Israel has carried out a systematic, deliberate, and slow-burning campaign of genocide in Gaza. Today, the number of Palestinian children killed exceeds the total number of children killed in the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Ukraine combined. In this prolonged genocidal campaign, Prime Minister Netanyahu has wagered that the world is like the proverbial frog placed in warm water, growing accustomed to the rising heat until it no longer realizes it’s being boiled alive.
By: Veton Surroi
1.
Out of all the verses in the Old Testament, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose one of the most blood-soaked to send off Israeli soldiers into Gaza in October 2023 — the place from which Hamas had, on October 7, launched an unprecedented assault that left scores of Jewish civilians dead. That mission, broadcast live, showed women, men, children, and the elderly being slaughtered simply for being Jewish. It continued with the abduction of children, women, and men taken as war hostages.
Netanyahu addressed the soldiers with these words: “Remember what Amalek did to you, says our Holy Bible. And we remember.”
In the Bible, the prophet Samuel speaks to Saul:
“Once the Lord had me anoint you king over His people, Israel. Now listen to His command! The Lord of hosts says this: I have not forgotten what the Amalekites did to My people when they came out of Egypt. Go now and attack them. Destroy everything they own, for it is condemned by Me. Kill mercilessly the men and women, children and infants, oxen, sheep, camels, and donkeys.”
No further operational clarification was needed. In this context, the war on Gaza was transformed into a war against every 21st-century “Amalekite” — men, women, children, infants, and even animals.
2.
The war in Gaza long ago surpassed the threshold of legitimate self-defense and the principle of proportional retaliation. From its inception, it has been an exercise in biblical retribution. By November 2023, the Israeli army had killed between 2,500 and 3,000 children — averaging 100 to 150 a day. This single-month toll exceeds the number of children killed during the entire wars in Ukraine and Kosovo combined.
Today, the number of Palestinian children killed may have reached 16,500 — more than all the children killed in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Ukraine combined.
On average, since the war began, one Palestinian child is killed every hour.
This cold, mathematical average is only one piece of a chain of horrifying stories. The latest came last Friday, when a pediatrician and her husband, also a doctor, lost nine of their ten children in an Israeli airstrike on the hospital where they had taken shelter. Their tenth child is wounded; the father lies in critical condition, with brain injuries from the blast.
3.
Beyond the bombings, movement restrictions, and continuous displacements, Palestinians in Gaza face a deliberately engineered famine by Israeli operations. For two months now, humanitarian aid has been completely halted (following a year and a half of severe restrictions). According to the UN, nearly half a million people are in Phase 5 of food insecurity (defined as catastrophic), with another half-million on the brink of starvation. At this pace, the entire population of Gaza, currently in Phase 3, will face collective famine by September 2025.
The Palestinian population is entirely aid-dependent: the Israeli military has intentionally destroyed fishing boats, greenhouses, and arable land. Only 5 percent of land remains usable for agriculture. Between 95 and 99 percent of livestock — poultry, goats, sheep — has been wiped out. Just as in the biblical command against the Amalekites.
Currently, Israel is carrying out an occupation operation in Gaza, with a plan to displace the Palestinian population into 15–20 percent of the remaining territory. Later, this repeatedly uprooted population will be offered “humanitarian assistance for relocation to other countries.”
4.
Everything described so far is the anatomy of genocide.
According to Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, “Genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group:
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Killing members of the group;
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Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
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Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction;
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Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
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Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Except for the fifth point, Israel has engaged in actions that match all other definitions above. These actions aim to erase the Palestinian population from Gaza — and, as some members of its government have indicated, from the West Bank as well.
Once, Palestinian activists in their anti-Jewish fervor sang about a state “free from the river to the sea,” from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. Today, that same vision is echoed by prominent Israeli politicians themselves — in pursuit of “Greater Israel.”
Israel has executed a systematic, deliberate, and prolonged campaign of genocide in Gaza. In this campaign — with the exception of South Africa, which filed a genocide case in The Hague — Netanyahu’s government has bet that the world is the frog growing used to the rising heat, no longer realizing it’s boiling.
Netanyahu has reached that point: the global frog has grown accustomed to the bubbles of the boil.