The Holocaust in Gaza Enabled by Corporate and Public Service Media
A Primer and a Reckoning
On 7 October 2023, Hamas and other resistance groups launched an attack that resulted in the deaths of approximately 741 Israeli civilians, 68 foreign nationals, and 314 members of Israeli military forces, with approximately an additional 252 people taken to Gaza as hostages. This, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council report. The corporate news media have framed this event as marking the beginning of conflict between Israel and Palestine, while providing very little, if any, context on what precipitated it. The reality is that Palestinians have been suffering for decades under a brutally oppressive and deadly Jewish supremacist, apartheid Israeli occupation that has continuously stolen their land, destroyed their crops and critical infrastructure, and severely restricted their movement and caloric intake. Israeli leaders and others have been known to refer to Palestinians as Amalek (a biblical license/commandment for genocide against them), and have such an intense disregard for their lives that the regular mass murder of their population is casually referred to as “mowing the lawn.”
In order to gain public consent for genocide, the corporate and public service news media in the Western world widely spread the now completely discredited claims that Hamas had beheaded forty babies and had systematically weaponized widespread sexual assault during the attack. Additionally, the corporate media have repeatedly made the false claims that Hamas has regularly used civilian facilities and human shields in carrying out its subsequent operations. Unsurprisingly, all these claims have been proven true regarding Israel’s conduct during its military’s genocidal operations. What the corporate news media failed to adequately convey to its audiences is that Israel implemented the Hannibal Directive on 7 October and engaged in an alleged cover up of their actions, making it difficult to ascertain exactly what occurred on that day, including determining the number of people killed by Hamas and those killed by Israeli Defense (AKA Occupation) Forces. Another crucial piece of information underreported in the corporate news media narrative was that Israel had obtained a comprehensive and detailed plan of the attack more than a year before it occurred, and that Egyptian intelligence warned them of an impending attack just days prior. Moreover, the Israeli response on the day of the attack was concluded to be slow and inadequate.
It is not beyond the boundaries of possibility to imagine that the Israeli government permitted the attack to occur as a pretext for further brutality and land theft committed against the Palestinians. In fact, soon after the attack, Israeli intelligence and a think tank with ties to Netanyahu drew up plans to do precisely that, citing the attack as the perfect opportunity to do so. With “startling enthusiasm,” Benjamin Netanyahu once admitted to a journalist that the 9/11 attacks in the US were “very good,” because they would “generate immediate sympathy.” Indeed, this sympathy was garnered. This is exemplified by a grim poll that found 47 percent of Israeli Jews support the complete extermination of Palestinians in Gaza, and 82 percent support their forced expulsion from the Gaza Strip.
With the connivance and enabling of the corporate and public service media, which has long been biased against the Palestinians, and the unrepentant diplomatic cover and seemingly unlimited military support provided by western governments, the US in particular, Israel has initiated and perpetrated what by many metrics may be considered the cruelest, most destructive and devastating genocide in many decades. The following is a sampling of mostly quantitative data in support of this argument. Missing from this data are the horrifying and desperate stories of those individuals and families who are experiencing, or who have perished, in this man-made inferno of death and unbearable suffering.
The scale of the bombing in Gaza has no historical precedent. Israel has indiscriminately dropped 100,000 tons of explosives on Gaza. One expert has stated that even at a lower estimate of 70,000 tons of explosives, the Israeli bombardment of Gaza is equivalent to six Hiroshimas. Gaza is a fraction of the size of Hiroshima.
Reliable estimates of the number of Gazans killed by Israel range from 100,000 to between 77,000 and 109,000. Though some believe this is a massive undercount. The latter range represents 4–5 percent of the pre-genocide population. Over 2,200 families have been completely wiped out, with an additional 5,120 reduced to a single survivor. Additionally, more than 14,222 Gazans are missing and presumed dead, and at least another 111,588 have been injured. Tens of thousands of Gazans have sustained life-changing injuries that will require years of major rehabilitation. Many of these have been severe limb injuries, including thousands of amputations. The number of deaths resulting from living under the conditions created by genocide, such as lack of medical care, is unknown. Oxfam has found that the daily kill rate in Gaza is higher than for any other conflict in the twenty-first century.
The minimum number of children killed in Gaza ranges from 16,500 to 17,492. UNICEF estimates that more than 50,000 children have been killed or injured. No other conflict or mass atrocity in decades has been deadlier for children. By some accounts, Gaza now has the highest number, per capita, of child amputees in the world, while other accounts suggest that Gaza is home to the largest total number of child amputees in modern history. A UK doctor who has travelled to Gaza multiple times has recently reported that her most recent trip was the worst, with a noticeable increasein injuries and child amputations. Nearly 50,000 children have been left orphaned.
Israel has killed at least 232 journalists, often in targeted attacks, in an effort to silence and reduce reporting on the genocide. This is the highest death toll for journalists of any conflict in history. To put it in perspective, this is more than the combined sum of journalists killed in the “U.S. Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the U.S.’s assaults on Cambodia and Laos), the Yugoslav Wars, the War in Afghanistan, and the ongoing Ukraine War.” Approximately an additional 380 journalists have been injured.
