After three months of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, the death toll stands at 23,000. A dossier has compiled the genocidal rhetoric of Israeli authorities.
More than three months have now passed since the start of the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, following the attack by the radical Palestinian organisation Hamas on 7 October. Three months that leave behind a devastating toll: more than 23,000 dead, of whom around 40 per cent are children. Around 50 per cent of buildings destroyed or heavily damaged. Almost two million displaced out of a total population of approximately 2.2 million. And an unprecedented humanitarian emergency.
From many quarters it has been emphasised that what is taking place in the Gaza Strip at the hands of Israel increasingly resembles genocide — that is, the systematic and intentional destruction of a people. Last November, several UN experts signed a statement with a very clear message: "the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip are at risk of genocide". A few weeks later, also from the United Nations, came an even more unequivocal position: "The grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians in the aftermath of 7 October, particularly in Gaza, are indicative of a genocide in progress".
The human rights organisation Law for Palestine has compiled more than 500 statements made over these three months by members of the Israeli government, military and parliament that allude, more or less explicitly, to the extermination of the Palestinian people. A body of evidence aimed at demonstrating that yes, the genocidal intent towards the Palestinian people is present in the minds of Israeli officials and public figures. And that the time has come to start calling things by their proper name.
The Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which began on 7 October following the Hamas attack that caused 1,200 deaths and the taking of hundreds of hostages, has passed the three-month mark. Three months that have upended the landscape and daily life of the Gaza Strip.
First, the numbers. The death toll in the Palestinian territory bombed, invaded and besieged by the Israeli military has exceeded 23,000. Of these, around 40 per cent are children, 72 are journalists, 142 are UN staff members and 374 are doctors and healthcare workers. Around half of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed and entire neighbourhoods no longer exist. 85 per cent of the population, almost two million people, has been displaced.
In the first phase of the offensive Israel heavily bombarded the Gaza Strip; in the second phase came the ground invasion of the north and the evacuation of the population southwards. Operations are now, however, concentrated on the south itself, where virtually the entire population is now packed together and where every previous instruction to civilians issued by the Israeli military has been abandoned. Israeli military authorities announced that after three months of operations, Hamas's military infrastructure in the north of the Strip has been dismantled, though hundreds of active militants remain. This led to the withdrawal of five Israeli brigades from the area in the first hours of 2024.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps repeating it: the war will continue until Hamas is eliminated and the Israeli hostages are freed. The end of Israeli operations is therefore still far off and, given the manner in which they are being conducted, this is a cause for concern.
The killing of children, journalists, doctors and humanitarian workers demonstrates how Israeli attacks are carried out without restraint, often relying on artificial intelligence. The distinction between military and civilian targets is frequently lost, and the need to strike the former justifies, in the logic of the Israeli authorities, the consequences for the latter. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres continues to call for a humanitarian ceasefire and has described the Gaza Strip as a "graveyard for children".
Israel's allies, the United States in particular, have dismissed the widespread accusations of a genocidal logic behind the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip. And yet, analysing the speeches and statements of the country's authorities, allusions to that effect are easy to find. The non-governmental organisation Law for Palestine has created a continuously updated database recording all allusions to Palestinian genocide made over these three months by Israeli politicians and military figures. What is described as "A body of compelling evidence denouncing the proliferation of incitement to violence and genocidal intent perpetrated by Israeli officials and public figures".
In Law for Palestine's dossier, allusions to genocide made by the highest-ranking figures in the Israeli state are documented. "There are no innocent civilians in Gaza," said Israel's President Isaac Herzog on 13 October, adding that "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved, is absolutely not true."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also made statements alluding to the destruction of the Gaza Strip, with little restraint. On 7 October he described Gaza as "the city of evil", announcing that he was ready to act anywhere and with full authority so as to turn "into rubble all the places where Hamas deploys and hides". In effect, a green light for indiscriminate bombing — a licence to wipe out homes and buildings at any suspicion of a militant presence.
In the database compiled by Law for Palestine, there are government statements that are even more explicit and allusive to the genocide of the Palestinian people. "I have ordered a complete siege of Gaza. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly," declared on 9 October Yoav Gallant, Israel's Defence Minister. Amichai Eliyahu, Heritage Minister, on 5 November expressed his wish for an atomic bomb to be dropped on the Gaza Strip, while Yoav Kisch, Education Minister, speaking about the Gazan population on 9 October said that "They are animals, they have no right to exist. They must be exterminated."
Then there is Itamar Ben-Gvir, National Security Minister and one of the most extremist figures in the Israeli government. On 25 October, when the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza was already well underway, he said: "The only thing that needs to enter Gaza is hundreds of tonnes of explosives and not a single gram of humanitarian aid."
As Law for Palestine points out, speeches and statements alluding to genocide and violence against the Palestinian people have come not only from the government and the president, but also from other members of parliament and from the military.
On 17 November, just days before the first and only ceasefire agreed by Israel on the Gaza Strip, Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, declared: "We are too humane. Gaza should be burned down now." Revital Gottlieb, an Israeli member of parliament, on 7 October called on the country's decision-makers: "Bring down buildings!! Bomb without distinction!! Enough with this impotence. Raze Gaza to the ground. Without mercy! This time there is no room for mercy!" In the same vein, member of parliament Boaz Bismuth, who on 16 October stressed how "We must not show mercy to cruel people, there is no room for any humanitarian gesture." According to member of parliament Galit Distel Atbaryan, who was also a former Information Minister until October, "Gaza must be erased from the face of the Earth," while Avigdor Lieberman, member of parliament, former Finance Minister and former deputy prime minister, on 30 November — in the midst of the temporary ceasefire — repeated what President Herzog had said in October: "there are no innocent Palestinian civilians."
Allusions to genocide also came from the Israeli military. From the inscription "God willing, it will hit innocent civilians," left by soldiers on a missile before firing it at the Gaza Strip, to tweets from the army's official account in which hospitals and ambulances were described as "legitimate military targets." And then there are the videos of Israeli soldiers at the front singing in chorus: "Who has no water or electricity? Gaza! Who will live in tents? The Gazans! This is the land of Israel, we don't want peace with Gaza."
In early November, the UN said that the Palestinian people are at risk of genocide in Gaza. Also in November, United Nations experts thundered that "the grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians in the aftermath of 7 October, in particular in Gaza, are indicative of an unfolding genocide." The statements by Israel's political and military representatives, compiled in the Law for Palestine dossier, are difficult to ignore.
