Primo Levi posed a devastating question: Is he still human, the one deprived of bread, water, and dignity? In Gaza, it is not merely a few souls, but two million human beings who daily beg for the basic right to exist.
Everything is known, everything proven. Tomorrow, no one will dare say, “I did not know.” Since October 2023, Gaza is disappearing before our very eyes, victim of a crime that the highest moral, legal, and intellectual authorities have dared name unequivocally: genocide.
Will Western nations—chief among them the United States—still have the audacity tomorrow to denounce human rights violations elsewhere, punctuating their hypocrisy with the endless platitudes of the State Department? Their discredit is sealed; their word is disgraced.
And what of the complicit Arab regimes—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates—especially Egypt and the Emirates, the true architects of Gaza’s strangulation? What will they say before the tribunal of history? These regimes of shame will forever bear the mark of infamy. They thought to trade their honor for protection from the powerful; instead, they have earned only the contempt of their peoples and the curses of generations yet unborn.
The dreadful word genocide is not spoken lightly, nor driven by emotion; it has been carefully weighed by those whose vocation is rigor. Omer Bartov, eminent historian of the Holocaust and a former Israeli soldier, describes Gaza as the theater of deliberate extermination. Raz Segal, an Israeli specialist on modern genocides, identifies it as a “textbook case” of ethnic erasure in broad daylight. Amos Goldberg, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, declares bluntly: “This is genocide.” Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, denounces “genocide in plain sight.” Even international institutions, typically so reluctant to name the irreparable, have confirmed this damning diagnosis.
On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice solemnly recognized the plausibility of genocide accusations against Israel, demanding immediate measures to halt further irreparable harm. The International Criminal Court, crossing a historic threshold, has issued arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights—all now speak openly of extermination, genocide, the systematic destruction of a people.
Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, severing food, electricity, drinking water, making physical survival impossible. The last desalination plant has ceased operation, condemning the population to thirst and disease. More than half the territory is militarily occupied.
Two-thirds of Gazans face forced displacement orders, driven toward a sealed border in an orchestrated exodus. Israel’s Defense Minister openly admits Israel will use all forms of pressure, military and civilian, to impose this displacement in alignment with the ambitions of the Trump plan.
The human toll is unprecedented. Between October 7 and 31, 2023, nearly 1,900 children were killed, according to Airwars—proportionally equivalent to three hundred times the child mortality rate observed in Ukraine. In Syria’s worst year, it took twelve months to reach this figure. In Gaza, three weeks sufficed. Aid workers assassinated, doctors targeted, journalists executed, hospitals obliterated: Gaza has become the epicenter of an unparalleled tragedy in contemporary history. Even the tonnage of bombs dropped surpasses Dresden in 1945.
The scale of destruction defies all military justification; it embodies the genocidal instinct in its purest form. Even Moshe Ya’alon, former Israeli defense minister, openly accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza—an extraordinary indictment from within the Israeli security establishment amid ongoing conflict.
This horrific assessment is echoed widely. The Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School unequivocally states: “Israel has committed genocidal acts, namely killing, seriously harming, and inflicting conditions of life calculated, and intended to, bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.”
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention adds bluntly: “Israel is committing genocide, and the US is complicit.” Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has denounced Israel’s starvation tactics as genocidal. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, concurs, condemning the deliberate imposition of famine, prolonged malnutrition, dehydration, and genocide.
The method follows an icy logic: terrorize, starve, displace, and then, with nowhere to flee, render Gaza uninhabitable by annihilating its vital infrastructure. Make of this land a wasteland. Benjamin Netanyahu himself admitted it: the goal is to “thin out the population.”
Against this enterprise of erasure, universal memory rises. Imre Kertész reminded us that some tragedies exceed ordinary language; Gaza now imposes such a trial upon human discourse. Charlotte Delbo taught that the agony of the living—hunger, thirst, extinguishing bodies and spirits—can be crueler than death itself.
Primo Levi posed a devastating question: Is he still human, the one deprived of bread, water, and dignity? In Gaza, it is not merely a few souls, but two million human beings who daily beg for the basic right to exist. Simone Veil, survivor of extermination, knew that the ultimate crime is consigning survivors to the wilderness of indifference.
Today, Gaza risks dying—not only beneath bombs but also buried beneath oblivion.
After Auschwitz, Adorno wrote, poetry seemed barbaric. After Gaza, even speech falters. How can we speak of human rights without desecrating what remains of human dignity? How erect treaties, pronouncements, when the ashes of a people choke our voices? Every hollow speech, polite silence, and feigned indignation becomes after Gaza yet another complicity, another abdication signed in blood. It is no longer enough to mourn: we must condemn. It is no longer enough to commemorate: we must rise.
There are crimes against the body. There are crimes against the soul. There are crimes against memory.
To remain silent, to turn away, to refuse to name—is to murder twice.
Our duty is not lamentation, but declaration; not to avert our eyes, but to name clearly; not to survive in shame, but to bear witness with dignity. If Gaza is erased through indifference, then “Never Again” will become merely a lying epitaph on the mass grave of our betrayals.
Meanwhile, Zionist propagandists sneer, oblivious to their own moral shipwreck. Cornered by facts, overwhelmed from all sides, they have nothing left on social media but laughing emojis—pallid grimaces of a decaying cause. Bereft of language and courage, they recruit anonymous foot soldiers from Nigeria and India, whose mediocrity mirrors the decay of their lies.
They laugh, yet it is the grotesque rattle of the defeated, the dying breath of a thoroughly exposed fraud.
– Mohamed El Mokhtar Sidi Haiba is a social and political analyst, whose research interest is focused on African and Middle Eastern Affairs. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Good piece !
Gazans has moved on from dashed hope let’s move on with them.
Leadership comes with burden and the burden is for the leaders of both Muslim & Arab world to bear before ALLAH azza wajal.
Handful positives from this reckless Netanyahu extermination wars.
At least Palestinians can differentiate, with ease, between true caring friends and their enemy’s collaborators.
Praying ALLAH azza wajal accept this little piece of yours as a valuable contribution to our Gaza brethren.
And enter us all into the fold of those that help Palestinians fight off the glaring Israeli aggressions with prayers & pen.
Dear Mr.Mokhtar, my grateful thanks to you for your powerful article, and especially for exposing Indian trolls who are a disgrace to humanity. I beg to assure you that there are hundreds of millions of us in India who are passionate about Palestine and who bear witness to the unparalleled genocide the israelites are committing in Gaza.
Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.