Gazing On Gaza: The Gordian Knot Of Israel And The Middle East

Today, in 2025, Gaza has become the world’s living proof that there are horrors for which words like “tragedy” or “crisis” are grotesquely insufficient.

By Thomas Drake

As a longtime intelligence officer formerly tasked with helping monitor and report on the ever-tightening knot of the Middle East, I have watched, mapped, and analyzed these horrors—not as an abstraction, but through the living pulse of satellite images, intercepted communications, and the terse, desperate voices of those left behind.

I watched not from a distance but through the restless pulse of the region’s calamities for years—first at the CIA, later for the Navy—trying always, vainly, to decipher the logic beneath the suffering. Yet each passing month and massacre makes the prospects for peace seem ever more unreachable.

For a number of years I focused on the Middle East’s tangled web of nationalism, religion, and power—first at the CIA and later for the Navy and eventually as visiting professor of behavioral science at the National Defense University at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Like anyone who’s spent time truly observing this region, I am now less certain than ever about the prospects for peace.

I served as an intelligence officer at the CIA focused on WMD (including the Middle East) specializing in imagery, and then as an all-source commissioned intelligence officer in the Navy focused on electronic intelligence, global terrorism, and the greater Middle East and North Africa area. I also served as a senior executive at the National Security Agency (9/11 was my first day on the job) with responsibilities during my time there focused on communications and leadership as a senior change leader while also enabling specialized teams to help provide intelligence analysis and reporting to national command authorities—even when they often ignored or dismissed them.

I also spend a fair amount of time listening and watching Al Jazeera and Israeli i24 News as well as reading other Middle East media outlets in an admittedly difficult and challenging environment, while trying to make sense of it all.

The Limits of Human Endurance

There is no metaphor that can hold the reality of Gaza now, only a raw, ceaseless ache. Today, in 2025, Gaza has become the world’s living proof that there are horrors for which words like “tragedy” or “crisis” are grotesquely insufficient.

The Gazan enclave is no longer only ‘an open-air prison’ as so many observers long called it and now an open mass grave. The streets are not thoroughfares but tombs. What were once bustling neighborhoods are now barren moonscapes.

Children limp past journalists, their bodies hollowed not only by starvation but by the gnawing certainty that the world has judged them invisible. And starvation here is not a misfortune as much as it is a weapon, wielded by policy, inflicted by siege.

The few hospitals left in Gaza have become abattoirs. Doctors at Al-Shifa speak of cutting off children’s limbs without anesthesia, of mothers’ milk dried up, of fathers vanished under collapsed buildings.

UNRWA estimates now confirm over 70% of Gazans are suffering famine-level hunger. UNICEF reported in May 2025 that nine out of ten children under five are acutely malnourished. Entire families, even their civil records, have disappeared—erased not only in life, but from memory and once proud communities are now at death’s waiting rooms.

Starvation is not a consequence—it is policy.

A Catastrophe Unfolds

This is not the fallout of a single intolerable crime but the result of a deliberate campaign, enabled by a traumatized and furiously vengeful Israeli state. The attack on October 7, 2023, was itself an abomination—Hamas’s killing and kidnapping spree offered both excuse and prelude. The October 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas—1,200 Israelis killed, hundreds more maimed or abducted—was an atrocity.

But the Israeli response, with full-throated and green-lit American support and unlimited arms, has moved beyond retaliation to calculation in a policy not of self-defense but of erasure, a campaign not just against Hamas, but against the very possibility of sustainable life in Gaza.

And the response from Israel, backed without pause by American weapons and diplomatic shields is total and is also a policy of eradication not just of Hamas, but of Gaza’s very viability as a place for human life.

Genocide is not being used lightly—the word, once unthinkable here, is now steadily voiced by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Israel’s own B’Tselem, and even genocide scholars who once recoiled from its use.

Full recognition of America’s role is necessary to call out as these weapons, these policies, these red lines continually erased—all have the endorsement, cash flow, and political cover of Washington because Netanyahu’s regime could not exist as it does without it.

Yet the nightmare would also not be possible without the iron hearts of Hamas’s leadership as well—willing to sacrifice civilian lives for power, holding hostages, entrenching itself in civilian neighborhoods while offering only the prospect of endless struggle and martyrdom.

Gaza, once called an open-air prison, is now an open graveyard. “Never again” has become a hollow slogan, twisted on all sides.

