Israel’s Genocide in Gaza – 10 Months of Hell and Inhumanity, Part 2: Devastation and War Crimes

This article continues the previous post covering the past ten months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, with a focus on the devastation and war crimes of the past 10+ months.

Read part one, which covers the general death toll, here. Like that article, this part includes recent events and events from a few months ago that I wrote about when I first started drafting this.

As a reminder from Part One of this split article, the Lancet published a correspondence that outlined how the actual estimate is likely way higher than the current 41K count. When that correspondence was published at the beginning of July, it was 186,000. With the death toll having sat around 41k+ since at least April (as noted from my research below), I will be using the Lancet’s estimate, but I am rounding to 200K to account for the average of additional deaths that likely have occurred since then. (Since the 186K estimate comes out to ~20.5K when divided by the 9 months the genocide had been going on since the Lancet’s article.)

Since it’s now been almost 2 months since the 186K estimate, 200K probably isn’t even accurate; I expect that the death toll is even higher as starvation and exposure and everything else takes countless more lives every day. And that’s before we count the deaths by Israeli airstrikes or snipers, or the people still under rubble, or the mass graves we have yet to uncover. But it’s far more accurate than the stagnant 41K number, by far. So, I will be using 200k when referring to the number of deaths, when I am not citing counts made by outlets that I have sourced below that were published prior to the Lancet’s article.

And as a reminder, this article series is an editorial. I will be engaging in more active, personal voice than simply reporting what has happened. I understand the need for objectivity in journalism, and this is me being as objective as possible, including data and sources to back what I say, coupled with my own thoughts and emotions.

To be blunt: I am not going to “both sides” a fucking genocide. We are 10+ month and 76 years past any “both sides” rhetoric. I will not mask my disgust, rage, or horror at what is happening and what others and I have borne witness to for months on end.

And as always, I will not argue with anyone about the validity of calling this a genocide, nor will I entertain any other arguments that excuse or justify it.

Highlights of Horror – Destruction, Displacement, and Devastation

Destruction Across Gaza

I will continue from where I left off in the last part, moving into this next segment of my summary coverage of what has happened.

From Al Jazeera’s Live Tracker, “According to the latest data from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization and the Palestinian government as of August 25, Israeli attacks have damaged:

• More than half of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed or damaged (60% of residential buildings)
• 80% of commercial facilities
• 85% of school buildings
• 16 out of 36 hospitals are partially functioning
• 65% of road networks
• 65% of cropland

Every hour in Gaza:

• 15 people are killed – six are children
• 35 people are injured
• 42 bombs are dropped* (*Based on the first six days of the war, according to the Israeli army)
• 12 buildings are destroyed.

(The following statistics were noted in my May research but are no longer listed in this section on the Live Tracker. I still wanted to include it since the lack of available clean drinking water is a factor in the death toll, and it’s important to highlight how Israel has destroyed houses of worship, including those of different faiths). 

• 267 places of worship
• 83% of groundwater wells not operational

The destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and of the majority of Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and places of worship adds more evidence to Israel’s blatant genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. And targeting hospitals with injured civilians, schools with children, and churches and mosques, is all the more damning as war crimes continue to be committed in the name of “defense.” 

Displacement

In a post by Visualizing Palestine, Slow Factory, and Al Mezan Center to honor the 76th anniversary of the Nakba (meaning “the catastrophe”) on May 15, the parallels of the initial catastrophe and the current one are presented.

According to that infographic post, over the course of two years, between 1947 and 1949 during the initial Nakba, 750,000 Palestinians (80% of the Palestinian population in the lands taken by Israel) were ethnically cleansed. During this time, 50% of villages and neighborhoods were depopulated, with many destroyed to prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes. Between ‘47 and ‘49, 15,000+ Palestinians were killed in 70 massacres. 

In contrast, in just seven months between 2023 and 2024, almost two million Palestinians (85% of Gaza residents) were expelled from their homes at the risk of being ethnically cleansed. In addition, 70% of the housing in Gaza has been destroyed. An estimated 41,488+ Palestinians have been killed or are missing (as of April 29). 

With the most recent death toll estimate, more than 200,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered in the past ten months alone.

