Why Gaza’s genocide ranks among
the gravest horrors of human history

A prevalent fallacy is to view modern brutal policies as less severe than previous atrocities that have scarred human history, including the horrors of the Second World War.

The core of this fallacy lies in neutralizing the element of time, and overlooking the evolution of deterrents and constraints designed to prevent the recurrence of past monstrosities.

These constraints are not limited to the development of global values-based and legal frameworks, nor to the growth of a general ethical conscience across humanity, regardless of the degree to which such standards are upheld.

They also include the fact that many of today’s crimes are exposed in real time through pervasive media coverage, making concealment far more difficult than in the past, when empires, states and armies could sweep grave offences under the rug.

Some early signals of the Nazi extermination program were publicly apparent via racist and inflammatory rhetoric, coercive legislative and procedural measures, and horrifying policies of persecution and deportation to concentration camps.

Yet many of these horrors remained hidden behind fortified walls until the Nazi regime collapsed, revealing the terrifying atrocities committed under the deceitful slogan mounted above the gates of Auschwitz: “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work sets you free”).

A few decades prior, Germany committed acts of genocide in Africa – horrors that remain largely unknown even today, despite belated official recognition by the German state. During the genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples in the early 20th century in what is now Namibia, German colonizers killed tens of thousands.

In stark contrast to the historical veil over such atrocities, Israel’s current slaughter in the Gaza Strip is being transmitted live from the field through screens and networks, despite Israel’s ban on global media entering the territory.

Savage violations

In this narrow stretch of land, human lives and dignity are being savagely violated in an era that has seen the elevation of international law and human rights principles, alongside the development of the United Nations and other global mechanisms for accountability, most notably the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Were the atrocities of the past to be reactivated in the present day, they might find no more advanced or horrifying mode of execution than Israel’s genocidal program in the Gaza Strip, which continues under the gaze of the entire world. Indeed, they could derive an operational blueprint from the systematic policies and practices of Israeli war leaders, and the propaganda narratives they use to justify each fresh atrocity.

Likewise, if the horrors unfolding today in Gaza had occurred during previous eras, they would likely have reached even more monstrous scales, liberated from modern constraints and spared the need for the elaborate justifications required in the 21st century.

Today, any atrocity systematically committed by a modern regime, such as the Israeli army’s program of occupation and extermination against the Palestinian people, must be classified among the gravest horrors in human history – for these crimes are committed despite the existence of multiple deterrents.

One must then ask: how would Israel’s actions look unshackled from modern constraints, enjoying the same unchecked impunity granted to empires, states, regimes and armies of times gone by?

It is essential to highlight this reality in order to fully grasp the immense dangers posed by Israel’s program of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Such ghastly atrocities – mass killing, total destruction, starvation as a method of warfare, impoverishment, humiliation, and biological and environmental warfare – are not confined to the past, appearing solely in black-and-white footage, as some might assume.

These atrocities are coming today in full color, broadcast live from the field of carnage, moment by moment. Their harrowing details unfold relentlessly before the world’s eyes, committed by a modern state through its administrative institutions and a contemporary army, as politicians adorned in silk ties ascend to podiums, justifying these crimes and blaming the victims.

Another danger of neutralizing the element of time lies in forgetting that the atrocities of the first half of the 20th century were primarily carried out amid two world wars – cataclysmic events that reduced the modern world to ashes and killed tens of millions of people across cities reduced to rubble and smoke.

The genocide in Gaza, by contrast, is unfolding in a context where modern warfare has been shaped to justify the use of force and mass destruction, and to minimize civilian bloodshed.

Race against time

To fully grasp the severity of Israel’s crimes – committed with western-supplied weaponry and technologies – it is crucial to consider the scale of killing, destruction, displacement and starvation relative to the exceptionally small geographic area of Gaza, which is home to around two million Palestinians.

During nearly two years of genocide, the Israeli army has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom have become permanently disabled. The United Nations and its humanitarian agencies have warned that the Israeli military is killing the equivalent of an entire classroom of children in Gaza every single day, without any international power stepping in to stop it.

The direct civilian death toll has already soared to more than 61,000 people, around half of whom are children and women – and it continues to rise unrelentingly, with vast swathes of residential neighborhoods wiped off the map. Factoring in indirect casualties – deaths from lack of medicine and healthcare, or because of spoiled food and a toxic environment – would raise these figures to even more horrifying levels.

The Israeli leadership is fully aware that it has been allowed to perpetrate these atrocities despite the ethical and legal constraints of the modern era, under the watch of international institutions and courts. It has thus resumed the ethnic cleansing campaign that it started three-quarters of a century ago with the Nakba in 1948.

Israel is now racing against time to enforce a definitive outcome in Gaza and the occupied West Bank through various means. Aware of its dilemma amid the constraints of the current era – including an unprecedented and growing chorus of dissent among western leaders – it seeks to circumvent all of this by reinforcing the notion of “Israeli exceptionalism”, a status that has long granted it license to override the international system and its conventions.

It does so by invoking a fabricated dual identity of the “exceptional victim”, allegedly entitled to commit crimes that others may not; and by selectively interpreting sacred texts, misrepresenting them as a genocidal manual immune to modern treaties and obligations.

In a further attempt to bypass the element of time, the Israeli leadership constantly reminds Americans and Europeans of the war crimes committed by their own states in decades past – a cheap trick aimed at silencing criticism, while simultaneously suggesting that the evolved colonial experiment in Palestine remains forever linked to the western context that first implanted it in this land.

-Hossam Shaker is a journalist and an author who has extensively covered the topic of migration in Europe. His article appeared in the Middle East Eye.