The events ignited by Hamas’s horrific October 7, 2023 attack—more than 1,200 killed, thousands wounded, and hundreds taken hostage—unleashed an Israeli response of relentless ferocity. The world looked on as Israel, traumatized by perhaps its gravest security failure, launched a genocidal revenge campaign that razed city after city in Gaza, pushing already desperate civilians into starvation, displacement, and the raw edge of famine with Israel’s Netanyahu now pushing for full blown military occupation of all of Gaza.

Today, even as world leaders urge restraint, Gaza has become a symbol of modern humanitarian catastrophe with many tens of thousands killed, children dying of hunger, and almost the entire enclave rendered unlivable and increasingly jammed into smaller and smaller areas.

Starvation isn’t a side effect as it is now turned into a deliberate tool—a war crime under siege. The siege’s grim arithmetic—collective punishment administered in the name of security—has isolated Israel, eroded its moral standing, and now the word “genocide” is growing increasingly louder in global forums, including from within Israel itself.

Genocide, once unthinkable in mainstream debate, is now spoken out loud and joined by genocide scholars like Omer Bartov, who called Gaza’s annihilation “systematized,” comparable to histories “we swore never to repeat” (Bartov, NYT, 15 July 2025) and concluded that the scale of indiscriminate bombing and deprivation meets the legal definition of genocide—terms once unthinkable in mainstream Israeli debate.

Every new atrocity is met by US financial and diplomatic endorsement. In March of 2025 alone, the US shipped $3 billion in munitions, blocked ceasefire resolutions at the UN, and recited the same refrain—“Israel has the right to defend itself”—over footage of infants dying in dust and tent camps.

Yet this tragedy is impossible without Hamas’s own pitiless calculations with its leaders, entrenched beneath the ruined streets, hoarding supplies, refusing all compromise, holding hostages living and dead as its last levers of power. Their intransigence, too, is a siege—against their own, with civilians as currency.

A Knot That Tightens by Betrayal

This is not a war that has raged for mere months, or years, or even decades. And the current catastrophe is not just the latest loop but the latest coil in a century-old snare—of imperial maps, colonial lies, broken promises, mass expulsions, and negotiations that only narrowed the horizon of hope.

The Balfour Declaration in 1917, answered by the Nakba of 1948 with some 750,000 Palestinians expelled as the world rearranged maps to its taste.

The Oslo Accords, meant as liberation, became another kind of impasse. As scholar Rashid Khalidi writes, “each negotiation has been another knot, not a loose end” and every failed peace process that, in retrospect, served only to buy time for the next round of violence and dispossession.

Hamas, born of despair and blockade, thrives in misery and rejection. The United States, once self-ordained as a peacemaker, is now the arsenal and diplomatic enabler of slow-motion ethnic cleansing.

Each purported “solution” only tightens the coiled wire.

Israel’s slide into outright ethno-nationalist aggression is no accident but the culmination of decades spent demonizing “the other.” Hamas, raised in this atmosphere, profits from misery and blockade, refusing compromise out of dogma and survival instinct.

Meanwhile, the United States, the supposed backer of a “rules-based order,” chooses—to the shock of much of its own populace—to fund, arm, and protect a policy of collective punishment and slow-motion ethnic cleansing—so much for America First.

Human Suffering as Policy

Famine, mass homelessness, amputations by the thousands—this is not collateral damage, but a message. These outcomes are choices, not accidents. When food and water become weapons of war, when aid trucks are blocked until children die, when journalists keel over from the same malnutrition they document, the gruesome logic is unavoidable: strip Gaza of its future, make it disappear.

The world’s response? Condemnations, statements, “concern”—and in practice, almost nothing. America’s G7 allies tiptoe toward recognizing a Palestinian state, but will not condition arms sales or push for real consequences. The UN counts the dead.

When food, water, electricity become weapons of war; when aid convoys are obstructed until children die; when journalists collapse from the same hunger they record—the aim is deletion.

A nurse for the Red Crescent testifies: “Children’s hair falls out in clumps. We ration glucose meant for diabetes just to buy them another hour” (Reuters, April 2025).

The Ministry of Health, corroborated by UN OCHA, counted over 45,000 dead by June 2025, a third of them children. UNHCR reports more than 1.6 million are now displaced into a strip smaller than Detroit—where “over 90% of water is undrinkable, and food cannot pass the checkpoints” (UNICEF, June 2025).