And beyond people being forced out of their homes, some whose families have resided in for generations, refugees are being constantly relocated and displaced as Israel continually evacuates people out of places that were deemed “safe zones.” In the process, refugees are constantly forced to move to smaller and smaller areas of “safe zones” that are still bombed and struck by Israeli forces. With each evacuation, there is less food, water, sanitation, and other resources, worsening the conditions of refugees seeking shelter.

A Comment About Israel Turning Gaza into a Concentration Camp

According to an Associated Press article, “Israeli evacuation orders cram Palestinians into shrinking ‘humanitarian zone’ where food is scarce.”

While the headline doesn’t include it, the article also mentions the increase of disease spreading in Gaza due to the lack of clean water and the amount of sewage and garbage refugees are forced to live in. Aside from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Gazans are suffering from diseases like Hepatitis A and now Polio, as a 10-month old baby was just confirmed by the UN to have contracted the disease and is now partially paralyzed.

“The lack of clean water is causing skin diseases and other outbreaks. The U.N.’s main health agency has confirmed Gaza’s first case of polio in a 10-month-old baby in Deir al-Balah who is now paralyzed in the lower left leg,” the AP reported.

As Ron DenBleyker (co-creator of the comic series, ‘Cyanide & Happiness’) pointed out in a response to that article on Twitter, “[“Crammed”] into a “shrinking zone” … (Pulls out thesaurus) Interesting… you could also say they are being concentrated into a camp.”

I wanted to include this comment because it highlights the stark reality of not only the situation regarding displacement, but also the media coverage, or lack thereof, of that displacement. Mainstream media has resisted for months to calling this all what it is – a genocide. So, it’s unsurprising that they also refuse to acknowledge this action for what it is: Israel turning Gaza into a concentration camp.

Defining a Concentration Camp

I think people think of the word “concentration camp” and assume that if people aren’t being visibly rounded up en masse and brought to a facility surrounded by fence, barbed wire, and armed guards, it’s not a concentration camp. This is likely because that’s what they visualize from learning about the devastation of the Jewish Holocaust. Or people hear the phrase and claim its antisemitic to designate any other instance of concentration camps by the same phrase. As if acknowledging other concentration camps somehow lessens the horror of those in Nazi Germany.

It ignores the fact that this is how most of Gaza is set up; except it’s a giant wall guarded by a nuclear superpower with missiles, instead of guards with rifles. And it ignores how Israel has detained thousands of Palestinian hostages (including men, women, and children), and actively holds them in inhumane conditions while torturing, raping, and sodomizing them. Yet people deny that those Israeli detention centers or Gaza itself, are concentration camps.

By definition, a concentration camp is a place where large numbers of people (especially political prisoners or members of persecuted groups or minorities) are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor, or to await mass execution.

For those who have trouble visualizing a concentration camp outside of learning about the Jewish Holocaust, America has had plenty of its own concentration camps, from when our country rounded up Native Americans onto ever-decreasing areas of land and starving them, to the Internment Camps where Japanese Americans were held during WWII.

It may come as a shock to some to learn that Hitler was actually inspired by America’s genocide of Native Americans and the implementation of race-based legislation like Jim Crow laws, which influenced his development of Nazi Germany and the Jewish Holocaust.

Moreover, the United States actively has concentration camps right now at the border where undocumented migrants have been held in horrendous conditions for years. Our country, under Trump and Biden, has separated children from their families, allowed sexual abuse of detainees – including children, sterilized migrant women without their knowledge, and even gassed people with chemical cleaners during the early part of the pandemic. The only thing that changed was that Biden took office, and everyone stopped caring or talking about what is happening there. These are just some of the horrors we know of.

There have been many concentration camps in the bloody history of the world. Having one instance monopolize the comprehension or acknowledgment of any that came before or after it, ignores the evil that people in power have committed throughout history and are actively engaging in right now. Arguing about the use of the phrase “concentration camp” doesn’t stop the fact that it is one. It allows and excuses it, while “debating” the vocabulary and detracting from action to stop it. Same thing with the word “genocide.”

[The rest of the article is especially difficult. Pause here for a moment before continuing.]

Devastation

There is no shortage of devastating news to cover from the past ten months of this genocide. But there is one recent massacre that was especially devastating. There will a graphic image shown below (third one down), this is your content warning.

On August 11, Israel bombed the Al-Tabieen religious school and mosque in northern Gaza were refugees gathered together for morning prayers, striking them with Hellfire “Ninja” missiles. Israel claimed Hamas operatives were hiding among the refugees, to justify their attack.

