In early May, the security cabinet of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met and agreed that Israel would “capture” Gaza and remove its Palestinian population “to protect it.” 

To achieve this policy of annexation of Gaza, the Israelis tightened their siege by preventing the entry of food, water, electricity and other humanitarian aid (they had already enforced a blockade of aid since March 2). 

Then, the Israelis began to bomb Gaza with increased ferocity, with Israeli ground forces gathering at the edge of Gaza and entering in short bursts. By May 18, these Israeli ground forces began measured entries into Gaza. After intense pressure, the Netanyahu cabinet agreed to allow “basic amounts” of food into Gaza. Meanwhile, the Israeli army released a “forced displacement order” for the people in Khan Younis.

There is a tangle of war crimes in the paragraph above: 1. Population transfer in an occupied territory is illegal. 2. Deprival of food, water, and electricity for civilians is illegal. 3. Annexation of an occupied territory is illegal. 4. Deliberately killing civilians in a war zone is illegal.

It would be meaningless to recite chapter and verse to prove this, since it is by now well known that the Israelis have violated every single one of the laws of war and that their violations have been meticulously documented by the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. 

Francesca Albanese in her annual report (and in recent statements, where she has spoken of a “[tragedy] foretold and [a] stain on our collective humanity”) and by Amnesty International in their report, “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.” 

In Amnesty’s recent annual report, there is the chilling sentence: “The world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide.”

‘Eradication’

The bombardments to prepare the way for the annexation have been ferocious. The Israeli bombs have eradicated entire families of Palestinians. The word “eradicate” is generally used in reference to pests or diseases. It is an ugly word. I am using it here deliberately. It comes from the Latin word eradicare, which means “to pull out from the roots,” a botanical meaning that now has far more sinister meanings when used in reference to humans. 

Eradicate sounds clinical when it refers to weeds, but horrendous when applied to humanity, just as clinical and bureaucratic as the term “The Final Solution” (when used to refer to the horrendous genocide of the Jews in Europe).

Among the Attacks on One Day in Gaza 

Adolf Hitler used the terms “annihilation” (vernichtung) and “eradicate” or “exterminate” (ausrotten) when he spoke of Jews in the 1930s, and then when he spoke of the Final Solution (Endlösung) in the 1940s. Language is cruel, already bearing the implications of the deed.

Consider the deed.

May 19, 2025.

At 6 a.m., a group of Israeli special forces (mista’arvim) entered Khan Younis disguised as Palestinian women. They came under the cover of F-16 airstrikes and quadcopter drone strikes. The special forces soldiers executed Ahmad Kamel Sarhan in front of his family. Then they kidnapped his wife, his son Mohammed (age 12), and other, older children. 

No one knows where they have been taken. At least 16 civilians died in the operation. Their names are:

1. Abeer Salah Khamis Ayyash
2. Ahmad Akram Mohammad al-Dali
3. Ahmad Kamel Hamdan Sarhan
4. Ahmad Mohammad Abu al-Rous
5. Ahmad Mohammad Kawarea
6. Elin Ashraf Hamdan Shalouf
7. Hasan Mahmoud al-Astal
8. Ibrahim Hamed Hussein al-Aqqad
9. Laila Fadi Naeem Ayyash
10. Malak Youssef Qeshta (Shalouf)
11. Mohammad Mahmoud Kawarea
12. Muhannad Mohammad Kawarea
13. Nabila Abd Wafi (Abu al-Rous)
14. Saja Salim Ibrahim Asleeh
15. Samira Abdel-Majid Ahmad al-Qarra
16. Tawfiq Ali Hamdan al-Qarra

An Israeli tank fired a shell at a home in the al-Amour neighbourhood in al-Fakhari, to the east of Khan Younis, and wiped out Safa Alyan Saleem al-Amour and her six daughters, Sama Rashad Omar al-Amour, Lama Rashad Omar al-Amour, Saja Rashad Omar al-Amour, Leen Rashad Omar al-Amour, Nada Rashad Omar al-Amour, and Layan Rashad Omar al-Amour.

