You Can’t Turn Back the Clock on Genocide - TomDispatch.com

You Can’t Turn Back the Clock on Genocide - TomDispatch.com Joshua Frank, Israel's Onslaught of Revenge May 30, 2024 Forget the dead for a moment and think about the living. We're talking about a miniscule, 25-mile strip of land on which, before recent events began, an estimated 2.4 million people lived, went to school, worshipped, farmed, did whatever. When Israel responded to Hamas's nightmarish October 7th attack by bombing northern Gaza into rubble and sending in its military, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed a "complete siege" of the region with "no electricity, no food, no fuel" for what he called "human animals." The Israeli military did indeed promptly proceed to destroy most of the homes, schools, and hospitals, you name it in northern Gaza, while encouraging hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants to flee south, many of whom finally ended up in the city of Rafah, where an estimated nearly 1.4 million refugees were lodged, often in crude tent encampments. Now, jump seven months or so and the Israeli military is, step by step, moving into and destroying parts of Rafah, while once again encouraging its population to flee. In the first weeks after they began doing so, it was estimated that at least one million (yes, 1,000,000!) Gazans did indeed flee that city. As Philippe Lazzarini, head of the chief U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, described it, "Every time they are forced to leave behind the few belongings they have: mattresses, tents, cooking utensils, and basic supplies that they cannot carry or pay to transport." And it's not just the Muslim Gazans who are suffering. The small Christian community there has been brutalized and largely destroyed, too. Talk about a hell on earth! Worse yet, as of now, there's no end in sight and -- imagine this -- the Biden administration nonetheless continues to plan to send vast quantities of new weaponry to Israel. With that in mind, let TomDispatch regular Joshua Frank explore the damage being done and what to make of it. Tom