At least 289 United Nations (UN) staff have been killed, the highest number of UN staff killed in any single conflict. The total number of aid workers killed is at least 408, with some reporting up to 452 killed, including 34 Palestine Red Crescent Society staff, and at least 76 staff from other NGOs.
Gaza’s structures and infrastructure have been nearly completely obliterated. It is accurate to say that in many ways, Gaza has been wiped from existence. Consider that 92 percent of homes have been damaged or destroyed. More than 90 percent of school and university buildings have been damaged or destroyed by way of airstrikes, shelling, intentional burning, and controlled demolitions. A whopping 94 percent of all health facilities have been damaged or destroyed, with only 17 out of 36 hospitals even partially functional. More than half of all religious, cultural, and heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed. Some 80 percent of commercial facilities have been damaged or destroyed, 92 percent of primary roads, and 68 percent of the total road network have been damaged or destroyed. In addition, 80 percent of cropland, 71.2 percent of greenhouses, and 82.8 percent of agricultural wells have been damaged, leaving only 4.6 percent of cropland cultivable. Eighty-five percent of water and sanitation facilities are nonfunctional. Israel has engaged in a sustained effort to destroy and disrupt telecommunications infrastructure to limit communication within Gaza and between Gaza and the rest of the world.
At least 1.9 million people have been displaced, many have been displaced multiple times, with some having been displaced ten times or more.
At the time of this writing, the situation is beyond dire. There are 470,000 people in Gaza who are experiencing catastrophic hunger, with the entire population suffering from acute food insecurity. There are 71,000 children and more than 17,000 mothers who need urgent treatment for acute malnutrition. According to the World Health Organization, this is “one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time.” This crisis has been caused by Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid, which is tantamount to using starvation as a weapon of war and collective punishment. Both are war crimes under international law. Israel has been regularly luring starving Gazans to aid distribution sites where they have been slaughtered by the hundreds with gun and tank fire, their state-sanctioned killers cheering as they flee for their lives. In a depraved development, in late June 2025, sources reported that the meager food supplies distributed by a US/Israeli organization were being laced with narcotics, compounding the suffering.
Ultimately, the plan appears to be complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by means of extreme terror, massacres, and obliteration, followed by mass expulsion of those who remain. One aspect that makes this genocide unique is that it has been livestreamed and is highly visible to the entire world. Videos are widely available online of people holding charred, severely injured, and sometimes headless children; carrying family members’ body parts in plastic bags; as well as many videos of people, including women, children, and journalists, being burned alive after being hit by Israeli munitions. A holocaust can be defined as massive destruction and loss of life, particularly through the use of fire. By this definition, it is easy to conceive of Israel’s actions as a holocaust committed against the Palestinian people.
As a result of this barbaric calamity visited upon the Palestinian people, students have risen up to increase public awareness and to bring an end to the genocide. There have been student protests and encampments worldwide in support of Palestine. The majority of these have taken place in the United States, where there have been over 500 protests, including more than 130 encampments. One would think, given the repeated messaging we have received throughout our schooling about the horrors of genocide, and the constant exhortations of “never again,” that these almost universally non-violent acts of resistance would be embraced by our lauded centers of higher education. Instead, these protests and encampments have been met with intense surveillance, as well as severe repression and violence by both the state and educational institutions, which have been working as extensions of the repressive state apparatus. Social media firms have done their part to quash dissenting voices, extensively silencing pro-Palestinian content, a long-standing practice. Both students and educators have suffered extensive violence at the hands of state authorities and counter-protesters, the latter who have been allowed, at times, under the supervision of state authorities, to violently attack protesters. There have been thousands of arrests of student activists. Educators have been disciplined and fired, and students have faced a number of disciplinary measures, such as being put on probation, suspended, expelled, and/or having their diplomas withheld. Some student protesters and vocal student supporters of Palestine have been kidnapped by plainclothes officers from their university residences, off the street, and even at a US Citizenship and Immigration Services Field Office after being lured there under the false pretext of a citizenship interview.
Alongside student protests, there have been other highly visible attempts to stop the genocide. These include multiple self-immolations, a Gaza Freedom Flotilla carrying world-renowned activists who were attacked and kidnapped by Israeli forces in international waters, and the Global March to Gaza, consisting of thousands of activists from around the world, many of whom were detained and abused by Egyptian Authorities.
The world population is currently gripped by collective trauma. Billions cannot come to terms with or reconcile the images and statistics of this holocaust of the present era, with their governments’ allegiance to Israel and the suppression of dissent. Many feel hopeless. A level of desensitisation has settled in. However, we cannot allow ourselves to become silent, complacent, or overly distracted by Israel’s other flagrant violations of international law. We must continue to raise our voices and act in whatever way necessary to bring this horror to an end. Even if our actions are futile in the face of this seemingly unstoppable onslaught, at least we will be able to say that we did not stand idly by. At least our conscience will allow us to sleep at night. We will not have been collaborators with the oppressor.
Originally produced for Project Censored.
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