American bombs and planes obliterated central Khan Younis, as confirmed by Pentagon logs and international reporters. “America’s $15 billion military package this year alone paid for the airstrikes that turned homes to dust” (New York Times, June 2025)—witnessed by countless international media.

Impossible Choices, Hardened Hearts

There is no way out that does not require a collapse of the intransigence on all sides, a total reckoning with the buried guilt and hatred animating every decision.

But who, now, will disarm? Who will end the siege first? Who can acknowledge their own crimes, when every crime is met with accusation and denial, and every victim is instantly made into a proxy for some greater cause?

The few Israeli voices of conscience who warn of “moral failure,” the exhausted Palestinian parents still clinging to dignity, the distant diplomats who know in their hearts the blood is partly on their hands—these are whispers in a storm of impunity.

Every initiative—ceasefire, hostage deal, corridor for aid—collapses against mutual loathing and blame. “To call this security is to lie to one’s own soul,” writes the Israeli-Palestinian author Sayed Kashua. “What security is built on a mountain of orphaned children?” (Haaretz, April 2025).

A teacher in Rafah whispers: “We teach our children to count with names of the missing, not numbers. We tell them not to look outside when the sky flashes; it is never rain, only fire” (Guardian, May 2025).

America’s Indelible Stain

Above all, this is America’s incubus. The Israeli right stands only because the White House props it up. Israeli impunity survives only with the White House’s blessing and billions in lethal aid. Every bomb and shell carries a US serial number. Every veto at the UN prolongs and extends the siege, every equivocation is another shovel over a Gazan grave. Talk of a “grand bargain” only intensifies the absurdity. What deal can be made on the bones of a people?

Since October, the U.S. has blocked four Security Council ceasefire resolutions and rushed bunker-busting bombs—used, says the UN, in jam-packed neighborhoods and UN-run schools (UNSC Reports, May 2025).

Even American Jewish leaders speak of the abyss: Rabbi Jill Jacobs (T’ruah), “If Jews must fight for survival by destroying another people, what have we become?” (Open letter, March 2025).

Haaretz’s editorial board concludes, “Never has Israeli policy been so emboldened by the blank check of a global superpower.” (May 2025).

Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, “American credibility is crumbling in the dust of Gaza more surely than its bombs.” (NYT, May 2025).

Why does the US continue to warehouse its own ideals in Gaza’s ruins? What is the ethical cost of American identity tied to this policy?

History: A Cyclical Trap

Why does it continue?

The answer is locked in history’s repetition: outsider-imposed partitions, promises broken, and mass displacements. The Balfour Declaration, partition plans, wars of 1948 and 1967 and 1973 and all the other conflicts in between, unending occupation and the illusion of a “two-state solution”—each turn tightened the knot further.

For decades, Israeli governments—especially in recent years under hard-line religious-nationalist leadership—have hardened their positions against any perceived compromise.

Hamas, meanwhile, rooted in Gaza, has exploited both the suffering and the chaos, mobilizing resistance but sacrificing ordinary Gazans. The people are used as human shields and political pawns, condemned to choose between occupation and militant rule. The result is a horrifying status quo where military might ensures only military deadlock, and each side views the other in existential terms.

There is a clear humanitarian crisis with simply devastating, inhumane conditions across the entire enclave of Gaza and the accompanying horrendous loss of life, staggering injuries and so many maimed and mutilated as well as gaunt children walking around or simply unable to move due to acute malnutrition—plus increasing starvation and the specter of induced famine on top of massive displacement—as the state of Israel hardens its heart even more against all real and perceived threats and enemies in an eye-for-an-eye mentality playing out against all sides because ‘others’ are of the ‘wrong’ ethnicity, lineage or historical genealogy.

Desperate hunger increasingly haunts Gaza. And after the recent collapse of the Gaza ceasefire talks and with the growing signs of famine in Gaza how does this all end? Many thousands of children are dead and dying. Many tens of thousands of civilians have died. And using food and desperately needed humanitarian aid as a weapon is unconscionable when turning the distribution sites over to a private shadowy entity into a death trap for far too many Gazans.

And yet whole cities and neighborhoods in Gaza are now wiped out and erased with significant negative impact and a clear diminishing of Israel’s reputation in the world and how it is clearly mishandling the worsening plight of Gaza at large.

Why is the conflict still ongoing as the world grows more angry with Israel combined with the grip Netanyahu and hard right religious nationalists continue to hold over Israel while letting starvation ‘serve’ as a tool of warfare as a de facto policy and gernocide as a clear war crime within a larger decades-long failed two-state solution?

