Orly Noy writes:

Gaza City is engulfed in flames, as the Israeli army embarks on its long-threatened ground offensive after weeks of relentless bombardment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already facing an international arrest warrant on suspicion of crimes against humanity, described this latest assault as an “intensified operation.” I urge you to watch the footage streaming out of Gaza, and see what this euphemism really means.

Look into the eyes of people gripped by a terror unmatched even in the darkest moments of this two-year genocide. See the rows of ash-covered children lying on the blood-soaked floor of what was once a medical center — some barely alive, others wailing in pain and fear — as desperate hands try to comfort them or treat them with whatever medical supplies remain. Hear the screams of families fleeing with nowhere to run. Witness parents scouring the inferno for their children; limbs protruding from beneath the rubble; a paramedic cradling a motionless girl, pleading with her to open her eyes, in vain.

What Israel is doing in Gaza City is not the tragic byproduct of chaotic events on the ground, but a well-calculated act of annihilation, executed in cold blood by “the people’s army” — that is, the fathers, sons, brothers, and neighbors of us Israelis.

How is it that, despite the mounting testimonies from Gaza’s concentration and extermination camps, no mass refusal movement has taken root in Israel? That after two years of this carnage barely a handful of conscientious objectors sit in prison is truly inconceivable. Even the so-called “gray refusers” — reserve soldiers who do not oppose the war on ideological grounds but are simply exhausted and questioning its purpose — remain far too few to slow the killing machine, let alone bring it to a halt.

Who are these obedient souls who keep this system running? How can a society so deeply fractured — between the religious and the secular, settlers and liberals, kibbutzniks and urbanites, veteran immigrants and new arrivals — unite only in its willingness to slaughter Palestinians without a moment’s hesitation? [Continue reading…]