‘Legitimate targets’: Israel justifies Gaza genocide by dehumanizing Palestinians

By Maryam Qarehgozlou

The apocalyptic scenes in the besieged Gaza Strip bear testimony to the genocidal campaign that is currently underway as the Israeli regime pushes ahead with its no-holds-barred aggression, legitimizing the massacre of Palestinians.

The indiscriminate bombings since last week, following the ‘Al-Aqsa Storm’ operation launched by the Hamas resistance movement in response to the prosecution of Palestinians and the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque, have been in line with the regime’s strategy of dehumanizing Palestinians.

In a press conference on Friday, Israeli regime president Isaac Herzog said there are no innocent civilians in the besieged coastal strip, essentially blaming the victims for their victimhood.

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog noted. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

His remark was in reference to the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, which won a huge majority in parliamentary elections over the once-dominant Fatah party in 2006.

When asked by a reporter if he implied that since Gazans did not remove Hamas from power, they are “legitimate targets” he said no, but then hastened to add: “When you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself?”

Israeli minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant also ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, cutting off the region’s access to basic utilities, including electricity, fuel, food and even water.

He basically green-lighted the suffering of 2.3 million people living in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” the war minister asserted, referring to Gazans as “human animals.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, while appearing on Britain’s Sky News, also dismissed the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, after being called out by the anchor.

“Are you seriously asking me a question about Palestinian civilians now? What’s wrong with you? Have you not seen what’s happened? We’re fighting Nazis,” Bennett said in a heated exchange with the host.

Such crude language and the policy of collective punishment against Palestinians is not new and the genocidal language has also been widely employed by officials in the US, the traditional ally of Israel.

Hawkish Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Gaza should be “flattened,” while Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley implored Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish them.”

Western media has also conveniently turned a blind eye to crimes perpetrated by the Israeli regime against Palestinians, blaming victims for being victims, and hailing the oppressors and aggressors.

Fueling the disinformation campaign, Western media outlets consciously and credulously amplified unverified claims of the beheading of Israeli children by Hamas, which was even denied by the regime.

On the other side, they didn’t deem newsworthy reports of Palestinian children being butchered in airstrikes after being ordered by the regime authorities to evacuate and move to the south of the strip.

The Palestinian Health Ministry announced on Saturday that at least 45 Palestinian families have been “wiped off the civil records,” since the regime began attacking Gaza relentlessly on October 7.

According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel dropped the equivalent of “a quarter of a nuclear bomb” since it began the onslaught in Gaza, killing over 2,700 people, including more than 700 children.

The regime also used white phosphorous munitions in densely populated civilian areas in Gaza.

Currently, with the number of dead exceeding the capacity of hospital morgues, the freezer trucks have been turned into makeshift morgues for victims of the devastating military onslaught.

Salama Marouf, head of the Hamas government media office, was quoted as saying that Gaza authorities have been preparing mass graves in the besieged strip.

“In light of the continued arrival of martyrs in their dozens as a result of the occupation’s massacres, a mass grave has been prepared to bury approximately 100 martyrs in the emergency cemetery,” he said.

The situation is becoming increasingly chaotic in the wake of the regime’s appalling evacuation orders, coming ahead of a potential ground assault by the regime.

Overnight between Thursday and Friday, the Israeli army dropped leaflets over Gaza ordering more than one million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza and Gaza City and head toward the south.

The forced transfer of Gazans is a blatant breach of international humanitarian law and a war crime.

Paula Gaviria Betancur, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, said on Friday that Israel must rescind its order for forced displacement of people in Gaza.

“Forcible population transfers constitute a crime against humanity, and collective punishment is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” she said.

And in case Palestinians are willing to evacuate their homes, with roads completely destroyed and bombs falling, how Palestinians are supposed to flee, human rights activists have been asking.

Thousands are still trapped under the rubble and more than 9,000 are nursing injuries, most of them admitted to various hospitals, according to reports. There are not enough beds, surgical beds or intensive care units and it is impossible to carry out surgeries due to the power cuts.

The outrageous and inhumane evacuation orders have also complicated the situation as the complete siege on Gaza has already crippled the health system inside the coastal region.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also condemned the regime’s order to have at least 22 hospitals in northern Gaza evacuated, where more than 2,000 patients are admitted.

“Forcing more than 2000 patients to relocate to southern Gaza, where health facilities are already running at maximum capacity and unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number of patients could be tantamount to a death sentence,” the world health body said in a statement on Saturday.

The rampant war crimes, disinformation campaign and the blatant dehumanization of Palestinians have also encouraged hate crimes against the Palestinian diaspora. 

On Saturday, a 71-year-old white supremacist landlord in the midwestern US state of Illinois stabbed a six-year-old Palestinian-American Muslim boy, Wadea al-Fayoume, to death.

His 32-year-old mother, Hanaan Shahin, a Palestinian who moved from the occupied West Bank to the US 12 years ago, is also in the hospital due to multiple stab wounds.

The Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that “both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis.”

A review of what happened over the past seven decades across the occupied territories clearly reveals that the Israeli regime continues to subject Palestinians to genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, warned that Palestinians are in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing and called on the international community to urgently mediate a ceasefire.

“Israel has already carried out mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the fog of war,” she said on Saturday.  “Again, in the name of self-defense, Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to ethnic cleansing.”

Maryam Qarehgozlou is a Tehran-based journalist.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)

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