And how can you separate Hamas from the people of Gaza as Hamas uses them as a shield and for exploitation? And yet for years Israel supported and propped up Hamas as a deliberate strategy to divide Palestinians. Will it lead to longer term isolation or end up with new alignments?

And what does the future hold in terms of the Middle East and impact on the rest of the world given the regions central role in world history and across multiple religions and faiths?

As Israel’s brutal and arguably unnecessarily belligerent over-the-top assault on Gaza continues (the pictures are filled with utter devastation and suffering)—and its related settler incursions and violence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, attempts to split up Syria, dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon, contending with Yemen and the recent 12 day war with Iran—are creating conditions causing public backlash around the world as well as alarmed voices from even within Israel and any number of Jews from around the world calling out the cruelty and that it is high time to end the war.

It is also high time to name the cycles where every broken peace attempt—Oslo’s collapse, Camp David’s breakdown, Intifada after Intifada—echoes today in the wailing and rubble of Gaza.

Witness the memory of an 87-year-old survivor of Deir Yassin: “The world exiled us once, now they watch as it happens again, in slow motion, on live TV” (Al Jazeera, May 2025).

The World Responds—Or Refuses to

Outside actors, formerly content with managing the conflict, now grapple with a situation spiraling beyond control. On July 21, 2025, 30 nations, including France, Canada, and the UK, demanded an end to Gaza’s siege. The majority of the UN membership now recognizes a Palestinian state in principle, while international courts debate war crimes and apartheid.

Their joint statement on the Occupied Palestinian Territories urgently called for an end to the war in Gaza, called out the worsening suffering of the people in Gaza, and condemned the Israeli Government’s denial of humanitarian assistance to the civilian population and also urged Israel to comply with international humanitarian law obligations it continues to ignore.

Some 140 U.N. members already recognize a Palestinian state and now France, Canada and the U.K. (the first from the G7) indicate they will soon conditionally recognize a Palestinian state too. Yet, meaningful action remains elusive, stifled by America’s shifting policies and a region riven by suspicion and rife with competing interests. Calls for a new order—a true peace accord, a regional détente—run up against the reality that human rights are still bartered for strategic gain.

And more recently a couple of well-known Israeli human rights groups stated that Israel was, in fact, committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza as the international debate heats up on whether a moral red line is now crossed and recognition that even revenge (however justified) is not a legitimate policy.

What a mess as both sides (Hamas and the state of Israel) are holding firm as the last of the hostages brutally abducted by Hamas remain unreleased and Israel further solidifies its military occupation of Gaza amidst the increasingly desperate plight of everyday Gazans and all the artificial hurdles and corruption getting desperately needed humanitarian aid and food distributed to the people who need it most living shattered lives.

International courts debate genocide and apartheid while bombs fall and food convoys burn.

Doctors Without Borders has called Gaza “history’s most documented starvation—millions are watching, but none intervene” (MSF Report, July 2025).

Meanwhile the EU floats sanction threats, but their ports remain open to Israeli trade. The Arab League issues statements; Iran and Hezbollah exploit the carnage for their own leverage. Only the children in the dust remain without a champion.

And then there is the UN Secretary-General’s condemnation of “a moral failure for our age” in July 2025.

The Human Toll—and Moral Abyss

The cost cannot be captured in numbers. Reuters describes mothers forced to wrap three children in Red Crescent banners, because there are not enough shrouds. Channel 12 anchor Yonit Levi, breaking with the Israeli government line, called it “a moral failure, not a hasbara (public relations) failure.” That moment ricocheted through a society only now waking up to the price of war.

Is Israel’s search for security now overshadowing the basic principle that no nation can build its safety on the dispossession of another? Can Hamas, after decades of manipulation and brutality—by Israel, by regional powers, by its own leaders—offer Palestinians any future beyond endless misery and sacrifice?

The true cost of this conflict is measured in lost lives and shattered humanity. Journalists document their own hunger alongside the famine stalking Gaza’s children. Once vibrant neighborhoods lie in ruin. The systematic demolition, deliberate denial of aid, and displacement of Gazans evoke the world’s darkest historical chapters.

The guilt and shame are beginning to penetrate Israeli society itself, as prominent Israelis now speak openly of moral failure rather than simple public relations missteps—a possible “Walter Cronkite moment” for Israel.

