TWO years after the brutal murder of Hind Rajab, Israel suddenly admits it “killed” her – choosing the sanitised word over the reality of a brutal massacre of an innocent family.
Hind was not alone. The five-year-old was one of countless children slaughtered in a genocide broadcast live since Oct 7, 2023, a genocide that has turned Gaza into a graveyard for innocence. The admission is not contrition; it is a calculated gesture, a cynical attempt to normalise the killing of Palestinian children – and of course other Palestinians – as routine collateral damage.
This normalisation is laid bare in the words of Itamar Ben-Gvir, who openly demanded that the Israeli military kill 30-40 Gazans every single day just recently.
What does such a statement reveal except the essence of Zionism itself: a totalitarian, antihuman ideology that feeds on bloodshed?
When the call for daily executions comes from a minister of the state, the mask slips. Israel is not merely occupying and colonising – it is institutionalising extermination.
Netanyahu’s recent attacks on Syria confirm the same logic. Having failed to achieve decisive outcomes in Lebanon and Iran, he seeks to open yet another front, this time hoping to drag Turkiye into war, gambling with regional stability to sustain a project of endless war.
Expansionism is not a policy choice; it is the lifeblood of a regime that survives only by manufacturing new enemies and new battlefields. It provides the excuse it needs “self defence” when confronting “enemies” who are labelled as “existential threats”.
Ben-Gvir’s call for daily killings is not an aberration – it is evidence.
What further proof is needed to declare Israel a genocidal regime? Why does the International Court of Justice hesitate to state the obvious?
In 2024, the ICJ issued an interim ruling acknowledging the possibility of genocide in Gaza. Two years later, Palestinians continue to die daily, yet the pronouncement remains pending. Justice delayed is justice denied, and in Gaza, denial or delay translates into death.
On the ground, the so-called ceasefire is a fiction. Israel’s attacks continue unabated, and its occupation of Gaza has expanded to 70% of the territory, squeezing Palestinians into a suffocating 30%.
The wasteland left behind is not incidental – it is deliberate, a strategy of erasure, of full-scale ethnic cleansing.
While international bodies debate peace plans and Netanyahu rejects a 15-point proposal, ordinary Palestinians endure starvation, displacement, and bombardment. The “Board of Peace” negotiates terms; Israel enforces annihilation.
The silence of Western capitals is deafening. Washington and Brussels continue to arm and shield Israel diplomatically, even as the evidence of genocide piles up.
Their complicity is not passive – it is active. Every veto at the United Nations, every shipment of weapons, every diplomatic cover-up is a green light for further massacres.
The so-called “rules-based order” collapses when the rules are bent to protect a regime of apartheid, colonialism and occupation.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s destruction is not only physical but cultural. Schools, mosques, libraries, and hospitals have been reduced to rubble.
The systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure is designed to erase Palestinian identity and memory, to ensure that even survival is stripped of dignity.
This is not war – it is cultural annihilation, a campaign to make Palestine unliveable and unremembered.
And yet, despite the rubble, Palestinians resist. Every day of survival in Gaza is an act of defiance against a regime that seeks their disappearance.
The resilience of the people stands as a moral indictment of the Zionist project and its enablers. It is a reminder that genocide cannot erase a nation’s spirit, even if it destroys its homes.
Ben-Gvir’s words should be read as a manifesto of extermination. When a sitting minister calls for the daily killing of dozens of civilians, it is not rhetoric – it is policy.
It signals to the military that mass murder is not only permissible but expected.
It signals to the world that Israel no longer feels the need to hide its crimes behind euphemisms.
The genocidal intent is declared openly, and the international community’s failure to respond makes it complicit.
The hypocrisy of global powers is staggering. The same governments that lecture the world on human rights and democracy remain silent – or worse, supportive – when Israel commits atrocities in broad daylight.
They mobilise sanctions against other states for far less, yet when confronted with the deliberate extermination of Palestinians, they stall, equivocate, and deflect. This double standard exposes the moral bankruptcy of the so-called liberal order.
History will not be kind to this silence.
Just as Srebrenica and Rwanda became symbols of international failure, Gaza will stand as a monument to cowardice and complicity.
The difference is that Gaza’s genocide is not hidden – it is livestreamed, documented, and admitted by the perpetrators themselves. The world cannot claim ignorance. It can only be judged for its inaction.
The conclusion is unavoidable: Israel has entrenched itself as a genocidal regime, its leaders openly celebrating the killing of civilians, its military expanding occupation under the guise of ceasefire, its courts and allies shielding it from accountability.
The Zionist project, once cloaked in the rhetoric of survival, now stands exposed as a machinery of death. Gaza is not a battlefield – it is the site of a crime against humanity unfolding in real time.
The world does not need more evidence; it needs courage. To call Israel what it is – a genocidal state – and to act accordingly before Gaza is erased from the map.
Dr Abdul Latiff Mohd Ibrahim is head of the Research and Publications Division at the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) Malaysia. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
