October 2025. Two years of bombs raining down. Two years of the world watching. The international order is dropping its mask.
“On this earth there is that which makes life worth living: the hesitation of April, the scent of bread at dawn, the grass upon the stone, the opinions women hold about men, and there is that which makes life worth living in the end of September…” Mahmoud Darwish
A planned colonization
The archives do not lie
History does not begin on 7 October 2023, nor even in 1948. To understand Gaza, one must go back to the 1880s and to the first Zionist writings. Theodor Herzl, in his Diary (1895), does not mince his words: “We shall have to gently expropriate the poor population beyond the borders by procuring work for it in the transit countries, while denying it any work in our own country.”
This logic of exclusion was no accident. The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi has shown how, as early as 1918, detailed maps identified the Arab villages to be “transferred.” The Plan Dalet of 1948, brought to light by Benny Morris — a leading figure among the Israeli “new historians” — formalizes a strategy of displacement that leads to the Nakba: the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians.
Chronology of a dispossession
- 1880–1914: first waves of Zionist immigration, land purchases
- 1917: Balfour Declaration
- 1948: Plan Dalet, Nakba
- 1967: occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
- 2007: blockade of Gaza, an “open-air prison”
- 2023: the tipping point into genocide
This is not a deviation. It is the essence of the project.
The Gaza laboratory
Between 1967 and 2023, Gaza became a veritable laboratory of demographic control. The Israeli-American anthropologist Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), speaks of a “matrix of control”: an integrated system that combines territory, the economy, mobility, security and the collective psyche. In concrete terms, this means that the occupation is not confined to a military presence: it turns into an exportable technology of governance and domination, tested on the Palestinian population.
The figures speak for themselves: tens of thousands of homes demolished, millions of olive trees uprooted, farmland confiscated on a massive scale. The strategy is not to annihilate brutally, but to strangle methodically, keeping society under constant pressure.
As early as 2012, one revelation illustrated this chilling logic: a military document, disclosed by Gisha — an Israeli NGO that campaigns for Palestinians’ freedom of movement, particularly in Gaza — laid bare a cynical calculation of the “minimum calories” needed to avert a famine while keeping the population “on the brink of collapse.” The aim was not to feed, but to control: to let people live without allowing them to thrive.
A genocide broadcast live
I use the term in the strict sense of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the UN in 1948. Under this convention, two elements must be present: the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group and concrete material acts (killings, serious bodily or mental harm, measures intended to prevent births, forcible transfer of children, living conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group).
It is precisely on this basis that South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. In January 2024, the ICJ recognized the plausible character of these accusations and ordered Israel to take provisional measures: to prevent any act of genocide, to allow humanitarian aid through, and to punish speech inciting extermination.
The facts documented by numerous reports confirm these criteria:
- Intent: public statements by political and military officials speaking of “erasing Gaza,” “reducing the population,” or “exterminating the enemy.”
- Material acts: massive bombardments of civilian areas, a blockade cutting off food, water, medical care and fuel, systematic destruction of vital infrastructure, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
In other words, we are witnessing a process of destruction that no longer even hides itself, filmed, documented and broadcast in real time: a genocide broadcast live.
When the masks come off
The Hamas attack targeting civilians and the taking of hostages constitutes a war crime within the meaning of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (Common Article 3 and Additional Protocol I, Article 51 on the protection of civilians). The deliberate killing of non-combatants and the taking of hostages are strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law.
The Israeli response, however, grounded in a logic of collective punishment and described by its most senior officials as genocidal, went beyond the framework of self-defense and tipped into a project of annihilation.
Yoav Gallant, Minister of Defense: “Complete siege. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel… We are fighting human animals.”
Isaac Herzog, President: “There are no innocent civilians in Gaza.”
Giora Eiland, former head of the National Security Council: “Gaza must become a place where no human being can exist.”
These are not slips of the tongue. They are the confession of intent.
The death machine
In October 2023, the Israeli historian Raz Segal, a specialist in the Holocaust and in genocides, published a resounding article in Jewish Currents (an intellectual and progressive magazine of the American Jewish left) in which he described the Israeli offensive on Gaza as a “textbook case of genocide.” A teacher in the United States, at Stockton University (New Jersey), and recognized for his academic work on mass violence, Segal draws on international law and the 1948 Convention to argue that the acts committed in Gaza fall squarely within the legal definition of genocide.
His remarks immediately set off a fierce debate. In academic circles, several scholars and human rights defenders backed his analysis, holding that the observed facts — systematic bombing of civilian infrastructure, hospitals and schools destroyed, universities razed — bear out his conclusions. But others rejected this characterization as “excessive” or “politicized.” The controversy even had professional consequences: in 2024, the University of Minnesota withdrew a job offer to Segal under pressure from pro-Israeli lobbies, raising a broader debate about academic freedom and the political pressures brought to bear on research.
Segal’s denunciation joins other international alarms. The notorious “Hannibal” directive — a military rule that favors the elimination of hostages over their release — illustrates a logic in which human life is instrumentalized to the point of sacrifice. At the same time, Craig Mokhiber, a senior UN official, resigned, denouncing “a textbook genocide” unfolding before the eyes of the world, accusing the UN of proving powerless, even complicit through its inaction.
The UN sham
A system born in inequality
89 vetoes. Zero sanctions. Seventy-five years of impunity.
The Security Council is not a guardian: it is a veto-club. 140 countries vote for Palestine. Ten oppose. Guess who prevails?
We know. And we see. We can no longer say we did not know. The view of 85% of humanity counts for nothing against Western interests. Gaza is the grave of international law — and we are its gravediggers.
The ICJ, theater of powerlessness
January 2024: provisional measures. Result: intensified bombardments. When leaders hostile to the West are targeted, applause. When Tel Aviv is, evasions.