And some Israeli citizens are now stepping forward to acknowledge that there is a shared civil responsibility for the horrendous acts against humanity and the sheer contempt for human lives shown by Israel in Gaza in this de facto policy of starvation and destroying most of the infrastructure across Gaza through deliberate demolition and laying waste to most of the area making most of Gaza simply unlivable.

And don’t forget that back in February, Trump declared that the US would take over Gaza, clear it, push out its two million people and then construct a new Riviera Gaza with Netanyahu saying the idea could change history. This aligns with some of the far right in Israel supporting a take over of Gaza by depopulating Gaza.

Beyond all the justifications used and promoted for seizing, holding or occupying land rooted in millennia of history, Israel’s neo-colonial control over the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is under increasing scrutiny by an unprecedented array of investigative bodies, courts, and sanctions regimes.

Reports by Israeli, Palestinian, and a number of international organizations argue that structural discrimination by Israel has crossed the legal threshold of apartheid (and even genocide in Gaza), spurring criminal proceedings at the International Criminal Court, emergency measures at the International Court of Justice and targeted sanctions by numerous states.

What’s at stake in a region that seems to defy understanding, let alone any lasting solutions or permanent resolution since the Zionist movement in the late 1800s calling for a Jewish homeland state by colonized immigration, that led to the Balfour Declaration that led to the Mandatory Palestine as a British Mandate, then an Arab revolt and lots of violence and tension that led to a UN partition plan after WWII in 1947 and then the 1948 war with the emergence of the modern day secular state of Israel—in the face of seemingly intractable historical, religious and ethnic conflict so deeply embedded in the region and at the very crossroads of so much history and culture and multiple empires?

The future of modern Israel, its role as a nation, its outsize ability to fend off threats and defend itself, its role as an occupying power over seized and annexed land as a result of war and conflict within the greater Middle East and the world—stands at a nexus point.

At the Crossroads of History as the Trap Repeats?

Modern Israel, for all its military might and siege mentality, has never been more isolated. Palestinians are dispossessed, again and again, as regional powers posture and reposition. Jordan wonders if it can weather a second Nakba. Egypt fills its border with guns—not to keep Israelis out, but to keep Gazans in.

Iran and Hezbollah use these images as recruitment films. The Gulf monarchies count petro-dollars, pretending not to hear the wails from the camps. The world stands paralyzed, more invested in winning than in ending the agony.

This complex nexus is marked by profound contradictions with clear military dominance, Hamas intransigence and resistance to giving up its power, coupled with increasing diplomatic isolation of Israel, regional power shifts amid persistent conflicts and violence and economic opportunity for some while overshadowed by entrenched political, religious and societal polarization for others.

Yet any positive impact on daily Palestinian life with so many of them dispossessed remains at bay and further away because of political shielding, Hamas’ militant stand in Gaza, Hamas using Gazans as human shields—with desperate people in increasingly dire conditions, perceived and declared existential threats to Israel, arms support and economic entanglements that dilute legal and diplomatic pressure—can only persist the terrible cycles of violence and terrorism as well as the continuing use of military force and military action and all kinds of spying and cyber activity across the region.

Sustained enforcement of court orders, coordinated sanctions on systemic enablers, and universal jurisdiction prosecutions are essential if Palestinians are to move from “second-class status” toward equal protection under international law as they are people too.

It also seems evident that there is no day after or political horizon in Gaza and with every minute the war goes on—with all the clearing and cleansing and most of Gaza turned unlivable—one could easily argue that the final goal is expulsion and re-settlement.

But solutions now seem more distant than ever as Israel will perceive any backing down or compromise (and especially going forward since the 7 October heinous attack by Hamas) as weakening their ability to maintain their sovereignty and safety with ‘enemies’ all around. And Hamas won’t give in as they know they would lose power and leverage.

If Israel wants to remain safe it must make Palestinians safe and free as both their destinies are intertwined. It is simply no longer viable to pursue a policy of military oppression with the military objectives long complete while continuing to deny Palestinians their basic rights.

And what is the end game other than a desire for the ridding and mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza while the people remain trapped and cannot leave?

Again—is Israel beginning to experience its own Walter Cronkite moment back in 1968 when Cronkite spoke out against continuing US involvement in Vietnam?

And yet what prevents a return to October 6th and the tragic cycle just begins all over again?

In light of the breakdown in ceasefire negotiations, Hamas is also further digging in its heels knowing that if it were to return the remaining hostages—both dead and alive—it also gives up and loses any last vestiges of leverage over Israel.