Over 100 people, mostly women and children were slaughtered. I have seen the words “vaporized,” “melted,” and “evaporated” to describe what happened to these people.

According to The Journal, an Irish news outlet, “An Israeli rocket attack on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza has been widely condemned as ‘barbaric’ and a ‘crime against humanity’ by Middle Eastern states while allies like the United States and the UK have expressed “concern” and once again urged Israel to adhere to international law. Meanwhile, this afternoon people fled the Gazan city of Khan Younis after Israel issued yet another mass evacuation order for a designate so-called “safe zone”, further displacing those affected by the ongoing conflict.”

It is important to note how Western media has portrayed the massacre, using passive language that changed the subject of accountability of the attack, as well as the manufacturing of consent of war crimes. (See left image of Reuters changing their headlines multiple times.) Hence why I decided to use a source from a different country.

The Journal went on to report how “Rescuers and journalists in Gaza have posted photos and videos showing the collection of body parts in plastic bags as distraught family members searched for remnants of their loved ones.”

The carnage in this particular attack was so extreme, that the victims were unable to be identified. Family members were given blankets and plastic bags of charred remains that weighed 70 kg, the average weight of a human being. Children were measured out into 35 kg bags.

Writing that sentence makes me physically ill.

To have a human being measured out by weight in unidentifiable body parts, in a shopping bag.

I have seen pictures and videos of people carrying dead loved ones, dead children, in bags throughout the past 10+ months now. I’ve even seen images of children carrying what was left of their siblings, sometimes just a head.

But to see someone grieving while holding a bag with the remains of an untold number of people, that represents their loved one killed so unimaginably violently, is a different level of horror.

War Crimes

The Deaths of Journalists and Attacks on Journalism

In case you don’t know, intentionally targeting and killing journalists are war crimes.

As a journalist, this part is especially devastating to me. It’s why I choose to cover the genocide the way I do. Especially since mainstream journalists are outright ignoring the murder of their colleagues and forsaking all journalistic ethics and standards in their reporting of the genocide.

It would be a disservice to my humanity and to those sacrificing their safety and lives to cover the genocide to not acknowledge the pain of covering it especially when so many have lost their lives in the pursuit of that truth.

I am grateful for the work by journalists and creators covering the genocide; I wouldn’t be able to report on any of this without them. And I want to say thank you to Hosny Salah, a photojournalist in the Gaza Strip whose photos are featured in this series.

“The deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.”

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of August 23, at least 116 journalists and media workers were confirmed dead: 111 Palestinian, two Israeli, and three Lebanese. Thirty-three journalists were reported injured, two journalists were reported missing, and 52 journalists were reported arrested. They also reported multiple assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.

Israel’s war on Gaza has been the “deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992,” (CPJ).

For context, in 2022, the CPJ counted 68 deaths of journalists. In 2023, 86 journalists were killed, the overwhelming majority of whom died covering Israel’s genocide of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, accounting for 62 of the 86 deaths. For additional context, 17 journalists have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war in 2022. 

Israel has repeatedly broken international law and committed war crimes by purposefully targeting journalists and press workers, including threatening and killing their families. Almost nine months into 2024, CPJ reported that 51 journalists have been killed this year. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is responsible for 37 of them alone in occupied Palestinian territory.

“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in New York. “Journalists are civilians who are protected by international humanitarian law in times of conflict. Those responsible for their deaths face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.” 

The fact that Israel is not being held accountable for these war crimes by world leaders and mainstream journalists is shameful.

Another Instance of Israel’s Attacks on Press Freedom

Moreover, on May 5, “Israel’s cabinet unanimously voted to shut down Al Jazeera in the country on Sunday, immediately ordering the closure of its offices and a ban on the company’s broadcasts.” (Al Jazeera). 

Shortly after shutting down Al Jazeera’s offices in Israel, Israel shut down an Associated Press live camera of the Gaza strip. The government seized the AP’s camera and equipment that was set up in Southern Israel, covering what was happening in the Gaza Strip in real-time. After an international outcry, Israel reversed its decision, returned the equipment to the AP, and restored the live feed. 

Between shutting down Al Jazeera and the removal of the AP’s live feed, more of the world has questioned Israel’s motives as they actively undermine the freedom of the press. 

