Israel’s genocide in Gaza is reaching its final monstrous stage. It has begun a massive new military onslaught, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly declaring his aim of mass ethnic cleansing.
He wants to force the entire population of over two million people into a narrow area along Gaza’s southern border. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the killing until Israel can implement Trump’s plan to force the entire Palestinian population out of Gaza.
Israel wants to “conquer” and take military control of the whole of Gaza in a blatant act of dispossession.
This is a plan to “utterly destruct and depopulate” Gaza, according to one MP from Netanyahu’s Likud party.
Israel has imposed widespread starvation after 11 weeks of total blockade stopping any aid deliveries. Children and the elderly are dying from hunger. Over 70,000 children require treatment for acute malnutrition, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
Netanyahu has now said he will allow “minimal” deliveries of food, but only so he can continue his military operations and maintain support from the US, which he said could not “handle pictures of mass starvation”.
But aid deliveries are now under the control of a new US-backed operation called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It is setting up aid distribution points inside zones controlled by the Israeli military in an effort to force people to move to the south.
Israel’s aim is to cut out UN bodies and independent charities so it can use aid to further control the Palestinian population.
This has been a disaster, resulting in a string of Israeli military attacks on Palestinians desperate for food, including 35 people shot dead in one day in Rafah and central Gaza. Over 100 had been killed in total as we went to press.
An Australian doctor volunteering in the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Dr Ahmed Abu Sweid, said many of them had single bullet wounds to the head and the chest, showing they were deliberately targeted.
Trump still backing genocide
There has been talk of a rift between Donald Trump and Netanyahu following the US President’s tour of the Middle East last month.
Yet the US has provided arms and approval for Israel to further ramp up its murderous war crimes.
The US and Israel do not always agree. Trump says he is close to a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, warning Israel not to launch further military strikes against it until negotiations are complete.
Netanyahu has been pushing the US to help launch airstrikes to try to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and ensure it can never develop nuclear weapons.
Trump also ignored Israel and agreed a ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen, ending an intense US bombing campaign in exchange for an agreement to stop targeting US shipping. But the Houthis have continued to launch strikes against Israel, including one that hit the outskirts of Israel’s main airport.
They have been targeting shipping in the Red Sea since October 2023, demanding an end to Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
The New York Times reported that the US had failed to significantly damage the Houthis’ operations, and risked being drawn into a long and costly war.
But the US still wants to keep arming Israel as a watchdog state for its interests in the Middle East. As Israel’s genocide in Gaza reached its 600th day the US announced it had sent Israel 940 aircraft and cargo ships filled with weapons since October 2023.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has blatantly done Israel’s bidding throughout ceasefire negotiations.
His latest proposal asked Hamas to hand over all remaining hostages in the first week, with no requirement for Israel to withdraw its troops or even discuss ending the war. This would allow it to simply resume its full-scale assault almost immediately.
Israel unilaterally broke the last ceasefire in March, refusing to fully withdraw from Gaza or discuss a permanent end to its genocide. Yet Witkoff and Trump have continued to give Israel their full backing, blaming Hamas for the failure of ceasefire talks.
Western governments have been forced to step up their condemnation of Israel as the pressure from the worldwide movement for Palestine keeps growing.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy called its actions “monstrous” and “repellent” and European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen labelled them “abhorrent”. They have also begun to raise the threat of sanctions.
Even Anthony Albanese has heightened his rhetoric, saying its starvation of Gaza was “an outrage”.
But Albanese and other Western governments have still not taken any action against Israel. We have to keep fighting to demand that Australia and the West stop arming Israel, impose sanctions on trade and do everything possible to stop the genocide.
By James Supple
