🇵🇸 When the World Watches a Genocide in Real Time
By: ainnbeen| Blog: ainnbeen.blogspot.com
"How can you say it's not genocide—when half the country supports genocide, and the other side doesn’t even have an army to defend itself?"
— Norman Finkelstein
October 7, 2023. That was the day Israel’s latest war on Gaza began. What followed was not a military campaign. It was obliteration. Not retaliation—extermination. For those willing to see clearly, to feel honestly, and to speak truthfully, it has become obvious: this is genocide. And Norman Finkelstein, a scholar whose entire life has been shaped by the legacy of the Holocaust, is one of the few voices willing to say it, without euphemism, without cowardice.
A Timeline of Systematic Destruction
The facts are no longer in dispute. The question is whether we dare name them.
October 2023 – The Israeli bombs fell fast and indiscriminately. Over 20,000 Palestinians dead in the first weeks. Entire families wiped out in their sleep. Hospitals, mosques, bakeries—flattened.
And still, inside Israel, there was celebration. Social media flooded with videos of Israelis clapping for the IDF’s destruction. Polls showed 80% of Jewish Israelis supported the war. Many said it wasn't enough.
November–December 2023 – Finkelstein spoke with fury and sorrow:
"They want to reduce Gaza to rubble, and they are doing it... this is the most concentrated assault on a civilian population in modern history."
January 2024 – Famine became a weapon. Israel cut food, fuel, water. The images of starved babies, mothers weeping over empty pots, men digging through rubble with their bare hands—none of it slowed the carnage.
Finkelstein asked:
“What kind of human being can see this and remain neutral?”
Spring 2024 – Massacres escalated. Jabalia, Nuseirat, Khan Younis—turned to ash. Aid workers from World Central Kitchen were bombed and killed. The "Flour Massacre" turned bread lines into body counts. And the Israeli public? Still applauding.
May 2024 – South Africa brought charges of genocide to the International Court of Justice. Israel, backed by the U.S., deflected and denied. But the world was watching—and so was Finkelstein.
“We are watching genocide live. With cameras. With statistics. With death tolls. With child corpses. This is what genocide looks like.”
Genocide Is Not Just What They Do — It's What We Permit
Finkelstein has long reminded us: genocide is not just about bombs and bullets. It’s about intent. It’s about the destruction of a people—not just physically, but socially, culturally, spiritually.
And in Gaza, every sign of life—every child, every school, every hospital—is being erased. Not as collateral damage. As a target.
So when Norman Finkelstein asks:
“How can you say it’s not genocide when the overwhelming majority supports it?”
he is not only indicting Israel. He is indicting us—the world that watches, rationalizes, funds, and fails to stop it.
If You Still Hesitate to Call It Genocide...
Ask yourself:
- What do you call it when tens of thousands of civilians are killed, and the world does nothing?
- What do you call it when an entire people is starved, displaced, denied aid, and bombed in schools and hospitals?
- What do you call it when no army defends them, no state shields them, no power speaks for them?
Finkelstein calls it what it is. A crime against humanity—with mass approval.
“This isn’t war. This is extermination.”
The Silence Is Complicity
Each day this continues, it becomes harder to claim ignorance. The images are everywhere. The numbers are known. The grief is raw. And yet, the bombs fall, and the world nods along.
History will not forgive this silence.
Neither will the children of Gaza—those still alive, and those already buried.
✍️ Let us be counted among those who refused to be silent. Among those who spoke, even when it hurt. Because one day, history will ask: Where were you when Gaza burned?
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