The Ongoing Genocide in Gaza: History, Evidence, and the Failure of the International Order
Here Is The ACTUAL News Regarding Gaza And The Active Genocide
I. Introduction
The Gaza Strip, a narrow coastal enclave roughly 25 miles long and no more than seven miles wide, is home to approximately 2.3 million people. Since October 7, 2023, it has become the site of what a growing consensus of international institutions, human rights organizations, and legal scholars describe as an ongoing genocide. What began as Israel’s declared military campaign to dismantle Hamas following the group’s devastating attack on Israeli communities has evolved into something that the weight of evidence can no longer describe as collateral damage: a systematic, deliberate destruction of Palestinian civilian life — its people, its hospitals, its food supply, its shelter, and its future.
This essay examines that evidence — the death tolls, the targeted killings of aid workers and journalists, the weaponization of starvation, the destruction of medical infrastructure, the international legal proceedings, and the political failures that have allowed it to continue for nearly three years. It also grapples with the genuine complexity of the situation: the undeniable horror of October 7, the contested legal definition of genocide, and the geopolitical dynamics that have granted perpetrators near-total impunity.
II. What Happened on October 7
Any honest accounting of the Gaza genocide must begin with October 7, 2023. On that morning, Hamas militants launched a large-scale assault on southern Israel, breaching the border fence and attacking kibbutzim, towns, and an outdoor music festival. The attacks killed 1,195 people, including 815 civilians, with 251 taken hostage. It was the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust, and it produced a trauma in Israeli society that reverberated globally. Wikipedia
Israel’s right to respond militarily is not seriously disputed under international law. What is in dispute — and what has become the defining moral and legal question of our era — is whether the response that followed constitutes a proportionate act of self-defense or a campaign in which Palestinian civilian life has been treated not as something to be protected, but as something to be destroyed. The evidence accumulated over nearly three years points overwhelmingly toward the latter.
III. The Death Toll and Who Is Dying
The casualty figures from Gaza are almost too large to process, and they tell a story that goes beyond the fog of war. As of early May 2026, at least 75,811 people had been reported killed, including over 73,770 Palestinians and 2,039 Israelis, among them 270 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 560 humanitarian aid workers. Wikipedia
Those figures are understood to be significant undercounts. A study by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research estimated the total number of violent deaths in Gaza at between 100,000 and 126,000, of which 27% were children under 15 and 24% were women. Thousands more remain buried under rubble, beyond the reach of rescue workers. Wikipedia
The composition of the dead is itself evidence of who is being targeted. A study by OHCHR found that 70% of Palestinians killed in residential buildings were women and children. A classified IDF database revealed in a May 2025 investigation listed approximately 8,900 Palestinian fighters as dead or likely dead — roughly 17% of the death toll at that time — meaning that by Israel’s own internal accounting, 83% of the dead were civilians. That civilian-to-combatant death ratio has been exceeded in modern history only by the Srebrenica massacre, the siege of Mariupol, and the Rwandan genocide. Wikipedia
These numbers do not reflect a military campaign with civilian casualties as tragic byproduct. They reflect a campaign in which civilians are the primary victims — by a margin that strains any credible military justification.
IV. The Deliberate Targeting of Protected Persons and Sites
Some of the clearest evidence of deliberate civilian targeting involves categories of people and places that international humanitarian law places under explicit protection: medical workers, journalists, humanitarian personnel, and the facilities they operate.
Between October 7, 2023 and September 2025, 1,722 health workers were killed in Gaza. More than 400 documented attacks targeted hospitals, clinics, medical staff, and ambulances. At least 593 aid workers have been killed since the war began, making this one of the deadliest operating environments for humanitarian personnel in recorded history. UNRWA alone recorded 391 colleagues killed in Gaza since the start of the war. OHCHR + 3
These are not incidental deaths in a war zone. Hospitals are protected under the Geneva Conventions. Aid workers operate in coordination with military forces and travel in marked vehicles. Journalists are protected under international humanitarian law. The killing of over 270 journalists and 1,722 health workers is not consistent with accidents or miscalculation at scale — it is consistent with a deliberate policy of eliminating the people who document atrocities and keep civilian populations alive.
Starting in June 2025, IDF soldiers reported being ordered to shoot at crowds of Palestinians near humanitarian aid distribution sites, killing over 1,000 people. This is not collateral damage. These are documented orders to fire on civilians seeking food. Wikipedia
In March 2025, 15 medical and humanitarian personnel from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the Palestinian Civil Defense, and UNRWA were killed, with their bodies subsequently found in mass graves. The UN Human Rights Council concluded that the killing of such personnel not directly participating in hostilities amounts to war crimes, including willful killing. OHCHR
V. Starvation as a Weapon of War
The deliberate use of starvation against a civilian population is not a byproduct of military necessity. It is a war crime under international humanitarian law and one of the most explicit indicators of genocidal intent documented in Gaza.
