Afrasianet - Maya Rosenfeld - When the main instrument of war is aerial bombardment, when aircraft ceaselessly bomb besieged populations without the means of defense, the result can only be genocide and mass destruction. Author: Maya Rosenfeld

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz publishes an article by the Israeli researcher, Maya Rosenfeld, in which she talks about the genocide of the Palestinians, and how and when it became legitimate for Israelis.

Below is the text of the article translated into Arabic by Edited:

At the beginning of the thirteenth month of the war, the death toll in the Gaza Strip exceeded 41,000. According to estimates based on data collected so far, one-third of those killed are believed to be children, but the exact number is unknown, and as of 31 August, 34,344 victims have been identified, 11,355 of whom were children, or 33.08%.

The statements, although they cannot speak, are screaming to the sky with a cry that shakes the pillars of existence, like the statements that 11,355 Palestinian children were killed in the Gaza Strip between 7 October 2023 and 31 August 2024. In order to kill a large number of children, lethal means are required almost continuously, and with a very high frequency, against the civilian population.

Anyone who has lived or learned about the horrors of the twentieth century knows that the genocide of civilian populations is a crime against humanity and a grave violation of international laws, created to protect the weak and prevent a slide into the worst possible.

With all their weaknesses and failures, international institutions, established under the umbrella of the United Nations since the Second World War, have been able to ensure that "nothing like this happens again" by instilling awareness in large parts of humanity that the genocide of civilians, especially children, is a "taboo".

But this is not the case in Israel in 2023-2024, because here the Gaza Strip is excluded from this taboo. Most Israelis see it as permissible to kill Gazans, and the near-total absence of mention of genocide in public protests against the government since October 7 is evidence of the lifting of the taboo.  If the genocide of Gaza were not legitimate, it would not have continued.

For decades, Israel has systematically used military force, military law and military justice to dispossess Palestinians from their land, plunder areas and resources from their land, confine them to small "residential areas" behind fences, walls, and checkpoints, prevent them from earning a living from their work, rob them of a free public social and political life, and thwart the establishment of their independence and national institutions.

This process of depreciating Palestinian lives has accelerated further in recent decades, with Israel completely ignoring peace based on ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state.

The idea that the occupied territories could continue to be occupied forever through the use of military force established an army whose primary skill was to control the occupied territories and their inhabitants and subjugate all forms of Palestinian resistance.

The implementation of this mission over a long period necessitated the army's escalation of its violence and an increase in the number of Palestinians who are harmed by it.

The justification for the genocide of Palestinians on the grounds that it is a "necessity for which there is no blame" easily slipped into the public's throat, as evidenced by the absence of meaningful protests against Israeli attacks during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, in which the Israeli army killed 2,202 Gazans, including 526 children.

However, although the pattern of military action in these attacks and their general legitimacy can be seen as a "prelude" to what is happening now in the war on Gaza, the differences between the two are significant. Operation Protective Edge was halted after 55 days due to external pressure, which eventually forced Israel to accept a ceasefire formula with Hamas. This attack inflicted unprecedented losses and destruction compared to previous attacks, but it did not turn into an all-out war of destruction.

The mass killing and destruction in Gaza are part of a strategy aimed at thwarting the possibility of a political solution by turning Palestinians into a rabble.

When the main instrument of war is aerial bombardment, and when planes ceaselessly bomb besieged populations without means of defense, the result can only be genocide and mass destruction. The attack on the Gaza Strip has never been in self-defence.