Israeli artillery shellfire hit a house in al-Fakhari, killing five members of a family: Jumana Kamal Muhammad Abu Daqqa, Wassim Muhammad Ali Abu Daqqa, Siraj Muhammed Ali Abu Daqqa, Jolan Muhammad Ali Abu Daqqa, and Jilan Muhamed Ali Abu Daqqa.

These are a few of the attacks that took place on one day in one part of Gaza, from where I was merely able to get reports from people on the ground as well as press reports. The attacks took place as well in Gaza City, near the Indonesian Hospital, which had been targeted the day before. Other names could be filled in here for others killed by other deliberate acts of violence.

These attacks come at the same time as a severe crisis of hunger inflicts itself upon the people of Gaza, with children hardest hit. At least 57 children have already died of malnutrition in Gaza, while 71,000 Palestinian children struggle to eat. The World Health Organisation warns of stunted growth, impaired cognitive development and poor long-term health for the children who do not die. 

The Food and Agriculture Organisation warns of “famine looming” in Gaza. Everyone warns about this or that. But these warnings amount to nothing. The U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Thomas Fletcher condemns Israel’s ‘cruel collective punishment’ of the Palestinians. He knows that ‘collective punishment’ is a war crime.

Consider the warnings. Consider the deed.

Consider the genocide.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations.  His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning From Movements for Socialism and, with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

This article is from Z Network.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/05/22/vijay-prashad-israels-final-solution-for-gaza/

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

The ‘Napalm Girl’ photo shocked the world and helped end the Vietnam War – but a viral video of a child surrounded by flames and other similar images in Gaza can’t even provoke a ceasefire.

BY Jehad Abusalim

Left: Phan Thi Kim Phuc runs screaming after the South Vietnamese army dropped napalm in 1972. Photo by Nick Ut/AP/Public domain; Right: Ward Jalal al-Sheikh Khalil attempts to escape the flames after Israel bombed a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza. Photo: Screenshot via Twitter
When the ‘Napalm Girl’ photo appeared in US and international media in 1972, it shocked the world. The image showed a young Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked, screaming in agony, her body burned by napalm dropped by the US-backed South Vietnamese army. The photo captured the raw, inescapable truth of war, and it forced people, especially in the United States, to confront the human cost of their government’s actions in Vietnam. It became a catalyst, a turning point, a symbol of a war that had lost its moral justification.

Now, more than 50 years later, the world is again seeing images of children burned alive. But this time, the response is different. This time, the images don’t seem to pierce through power in the same way. The pain in Gaza is undeniable, the evidence overwhelming. But the accountability is missing.

Just on Monday, footage emerged from Gaza after an Israeli airstrike hit the Fahmi al-Jirjawi school in Gaza City. The school was sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinian families, many sleeping in makeshift tents in the courtyard and classrooms. At least 36 people were killed in the bombing, according to Al Jazeera, and many of them (nearly half) were children. Dozens more were critically wounded, with bodies burned beyond recognition.

One clip in particular shook many. It showed a 5-year-old child, Ward Jalal al-Sheikh Khalil, trying to escape a burning classroom, her tiny silhouette surrounded by flames. The 11-second video, shot from a distance, spread quickly on Telegram and other platforms. You could barely see her form against the fire. Somehow, Ward survived. But her mother and at least five of her siblings were killed. Her father is in critical condition.

When I saw that clip of Ward, I immediately thought of Kim Phuc. Like Ward, Kim survived a fire meant to kill. She survived the war that burned her, and later became a peace activist, a UNESCO ambassador, and recipient of prestigious prizes. Her suffering, her survival, and her transformation were all given meaning in part because her pain was seen and believed.

But what about Ward?

Today, scenes like Ward’s are not rare; they are daily. In Gaza, there are dozens of “Napalm Girl” moments each day, and they don’t come filtered through distant photo wires or delayed coverage. They come live. This genocide is being live-streamed by Palestinian journalists and by ordinary people who refuse to let their suffering go unseen. Burned children, screaming fathers, headless infants – these images are not just real, they are relentless.

So why won’t the world react the same way? Why did one photo of a burned child help end a war, while hundreds of clips showing burned Palestinian children can’t even provoke a ceasefire?

Political Impunity…

https://www.theinteldrop.org/2025/05/27/why-did-burning-girls-matter-in-vietnam-but-not-in-gaza/

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.