478

Reported fatalities

66,835

Israelis**

Israel

Gaza

****

EDUCATION

FOOD SECURITY

HEALTH

INCOMING

TRUCKLOADS

At high risk

At least 1,000 kidney failure, >2,000 cancer

patients, 130 neonates in incubators.

Critical shortages

of drugs, blood products and supplies

(Fuel at the hospitals is being severely rationed).

625K (100%) Students with no

access to education.

90% of all school buildings have

sustained signiﬁcant damage.

• One out of the three water pipelines

coming from Israel is operational.

• No Access to clean water in the northern

governorates. Fuel shortage impacts: 60

water wells, 2 desalination plants, sewage

stations and pumps, wastewater treatment.

WATER AND SANITATION

in addition to ~1,000 fatalities in Israel, including

people involved in the 7 October attack

BASIC SERVICES AND LIVELIHOODS

*Source: MoH Gaza

*Source: MoH Gaza **Source: UNRWA

*GMO as of 3 Feb

** According to Israeli media citing official sources

Reported fatalities

Reported

fatalities

Reported injuries

Reported

injuries

Over 1,200

***

~5,400

Reported injuries

DAMAGE*

70,000+

290,000+

Partially damaged housing units

Destroyed housing units

Over 60% of Gaza’s housing units

reportedly destroyed or damaged

390 education facilities reportedly damaged

11 bakeries reportedly destroyed

122 ambulances damaged

20 WASH facilities damaged

At least 3 churches and 183 mosques

damaged

HUMANITARIAN OPERATION

MOVEMENT AND ACCESS

• 154 UN staff killed:

UNRWA: 152; WHO: 1; UNDP: 1

• At least 339 health workers killed

• 46 Civil Defence killed while on duty

• 122 Journalists killed

1,162 identiﬁed fatalities,

including at least 33 children

27,478

Fatalities

66,835

Injuries

1.7

million

internally displaced

(75% of Gaza)

0 hours

Full electricity

blackout

Population

2.3

million

Area

365

*** The reported estimate refers to fatalities on 7 October and the

immediate aftermath and includes foreign nationals.

**** The reported Israeli casualties are soldiers killed or

injured since the start of the ground operation.

136 hostages remain in Gaza

• Hospitals are under heavy strikes.

• 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially

functional: 6 in the south and 7 in the north.

EGYPT

JORDAN

SYRIA

LEBANON

GAZA

STRIP

WEST

BANK

ISRAEL

Nitzana

Al Arish

• Civilian access to areas to the north of Wadi Gaza is only possible for

humanitarian teams. In January 2024, 61 missions were planned to

deliver humanitarian aid for the north of Wadi Gaza: 10 (16%) were

facilitated by the Israeli military; 2 (3%) were partially facilitated; 9

(15%) were initially facilitated but subsequently impeded; 34 (56%)

were denied access; and six (10%) were postponed by aid

organizations due to internal operational constraints.

• The Rafah crossing with Egypt and the Kerem Shalom crossing with

Israel are open for the entry of approved goods.

• The Rafah crossing is also open for the movement of some wounded

and sick people from Gaza to Egypt , and aid workers into and out of

Gaza.

• Access to the sea and to areas near Israel’s perimeter fence is

prohibited.

*Source: IPC, 21 December

* For aid to enter; subject to screening.

2023 2024 2023 2024

• 2.2 million people at imminent risk of

famine

• 378,000 people at Phase 5 (catastrophic

levels) Phase 5 refers to extreme lack of

food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping

capacities.

• 939,000 people at Phase 4 (emergency

levels)

223

1,300

The pre-crisis average per working

day in 2023 was 500 truckloads,

including fuel.

NANA NA

Feb

0 0

173

(Pause in hostilities)

109

128

137

145

156 156

7-12 13-19 20-26 27 Oct

2 Nov

3-9

Nov

10-16

Nov

17-23

Nov

24-30

Nov

1-7

Dec

8-14

Dec

15-21

Dec

22-28

Dec

29 Dec

4 Jan

5-11

Jan

12-18

Jan

19-25

Jan

2023

2024

Daily average (by week)

Daily total

Oct Oct Oct

Jan

170

134

161

200

207

Jan

Feb

00 00 7575 300300 411411 383383 385385 12091209 550550 764764 894894 681681 957957 1,0171,017 1,0941,094 1,0851,085Weekly totals

74 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 75

will take around ﬁve years. The ICJ required Israel

to take all measures to prevent genocidal acts,

prevent and punish the direct and public

incitement to genocide, and take immediate and

effective steps to ensure the provision of

humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza. The

judgemnt is binding but not enforceable.

Israel’s values have changed

Israel has changed and commentators, who are

not anti-Semitic, who wish Israel well in general

must be brave in facing up to new realities:

Fundamental facts change. Israel was once the

only ‘democracy’ in the Middle East, even if it set

an intolerant face to the outward world, especially

Palestinians. But in the last few years it has swung

dramatically away. It has long, eectively since

its birth, had a casualness about international

law. In recent years it has developed a casualness

about its judiciary. Though in 2021 Israel ranked

22nd in the UN’s Human Development Index and

its GDP per head, at $55,000, is higher than the

average EU member it is not a civilised place.

