Gaza Beyond the Alibi of Hamas: Genocide as Method, Silence as Accomplice.( From Chris Hedges report )
We are the most informed generation in human history—and perhaps the least disturbed by what we know.
From the first missiles that struck Gaza’s residential blocks to the slow starvation that followed, everything was visible. Every destroyed home. Every burned hospital. Every child pulled from rubble. And yet, the global emotional temperature barely rose. In an age of total visibility, feeling itself has become scarce. Watching has replaced witnessing. Knowing has replaced responsibility.
This moral numbness is not accidental. It is cultivated. And at the center of this cultivation stands a single word, endlessly repeated, ritually invoked, and strategically deployed: Hamas.
Hamas has functioned not as an explanation, but as an alibi.
The Choice Was Announcedk From Day One
From the earliest days of Israel’s assault, the policy was articulated with chilling clarity: Gaza’s population would be given two options—stay and starve, or leave.
This was not the language of counterterrorism. It was the language of population management.
When Israeli leaders spoke of cutting off food, fuel, water, and electricity—when they openly declared their intention to make Gaza “unlivable”—the target was not Hamas. Hamas does not drink from Gaza’s aquifers. Hamas does not rely on neonatal incubators. Hamas does not starve when bakeries are destroyed.
And when Prime Minister Netanyahu invoked the biblical command to “remember Amalek”—a command that explicitly calls for the destruction of every man, woman, child, and even livestock—the implication was unmistakable. This was not about armed militants. It was about a people.
Why South Africa Prosecuted Genocide, Not War Crimes
This is why South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice mattered so profoundly.
South Africa did not accuse Israel of merely violating the laws of war. It did not call for meetings of Geneva Convention signatories to adjudicate breaches of international humanitarian law. It did something far more consequential: it charged Israel with the crime of genocide.
If one reads South Africa’s December 29, 2023 application carefully, one notices something striking—Hamas is barely mentioned.
Not because South Africa sought to excuse Hamas.
But because it understood that Hamas was irrelevant to what was unfolding.
From October 8 onward, the defining feature of Israel’s campaign was not combat, but destruction: saturated bombing, infrastructure annihilation, enforced starvation, and mass displacement. Hamas was not the object. Hamas was the pretext.
Genocide, as Norman Finkelstein argues, may not have been the declared objective—but it was the chosen method. The objective was ethnic cleansing. And Israel demonstrated a willingness to destroy part—or all—of Gaza’s population to achieve it.
The Fiction of Precision and the Myth of Numbers
Israel claimed, early on, that Gaza contained 20,000 Hamas fighters—a figure pulled from thin air, repeated without evidence, and never substantiated.
How could such a number be verified under conditions of carpet bombing?
Israel does not know how many Hamas members it killed. It cannot know. When entire neighborhoods are obliterated, the dead are labeled posthumously. Guilt is assigned by proximity. Presence becomes proof.
And yet, months later, Israel claimed that 20,000 Hamas fighters still remained.
The number never changes because its function is not factual—it is rhetorical. As long as Hamas exists in sufficient quantity, Israel can justify continued occupation, blocked aid, stalled reconstruction, and permanent siege.
Hamas, in this sense, becomes indispensable. It is the movable prop in an exterminatory enterprise.
Weaponizing Starvation and the Theater of Aid
International resolutions promised humanitarian relief. Six hundred aid trucks per day. Reconstruction plans. Boards of peace. Stabilization forces.
None of it was real.
Israel made clear it would admit no more than a “humanitarian minimum”—a calibrated quantity of aid designed not to alleviate suffering, but to prevent outright death while maintaining collective punishment.
Starvation was not a side effect of war. It was a method of warfare.
Projects like the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation revealed the underlying intent. Aid distribution sites were placed strategically—three of the four near the Egyptian border—designed to funnel desperate civilians toward expulsion routes.
The plan failed to produce a flood of refugees. Egypt resisted. International pressure mounted. Israel adjusted.
The strategy shifted from mass expulsion to slow attrition. From flood to trickle.
Reconstruction, meanwhile, was always a fantasy. After devoting years to turning Gaza into rubble, the notion that Israel would suddenly rebuild it alongside its survivors was not naïve—it was obscene.
A National Project, Not a Rogue Government
Perhaps the most uncomfortable truth exposed is this: the destruction of Gaza was not merely Netanyahu’s war.
Polling data inside Israel tells a damning story.
From the earliest days after October 7, approximately 95 percent of Jewish Israelis believed the army was using either sufficient force or too little force. Only five percent believed it was using too much.
One poll found that 47 percent of Israeli Jews supported killing everyone when the army enters a city.
Another found that 62 percent believed there are no innocents in Gaza—where roughly half the population are children.
This was not fringe extremism. It was societal consensus.
The genocide in Gaza was not simply a state project. It was a national project—endorsed, embraced, and executed by a citizen army.
Demilitarization for Them, Impunity for Israel
International proposals demanded Gaza’s demilitarization, justified by October 7.
But this logic collapses under scrutiny.
If armed resistance disqualifies Palestinians from sovereignty, then what does genocide require of Israel?
International law is clear: people living under occupation are not debarred from armed resistance. Occupying powers, however, are prohibited from using armed force to suppress civilian populations.
Yet demilitarization is demanded only of the occupied. Never of the occupier.
The question is never asked: after October 8 onward, does Israel not also require demilitarization?
The silence is the answer.
The Illusion of a Political Roadmap
UN resolutions speak of Palestinian Authority “reform,” benchmarks, milestones, and credible pathways.
But reform according to whose standards?
Egypt? Jordan? Saudi Arabia? Authoritarian regimes that jail dissidents, crush opposition, and fear Palestinian self-determination more than Israeli domination?
Even total compliance offers no guarantee. The language is deliberately evasive: reform may lead to a credible pathway. A pathway to what? That will be decided by Israel.
In effect, Israel retains veto power over Palestinian self-determination, statehood, and even its own military withdrawal.
Rights become conditional. Justice becomes negotiable. International law is annulled.
Arm-Twisting and the Collapse of Diplomacy
Why did UN member states acquiesce?
Because Gaza has no power.
Its symbolic power—once central to Arab and Muslim political identity—has been eroded by decades of regional catastrophe: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan.
With no material leverage and diminished symbolic resonance, Gaza became expendable.
Add to this the crude coercion of great powers. Threats of tariffs, sanctions, defunding, and economic ruin replaced diplomacy. Votes were extracted, not persuaded.
This was not consensus. It was submission.
What Comes Next
Israel has seized more than half of Gaza. Reconstruction is blocked. Aid is restricted to subsistence levels. Water is unsafe. Medical systems are shattered. Families live in ruins.
There are no grounds for optimism.
But despair is not an argument for silence.
History teaches only one certainly: however bad things are, they can always become worse.
Resistance, then, is not always about victory. Sometimes it is about refusal—refusal to lie, refusal to normalize, refusal to forget.
In a world trained to watch without feeling, bearing witness becomes an act of defiance.
And naming genocide, when genocide is unfolding, becomes a moral obligation—not a political choice.
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