Israel Is Wiping Out Entire Families In Gaza

Palestinians in the bombarded strip are facing a crisis on a scale we haven’t seen before. We fear it could become a genocide.

by Mahmoud Mushtaha, +972 Magazine

It has been five days of non-stop aerial bombardment against the people of Gaza. The Israeli military is exerting tremendous violence and pressure, both on Hamas and the civilian population, as a response to the former’s Oct. 7 assault and continuing rocket fire from the strip. For us Palestinians in Gaza, this is the hardest and most brutal Israeli onslaught we’ve ever experienced, and we are all fearing for our families and our society.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israel’s aggression has so far claimed the lives of at least 1,354 people and wounded over 5,763 more — the majority of them civilians. The occupation forces are committing massacres, leaving neighborhoods in ruins. The Palestinian Civil Defense is struggling to reach survivors under the rubble of people’s obliterated homes.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based nonprofit, documented Israel’s use of white phosphorus munitions to bomb civilians in the neighborhood of Al-Karama, in northern Gaza, destroying large parts of the neighbourhood and killing over 30 people. Indeed, Israel’s assault on the besieged strip is so severe that it has wiped out entire families, erasing any trace of their existence from the Palestinian civil registry.