Speaking to the Observer last year, Simon

Schama, author of the three-volume ‘Story of the

Jews’, said that Israel was at risk of becoming a

“nationalist theocracy” with the inclusion of ultra-

religious, far-right parties in the coalition

government. He warned that Israel’s 1948

declaration of independence – “a noble

document, which promised equal civil rights to all

religious and ethnic groups” – had disintegrated.

Some 10% of the country’s Jewish population

is ultra-Orthodox and another 20% is

conservative. Israel has endured ﬁve elections in

four years, culminating in the creation of what its

obnoxious and corrupt Prime Minister Benyamin

Netanyahu proudly calls “a full-on right-wing

government” last year. Far-right and Orthodox

parties won a quarter of the Knesset seats and

Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party formed a

coalition with them though since 7 October drawn

in the mainstream opposition too.

While the vast majority of the 20% of Israel’s

population who are Arabs are citizens, they tend

to live in poorer cities, have less formal education,

and face structural discrimination on an Apartheid

basis. Arab political parties have long struggled

to gain representation in Israel’s government.

Abnegation of Palestinians pre-dates 7 October.

Israel has suppressed all dissent about the

Gaza war. It systemically lies. It lied about Hamas

terrorists decapitating babies, it lied about

command centres under hospitals, it lies that it

never targets civilians, it lied that international

press were embedded with Hamas during its

massacre. It lies about the safety of areas where

it advises refugees to move to. It can’t be trusted

on the bombing of civilians outside hospitals. It

does fake videos such as one of a Gazan doctor

claiming her hospital’s morphine has all been

taken by Hamas.

After the start of the current hostilities

Netanyahu, declared that the Israeli response will

“reverberate…for generations’.

The blast at the Ahli Arab hospital on October

17 was a supreme example of the reach and clout

of falsehoods. Swiftly picked up by major news

outﬁts, misleading reports contributed, in short

order, to the cancelling of a summit between Arab

leaders and President Joe Biden.

Appropriate stance on Israel

Israel should face multiple war-crimes

investigations and trials. It should pay reparations

and the cost of rebuilding Gaza: how could

anything less suce? It should become an

international pariah until it atones for war crimes

approaching genocide.

However, some basic principles of humanity are

immutable. It will never be acceptable to promote

hatred of a race. Antisemitism is abhorrent.

It may be acceptable to be anti-Zionist, at least

insofar for example as it clashes with UN-resolved

allocation of territory in Israel-Palestine. Zionism

is lethally ambiguous but one mainstream

interpretation dictates the right of Jews to return

to Eretz Israel, their ancestral home, no matter

who lives there and with no regard to the right to

live there of the peoples they displace.

It is invidious to hate a country, since countries

are heterogenous and any evil it perpetrates is

likely to generate national dissidents who may

need support. However, sometimes a country

seems so united that culpability may rest with it

as well as with its government. Such was the case

with Nazi Germany and may be the case with

today’s Israel.

World attitudes to Israel

Many who might have known better have taken

a tribal stance, siding with Israel, forgiving and

supporting its excesses and refusing to judge it

objectively for its current actions. The US, UK and

the EU, in the person of the President of its

Commission and Germany all gave Israel a

dispensation to ventilate vengeance.

They focused on the appalling carnage Hamas

had purveyed on 7 October and did not caution,

certainly enough, on the need for caution and

observation of humanitarian law. They insisted

that the cause of the Israeli overreaction was the

actions of Hamas, as if Israel lacked autonomous

agency. It was a major failing of the West as any

sort of moral force. It resurrected Western carnage

in Iraq and Afghanistan. It deserves a backlash

but will inevitably reap a whirlwind.

Biden has recently ﬂexed some muscles by

issuing an executive order targeting Israeli

settlers in the West Bank who have been

relentlessly attacking Palestinians. He has begun

to be critical in public. In early February he

described Israel’s military assault in Gaza as “over

the top” and said he is seeking a “sustained

pause in the ﬁghting” to help beleaguered

Palestinian civilians and give space for the release

of Israeli hostages – though this is still far short

of ceasefire. More specifically, Biden told

Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call on 11

February that Israel should not go ahead with a

military operation in the densely populated Gaza

border town of Rafah without a “credible” plan to

protect civilians.

Ireland has from the beginning adopted a more

nuanced approach, properly cautious at ﬁrst,

emphasising Hamas’ savagery but moving

quickly when Israel exceeded the bounds of

proportionality with Varadkar in the end

recognising that Israel’s actions bore more of the

hallmarks of vengeance than of self-defence. Irish

people, perhaps because of a tribal post-

colonisation, perhaps because they read books

and make their own minds up, seem reasonably

focused on the ethical and humanitarian-law side.

Germany understandably considers it is forever

bound to support the security of Israel but it is

failing in its task.

For this magazine, from Herzog to Biden to Von

der Leyen to Zelenskiy to Bono a great number of

people have been exposed as ethical poseurs.

History and the Future

The biggest lesson of history is never forget the

Holocaust, never forget genocide.

In the last four months Israel has added a note

to the lesson. It is that modern Israel doesn’t have

the sensibility to be against genocide. It is horriﬁc

and tragic: for Gaza and Palestine, but for the

special place of Jews too.

A lesson from worldwide

modern history is that you

cannot permanently ensure

security by aggression

without dialogue

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