Resume the genocide

Killing 400 civilians in an unannounced military attack (helpless people who couldn't defend themselves; most couldn't even try to flee, either because they had nowhere else to go or because they physically didn't have the strength to go anywhere) is not only an illegal breach of the ceasefire. It's also a war crime, or a crime against humanity: this should be decided by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where these matters are settled and before which Benjamin should appear. Bibi Netanyahu, as well as much of his government and the Israeli military's top brass. What they call their response to Hamas attacks, or the pursuit of their objectives, is actually a series of crimes that fall squarely within the definition and assumptions established by the United Nations to define genocide (they did so in 1948, the same year the State of Israel was created, which Israelis now cynically use to justify the atrocities in Gaza).

Against the demagoguery of the enraged right, saying what the previous paragraph says does not imply denying Hamas's crimes, nor whitewashing them, nor denying their gravity. But the response to Hamas's crimes cannot be ethnic cleansing. The attack early Monday morning, and all the subsequent muddy, threatening rhetoric from Netanyahu himself ("negotiations will be conducted under fire," "that's only the beginning") and from Trump or spokesperson Karoline Leavitt ("all hell will break loose," and all that verbosity about Hamas having to continue releasing the Israeli hostages, was a simple gesture that Tel Aviv never thought to turn into effective policy. Nor did Washington: it's a bit odd to present yourself as a promoter and supporter of a ceasefire, and at the same time, for the president of the government to say that the best thing to do with the area is to eliminate the population and turn it into a resort of rich and shabby tourism.

The Palestinians have been living in hell for a long time. It's made even more lamentable by the fact that much of the motivation for this is Netanyahu's strictly personal interests: he needs to please his far-right allies (political parties like Shas, United Torah Judaism, Noam, Otzam Yehudit, or Religious Zionism, the counter-conservatives, and the Zionists), and he needs to stay in power to avoid having to face justice for his numerous corruption cases. Largely, more than 48,000 people have been massacred in Palestine in the last year and a half for these reasons. And because Netanyahu doesn't find the idea of ethnic cleansing repulsive either. Neither does Trump and his ultra-right administration. They always have time to invoke God and the homeland.