Since October 9, 2023, the Israeli government’s blockade cut off nearly all food, baby formula, and humanitarian aid from Gaza. By August 2025, over 500,000 people were experiencing famine and catastrophic levels of food insecurity, with at least 455 recorded malnutrition-related deaths. Over 54,600 children under five were acutely malnourished, with around 16% of children between six months and five years suffering from acute wasting. Congress.gov
UN experts stated that Israeli statements fluctuating between outright blocking of aid and conditional releases tied to strategic goals demonstrated a clear intent to wield starvation as a weapon of war. This language — starvation as a weapon — is not rhetorical. It is the clinical conclusion of United Nations investigators examining a documented pattern of behavior. OHCHR
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated in May 2025 that Israel was targeting Hamas’s civilian workers — bureaucrats and money handlers — saying “everyone who holds up Hamas’s civilian rule” was a legitimate target. Killing civilian members of Hamas is itself illegal under international law. Statements like this, made by senior government officials, constitute evidence of genocidal intent under the Genocide Convention’s framework. Wikipedia
VI. The Systematic Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure
By August 2025, 92% of all residential buildings and 88% of commercial facilities in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed. Satellite analysis by the UN’s UNOSAT program found that by July 2025, nearly 78% of all structures across the enclave had been destroyed. Al Jazeera
As of mid-2026, less than 43% of Gaza’s 683 health service points were even partially operational, with only 23 facilities fully functioning. The destruction of the healthcare system has not been a military side effect — it has been a defining feature. Pregnant women, the chronically ill, and trauma patients are operating in a system that can no longer hold them. Cultura Colectiva
Total losses to the education sector amount to $3.4 billion, with 728,000 children unable to attend school. International financial institutions estimate long-term reconstruction needs at $71.4 billion — the cost of returning Gaza not to prosperity, but simply to a functional baseline. Cultura Colectiva
A September 2025 UN Environment Programme report warned that damage to Gaza’s environment could take decades to repair, with clean water nearly nonexistent, sewage networks collapsed, and aquifers polluted. Destroying an environment so thoroughly that a population cannot survive in it is not a military tactic. It is an attempt to make the land uninhabitable for the people who live there. Wafa
VII. Forced Displacement and the Logic of Ethnic Cleansing
Of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million residents, approximately 85% have been internally displaced, many forced to relocate multiple times, cycling through overcrowded emergency shelters and tent camps with collapsing sanitation infrastructure. Cultura Colectiva
Following a large-scale military offensive in March 2025, over 1.2 million people fled Gaza City in just days. Israel’s government subsequently approved a plan to gradually reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip, beginning in the north, with 88% of Gaza’s land placed under evacuation orders. Wafa
The pattern is clear: bomb civilian areas, issue evacuation orders to shrinking safe zones, then bomb those zones too. Repeat until the population has nowhere left to go. With 62% of residents lacking legal documents to prove property ownership, rebuilding will be fraught with challenges, and many families face the prospect of permanent displacement, unable to reclaim their homes or land even if reconstruction eventually begins. Displacement that is engineered to be permanent is not evacuation. It is expulsion. Al Jazeera
VIII. The International Legal Record
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded on September 16, 2025, that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The International Association of Genocide Scholars reached the same conclusion, as did Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, B’Tselem, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, and Forensic Architecture. Congress.gov
At the International Court of Justice, South Africa’s genocide case continues. The court issued provisional measures in January 2024 finding it plausible that Israel’s acts could constitute genocide, and issued binding orders requiring Israel to prevent genocidal acts and ensure unhindered humanitarian access. South Africa noted in March 2026 that at the time of Israel’s counter-memorial filing, Palestinians continued to face ongoing bombardment and unabated loss of life despite three binding ICJ orders. Israel has ignored those orders with no meaningful consequence. The Presidency
Israel and its defenders maintain that the campaign constitutes lawful self-defense and that civilian deaths result from Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure. Pro-Israel analysts argue that Israel endeavors to minimize civilian harm in the context of operations against a group that deliberately exposes Palestinian civilians to danger. This argument, repeated with diminishing credibility as the body count rises, fails to account for the starvation blockade, the shooting of civilians at aid sites, the targeting of hospitals, and the killing of 1,722 health workers — none of which can be explained by Hamas’s conduct. AJC
IX. The Failure of the International Order
What the Gaza genocide reveals most starkly is not merely the capacity for organized violence, but the international community’s willingness to allow it to continue. The United States has repeatedly used its Security Council veto to block ceasefire resolutions. The ICC’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, issued in November 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity, have produced no arrests. States that supply Israel with weapons have continued to do so.
UN experts warned that continuing to support Israel materially or politically, especially via arms transfers, risks legal complicity in genocide, and called on member states to transcend rhetoric and take enforceable action. Those calls have gone largely unheeded. OHCHR
The Genocide Convention was written in 1948 with a simple promise: that the international community would recognize genocidal conduct and act to stop it. The mechanisms exist. The documentation is overwhelming. The institutions tasked with enforcement have spoken. What is missing is the political will of powerful states to enforce the rules they claim to uphold.
X. Conclusion
The evidence accumulated over nearly three years in Gaza points to a campaign in which Palestinian civilian life has been deliberately targeted — through bombs, through starvation, through the destruction of hospitals, through orders to shoot people seeking food, and through the systematic elimination of every institution required for human survival. The fact that Israel frames this as self-defense does not change what the evidence shows. Intent can be inferred from pattern. And the pattern here is unambiguous.
For the people of Gaza, the reality is one of despair, not diplomacy. Each day brings new loss, whether from airstrikes, starvation, displacement, or disease. Entire generations are being raised under the shadow of war, without access to education, safety, or hope. Wafa
What the world does with that knowledge — and whether it is willing to enforce the norms it claims to hold — will define not just the fate of Gaza, but the credibility of international law for generations to come. The promise of “Never Again” is being tested in real time, in plain sight, with cameras rolling and bodies counted. So far, that promise is failing.