Adding Insult to Injury to Journalists in Gaza

In July, the National Academy for Television and Arts and Sciences announced its nominations for this year’s Emmys, including nominations for Palestinian journalists and features from Gaza. Among those, 25-year-old Bisan Atef Owda was nominated in the ‘Outstanding Hard News Feature Story’ category for her series ‘It’s Bisan from Gaza, and I’m Still Alive.’

According to The Independent, “The documentary, created with AJ+, an imprint of Al Jazeera, which is also nominated, chronicles the journey of Owda as her family flee the bombardment of their home in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip.”

However, 150+ celebrities and entertainment industry professionals recently penned a letter demanding that NATAS rescind their nomination for Bisan.

“Creative Community for Peace, a Jewish non-profit organisation which describes its mission as ‘to educate about rising antisemitism within the entertainment industry, and to galvanise support against the cultural boycott of Israel,’ alleged that Owda has ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group which is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the US, Japan, and European Union,” The Independent reported.

In the letter to the Emmys governing body, it stated, “NATAS must decide – they can either condone the murder of innocent civilians, or they can listen to the entertainment community, and stand in opposition to hatred and violence.”

With more than 200K Palestinians killed in Gaza in the past ten months, it’s astounding how it’s being argued that nominating a journalist reporting their experience on the ground in Gaza is somehow condoning hatred or violence, or the murder of Israeli civilians.

However, as The Independent reported, “NATAS CEO President Adam Sharp responded to the letter saying it had been ‘unable to corroborate these reports, nor has it been able, to date, to surface any evidence of more contemporary or active involvement by Owda with the PFLP organisation.'”

So, while it’s incredibly insulting to see celebrities demand Palestinian journalists have nominations for their reporting revoked, it’s a relief that the head of NATAS is standing by the decision to nominate them. Without these journalists, we wouldn’t know about Israel’s war crimes as much as we do now.

Follow Bisan on Instagram and YouTube to keep up on her experiences.

World Central Kitchen Massacre

On April 1, Israel murdered seven World Central Kitchen aid workers who were trying to deliver food. I published my Aaron Bushnell article around the same time the news came out about that incident.

The names of the WCK aid workers were:

• Lalzawmi ‘Zomi’ Frankcom, 43
• Damian Sobol, 35
• Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, 25
• John Chapman, 57
• James Kirby, 47
• James (Jim) Henderson, 33
• Jacob Flickinger, 33

According to the BBC, “the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian and also included a dual US-Canadian citizen, WCK said. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged that the Israeli military hit “innocent people,” describing it as tragic and unintentional.”

Netanyahu’s claim that this attack was unintentional does not match the details. Split between three separate, marked vehicles, the charity founder, Chef Jose Andres, said that the aid workers were “targeted deliberately” and “systematically, car by car.” (Reuters)

The WCK workers had “had clear communication with the Israeli military, which [Andres said] knew his aid workers’ movements.” After they requested and received passage through the area, they were fired on despite their vehicles being explicitly marked to indicate that they were aid workers with the WCK. 

“Even if we were not in coordination with the (Israel Defense Forces), no democratic country and no military can be targeting civilians and humanitarians.” – Jose Andres, WCK founder (CNN). 

In case it wasn’t obvious, targeting and killing aid workers are also war crimes.

Other Aid Worker Deaths in Gaza

Moreover, Netanyahu’s claim that this attack was unintentional is not aligned with the number of aid workers who’ve been killed in Gaza. 

In June, the New York Times reported that “Gaza has become the most dangerous place in the world for aid workers, the United Nations said on Monday.”

The report went on to say, “At least 250 aid workers have been killed since the war there began on Oct. 7, the United Nations has said, and on Monday the U.N. said that nearly 200 of them worked for UNRWA, its main agency for Palestinian refugees, further hindering the work of organizations already struggling to deliver aid in the enclave.”

During the fallout of the WCK aid workers’ deaths, suddenly, the Biden administration and global mainstream news outlets were “concerned” about Israel’s actions. Some people who’d been reporting on the genocide for months argued that the only reason people and government now cared was the fact that white people from Western nations died. All of a sudden, things had crossed a line. 

Yet, despite that, not much has really changed since the April 1 attack on the aid workers. 

Since the incident, the Biden administration has still not made a determination, as it awaits more details from the Israeli government from its own probe into the matter. 