So then what? Further attrition and the razing of Gaza by Israel to wait out Hamas or just take over Gaza completely?

Or a full blown military occupation by Israel that goes on for years?

What Future Remains?

Against all of this background, what if some kind of comprehensive Middle East peace accord that Israel eventually signs due to the promise of security in a region wracked by so much conflict and violence in just the 20th and 21st centuries alone—through a too-hard-to-believe quid pro quo arrangement with all the key parties—were to take place in the future?

Could this happen against the plight and suffering of the Palestinian peoples—and the continuing lack and absence of a two state solution that just keeps the worsening status quo in place?

And that this treaty/accord eventually occurs due to the sheer and eventually overwhelming geo-political exhaustion as the answer to all these seemingly persistent and tightly wound Gordian knots of enmity, hate and deeply rooted historical contention and conflict in the region?

In other words, is some kind of breakthrough peace pact treaty deal even possible?

And yet what would this kind of deal really mean given the sad realities of history when this ‘deal’ no doubt is inevitably betrayed and broken no matter how unbreakable its ironclad promises may appear?

It’s high time to wage peace and reconciliation rather than war and revenge but seemingly impossible given the circumstances and hardened hearts. And yet the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza is way past the breaking point.

There is talk, always, of a “grand bargain”—some blindingly complex accord, stitched together not by justice but by sheer weight of continuing and unending exhaustion. Perhaps eventually, the price of ceaseless war will outweigh every rationalization. But every plausible scenario, from outright re-occupation, to ethnic cleansing, to indefinite siege or another failed negotiation, feels more like managing collapse than building peace.

The region’s Gordian knot has never been tighter, as cycles of revenge, impunity, and mutual dehumanization drive ever deeper. Unless the principle is finally embraced that security and justice must be shared, or not at all, every new generation will inherit an even starker reality.

The Unbearable Status Quo

There is no day after, no clear horizon left. Gaza has been rendered unlivable. Any plausible future—occupation, expulsion, indefinite siege—is only recognized as further catastrophe managed, not peace forged. Each “grand bargain” is just exhaustion renamed.

Gaza’s fate—caught between the hammer of military might and the anvil of political fanaticism—now stands as a stark warning. Without accountability, without the will to recognize the other’s right to a life of dignity and shared humanity, the nightmare endures.

To untie this knot, it is no longer enough to wish for peace. It must be waged with the same intensity as war itself—before the region descends past a point where even horror no longer provokes outrage.

But as long as impunity persists, and the cycles of dehumanization and conflict remain amidst the global legitimacy crisis surrounding it all—instability, conflict and crisis will only continue to deepen—and a very uncertain and uneasy status quo will remain in place.

If history is a knot, then Gaza is its cruelest twist. Peace is not on the horizon—only exhaustion, only a deeper normalization of horror.

Unless all parties wrench themselves out of this spiral, unless Americans recognize the price paid to preserve their own illusions, unless Israelis admit they cannot bomb themselves to safety, unless Hamas relinquishes its sacrificial politics—Gaza’s agony will remain the region’s and the world’s.

There is no honest distance left. Even the satellites cannot capture the full magnitude of Gaza’s unmaking. The world now lives with the knowledge, and that is its own crime.

To choose silence is to consent. Each container of aid blocked, each bomb dropped with our tacit blessing—binds history’s Gordian knot ever tighter. If one day there is justice in the Middle East, it will begin with those willing to tremble at the full truth of what has already been done.

It is not the absence of solutions, but the refusal to make them real. For that shame, may history never absolve us.

For this tragedy, solutions are absent not because none exist but because none are chosen.

There is no solace with any of this. There are only the demands of conscience to see clearly, to call things by their names, and to know that as long as this persists, humanity itself is on trial—and failing.

Final Call

We must all bear witness to the spiritual rot and let every statistic, every quote, every policy fact be a charge in the indictment.

We must demand accountability and name those in power—Netanyahu, Hamas leadership, US presidents, arms makers—hold them up to the mirror of history. Stand with the suffering as a witness, not as a bystander.

This agony is not unstoppable—it is only the product of unchosen justice. Humanity itself is on trial, and each day it fails anew. For that shame, may history never absolve us.

Thomas Drake is a former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency, a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblower. In 2006, he leaked information about the NSA’s dysfunctional data-gathering Trailblazer Project to the Baltimore Sun. He was prosecuted under the Espionage Act in 2010, but the case collapsed and on June 9, 2011, all 10 original charges against him were dropped.