In an escalation of its military campaign, Israel has started a ground assault in Gaza City, worsening the famine there.
Palestinians have been primarily living in tents for approximately a year now, since all of the buildings have been decimated. With this most recent attack, Palestinians have been warned to move again.
Scarcity of food and clean water for Palestinians has taken a desperate turn over the summer, into the most extreme phase possible, otherwise known as famine, according to the World Health Organization.
To put it in context, once a society reaches famine, civilians are eating once every two days if they’re lucky. Malnutrition affects children the most, so many of the deaths that come from the famine will be children.
The death toll in Gaza over the past two years has surpassed 65,000. That is tens of thousands of innocents dying at the hands of a perpetrator that faced genocide itself not even a century ago. It is truly ironic and hypocritical how Israel’s government has turned around to do the same thing to Palestinians that the Nazis did to them.
Dozens of countries and almost every humanitarian organization have tried to get aid and supplies to Palestinians, but Israel has arbitrarily blocked most efforts.
Israel claims that this attack, the forcible displacement of civilians, and the blocking of resources were carried out so they could get closer to Hamas and dismantle it. However, this has been their reasoning behind every other war crime that they have committed since this current conflict began.
Tensions have been high for decades between these two countries, spanning back to the 1940s when the UK and the UN agreed on a Jewish state to be placed on Palestinian land. During the persecution and genocide of Jewish people in World War II, thousands moved to this state, and in 1947, it officially became Israel.
The current clash began when 1,200 Israeli citizens, 46 being U.S. citizens, were taken and killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
Certainly, when any country is attacked and civilians are killed, that country will respond. After the attack on the World Trade Center by al-Qaeda, the U.S. immediately retaliated in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But the massacre of an entire people is never justified. Israel has taken this conflict too far. It’s high time for them to listen to reason and provide immediate medical attention and resources to the Palestinians.
Make no mistake, what is happening in Gaza right now is a genocide. Hope for a ceasefire is scarce but still possible. However, no one knows what will be left of Palestine once the conflict is over.
