This Ongoing Genocide

The day will come when the bombing actually stops, the tanks fall silent, and the gunfire ends. But we must all understand that this will not be “the end of the genocide.” The destruction of the Palestinian people will continue for generations. Consider these ongoing lethal and debilitating consequences of the genocide:

• There isn’t enough food and drinkable water. Israel, in flagrant violation of international law, is still limiting the number of trucks entering Gaza. Still using food as a weapon of war, a war crime. The vast majority of the population in Gaza is chronically malnourished. They have severely weakened immune systems, and are starving. United Nations experts have declared famine, and it will certainly claim victims by the hundreds and thousands more unless much more food is allowed in on a continuous basis.

• The shattered health care system in Gaza and the lack of medicines - those who will not receive the life-saving surgery they require for their injuries, those who will no longer have, or struggle to gain, access to life-saving treatments for chronic conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, asthma, cancer.

• Israel’s willful destruction of water treatment plants and sewage disposal systems that cause contaminated water and poor sanitation, leading to water-borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A, and polio.

• Exposure to neurotoxins released by bombs, heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and depleted uranium. Gases like carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide are produced in fires from exploding bombs. All of these toxins are released into the environment, can remain in the environment long after the bombardment has ended, contaminating soil, water, and the food chain, and can lead to birth defects, genetic destabilization, and cancer.

• Israel’s deliberate obliteration of every university and institution of higher learning in the Gaza Strip, and the destruction of the vast majority of primary and second schools. A whole generation of students have lost tremendous ground in their education, the formation of their minds, and the cultivation of their dreams. There are inspiring stories of teachers holding class in tents and students miraculously finding a way to focus on their lessons. Dedicated teachers are determined to create opportunities to educate the next generation, but the task has been made so much more difficult.

• Estimates are that Israel has destroyed over 90% of the homes in Gaza. This means that between 1.75 and 2 million human beings do not have reliable shelter. They are facing the winter rains in tents.

• The American-Israeli genocidal assault has wiped entire cities off the map. Images of once vibrant Jabaliya and Rafah are staggering. Gray flatness as far as the eye can see. There are no landmarks left, no mosques or churches, no markets, no familiar touchstones of the life they once lived. I don’t think we can begin to understand how disorienting this is – to have not only your home, but your community and your very sense of place destroyed.

• Consider the children of Gaza who “survive.” Perhaps they can be said to have “survived” in that they are not yet listed among the dead. But many of them are WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family). They will face the rest of their lives without their families. Those who have “survived” have been severely traumatized. They have been subjected to more than two years of terrifying bombardments nearly every night. They have been forcibly displaced multiple times. Israel has destroyed their homes and forced them to exist in makeshift shelters, sometimes exposed to the elements or huddling in piles of toxic rubble. Some have lost limbs. Hundreds of thousands of the youngest child survivors have no earthly idea what it is to be safe. This extreme trauma will be stored in the bodies, minds, and spirits of these child survivors. What will this severe trauma cost them in their lives? In their relationships? How will it alter their assumptions about the nature of existence?

Challenging questions. I raise them because I am deeply troubled by them. Whatever healing, renewal, and wisdom may eventually come, it starts with a fearless moral inventory of the ongoing damage.