Other War Crimes and Human Rights Violations Israel Has Committed 

In the process of killing an estimated 200K+ civilians and counting, a majority of whom were children, Israel has carried out a long list of war crimes.

As a recap, these are just some of the war crimes, human rights violations, and other atrocities that Israel committed or has been accused of committing over the past ten months (and in some cases, years or decades). I’m sure I’ve forgotten or completely missed things that I didn’t hear about simply because of the sheer magnitude of crimes against humanity that have been happening nonstop. If I have missed something that should be listed here, please message me so I can add it.

To keep things short, as this is already a long article after being split from a longer one, I am bullet-pointing incidents with sources. Some of these war crimes have already been mentioned above, or in previous articles, I’ve published. 

Also, if I’m being honest, writing about this has affected my mental and emotional health severely, and if I am going to finish this article, continue writing about this, and publish the next part, I need to summarize this section.

I encourage you to read each of these more thoroughly and then do your own additional research to better understand these war crimes that Israel has committed and other horrors happening in occupied Palestine right now and over the past ten months:

• Targeting and killing journalists and members of th press. (CPJ)
• Attacking aid workers (NYT)
• Using detainees as human shields. (Haaretz)
• Hospitals bombed, schools and mosques destroyed. (ABC, Al Jazeera)
• Mass graves uncovered after IDF destroyed hospitals (CNN, NBC, Vox)
• Use of white phosphorous in Gaza and Lebanon. (Reuters, Washington Post)
• Targeting and killing children (including children playing on playgrounds). (CBS, Al Jazeera – 2014, CNN, Middle East Eye)
• Forcing starvation and famine on Palestinians and refugees, forcing them to eat grass and dirt. (CBS, CNN, NPR, UN OHCHR)
• IDF, Israeli protestors and far-right groups destroying humanitarian aid, rejecting aid workers. (BBC, CBS, MSN 1, MSN 2) 
• Accusations of IDF using drones to lure civilians out with the baited sounds of crying children. (Middle East Eye)
• Israeli settlers killing Palestinians and claiming new territory in the West Bank. (Al Jazeera, Amnesty International, AP, PBS)
• People missing limbs after being tortured while detained. (Al Jazeera, Amnesty International, Middle East Monitor)
• Undercover reports exposing torture in Israeli detention facilities (concentration camps). (CNN, Middle East Eye)
• Using the cover of aid to massacre people (when aid was used as a cover for soldiers to enter Gaza where they killed over 247 people in a refugee camp to conduct a rescue operation of hostages – four were recovered, three were killed). (Middle East Eye, Al Jazeera)
• Report of rape in Israeli prisons, protests by Israeli citizens to allow soldiers to rape Palestinian prisoners. (CBS)
• Israeli forces blow up the main drinking reservoir in Rafah. (Haaretz, Middle East Monitor, Ground News)
• Real-estate sales in Gaza (property is already being put up for sale in devasted areas of Gaza). [BBC]

Sadly, this doesn’t even cover the surface of these war crimes and human rights violations. So much has happened in the past several months.  

History will look back, and no doubt uncover even more crimes and horrors of this genocide we’re watching live-streamed every day.

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Part 3: Responses to the Genocide and Israel’s War Crimes

The third and final part of this split article series will cover the responses to the genocide, including but not limited to:

• The ICJ rulings
• The ICC request for warrants
• The people’s response
• The student protests (Spring + Fall semesters)
• University responses
• The Biden administration’s response
• Kamala Harris and the DNC’s response to protesters and uncommitted voters
• … and more. (Including whatever happens between now and that article publishing.)

In addition, part three will cover any other recent developments in the genocide.

I aim to complete it before we hit the 11-month mark on September 7. I will link it when it is published.

In the meantime, visit the Protect Palestine resource page to find ways to take action and help end the genocide. There are tasks you can do in just three minutes that have a real impact. If you’re interested, check out other posts we’ve published about the genocide. I also encourage Nevadans and Las Vegas locals to read more about Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation, and follow them on Instagram.

NPL and other community partners, like Fifth Sun Project, are fundraising for a community member’s friend and their family trapped in North Gaza. Art pieces from several artists and creators are being sold to raise funds, including a print of the drawing I shared in the last article. Check out the art pieces available on NPL’s Instagram post.

Thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far.

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