John Dugard sums it up: “International law has become the law of the powerful, by the powerful, for the powerful.”
Western hypocrisy
Double standards
Moscow bombs Ukraine: sanctions. Tel Aviv razes Gaza: munitions. Putin indicted: cheers. Netanyahu targeted: “antisemitism.”
It is not the law that is lacking. It is the will to pay its price.
“Universal values” are geographically and racially conditioned. A dead white child makes the front page. A thousand Arab children massacred make a news brief. This is not a bug: it is the system.
Memory instrumentalized
The official identification with Israel rests on the instrumentalization of memory — which ranks humanities according to the needs of a global racial order. Hence these “Never Again”s that never apply to the non-white victims of contemporary genocides — from Rwanda to Yemen, from Iraq to Congo, from Sudan to the Sahel.
The forgotten of selective outrage
Gaza reveals the architecture of silence.
In Congo, more than six million dead since 1996, fuel for our “rare earths.” In Sudan, since 2023, thousands dead and millions displaced — the gravest displacement crisis of our time.
The same matrix: black or brown lives sacrificed on the altar of our comforts.
The media: complicit or blind?
Factory of lies
Beheaded babies: unverified stories repeated on a loop. Systematic sexual violence: instrumentalized allegations. “Human shields”: an accusatory inversion.
Conversely, every Israeli massacre is subjected to euphemism. Words kill twice.
Chris Hedges, former New York Times: “The American media have become organs of propaganda, incapable of critical distance from state lies. Gaza has revealed their true face.”
Resistance gagged
Social networks censor, de-rank, and choke the reach of Palestinian content. The algorithm classifies. It sorts. The algorithm silences. Even the attention market serves reason of state when reason of state demands it.
The awakening of consciences
A generation on its feet
Spring 2024: pro-Palestinian encampments emerge on American and European campuses. Young people see clearly.
The response: arrests, bans, dismissals. The repression proves one thing: the official narrative does not hold up against the facts.
Rashid Khalidi had said it: each generation rediscovers Palestine despite the effort to erase it.
BDS: the armed wing of citizen conscience for Palestine
Faced with the continuation of the Israeli occupation and colonization, and as states struggle to enforce respect for international law, global civil society has taken up the tool of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Born in 2005 out of a call from Palestinian civil society, this movement has become a practical playbook for millions of people wishing to break free from complicity with a situation they deem unjust.
The pressure is exerted through precise economic and symbolic acts:
- Divestment: Under pressure from activists and shareholders, leading financial institutions are taking action. The bank HSBC sold around 1 billion dollars in holdings in Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems, which operates in the arms sector. The insurance giant AXA divested millions of euros in shares in Israeli banks financing illegal settlements.
- Boycott: International brands perceived as directly supporting the settlement economy, such as SodaStream, have historically faced campaigns so effective that they had to close their factories in the West Bank. Today, chains such as McDonald’s and Starbucks are reporting drops in revenue in certain markets, which they attribute in part to boycott calls linked to the conflict.
- Sanctions and cultural/academic isolation: The call for a cultural boycott prevents normalization. International artists cancel concerts in Israel, and prestigious universities see their student unions vote divestment motions, weakening Israel’s legitimacy on the international stage.
The figures of the targeted companies waver, funds withdraw under the pressure of reputational risk, and the channels of influence panic. The BDS movement, though contested, proves that an ethical groundswell can force economic and political actors to listen, by creating a tangible cost to maintaining the status quo.
Gaza, mirror of our age
Gaza is not only an open-air prison. It is the laboratory of our barbarity. The testing ground of our silences. The grave of our “universal values.”
Here converge our ills: imperialism, structural racism, programmed indifference to the South. Our prosperity is built on mass graves; our democracy feeds on the blood of others; our humanism stops at the borders of our interests.
Gaza holds up a mirror to us. We do not like what we see in it.
Toward a post-Western world
The order of 1945 is dead
In Gaza, it is not only a people that is being murdered. It is the law that is being buried. It is the UN that is being reduced to ashes. 85% of humanity watch, stunned. In this silence, one certainty grows: the order born in 1945 is dying under the bombs, in Palestine.
The multipolar world is taking shape — an expanded BRICS, regional organizations, alternative mechanisms. Its effectiveness has yet to be proven against Western military hegemony, but one thing is certain: belief in Western neutrality is dead.
Resistance through beauty
Faced with the death machine, Palestinian culture resists.
Refaat Alareer, poet of Gaza, wrote: “If I must die, let it be a tale.”
Mosab Abu Toha bears witness from exile: “They can destroy our homes… not our words, nor our dreams.”
Beauty does not save — it accuses. It saves what, within us, refuses to die.
To act: the paths of resistance
The diagnosis has been made. Action awaits us.
Boycott the complicit. Divest from apartheid. Sanction the executioners.
Inform despite the censorship. Resist despite the repression. Amplify Palestinian voices.
In every city, every university, every conscience, Palestine calls.
Two years. Two hundred thousand dead. Two billion witnesses.
The choice is simple: complicit or free.
We know. We see. But we can no longer stay silent.
Palestine resists — and with it, what remains of our humanity.
“We will cast the dice on the land of poetry where no border divides the gardens and the songs.” — Mahmoud Darwish, Don’t Apologize
For a complementary analysis of the geopolitical realignments tied to the international recognition of the Palestinian State, read also: Palestine 2025: How Global Recognition Reveals the Geopolitical Fractures
This opinion piece denounces a political system and those responsible for it, without any hatred toward peoples. Criticism of Zionism, a political ideology, does not constitute antisemitism. Palestinians, like all peoples, have a right to justice and to freedom.
