83%
When I read the headline, I was sickened, but not surprised. I’ve become accustomed to this feeling. I turned to my partner, Nicoly, showing her the headline and said, “Please tell me this will matter. This has to matter.” Deep down, I knew it wouldn’t.
The headline above is from +972 , an independent, online, nonprofit magazine run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists. The investigation which led to this revelation was conducted by +972, The Guardian, and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
It shows what has been obvious from the start: Israel has been purposefully killing Palestinian civilians. There has never been an honest attempt by Israel commanders or Israeli soldiers to distinguish between civilians and combatants. It’s all been a lie.
Israel has a database of suspected Hamas militants (and other Palestinian militants) called AMAN, the Hebrew acronym for the “Military Intelligence Directorate.”
The database includes a list of 47,653 names of Palestinians in Gaza whom AMAN considers to be active in the military wings of Hamas and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]; according to the sources, the list is based on the groups’ own internal documents acquired by the army (which +972, Local Call, and the Guardian were unable to verify).
…
According to the data, which was obtained in May of this year, the Israeli army believed it had killed around 8,900 operatives since October 7 — the deaths of 7,330 of whom were considered certain and 1,570 recorded as “probably dead.” The vast majority of them were junior, with the army suspecting it had killed 100-300 senior Hamas operatives out of a total of 750 named in the database.1
Israeli intelligence knows and has known (for months? since October 2023?) that the vast majority of the Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers were civilians. 83%.
We know that Israeli soldiers and Israeli drones regularly target Palestinian children. On October 9, 2024 (almost 11 months ago), the New York Times ran a piece that focused on the experiences of medical personnel who volunteered in Gaza.
“The most moral army in the world” regularly shoots Palestinian children in the head.
The Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, has an exhibit called “The Righteous Among the Nations.” It is dedicated to non-Jews who defended or protected Jewish people from the Nazi regime. Here are a few lines from the museum website about that exhibit.
Despite the terror of Nazi occupation and dictatorship, the individual citizen still needed to make personal decisions. Most decided to act to their own advantage, e.g.: to protect themselves and their families as much as possible, to avoid problems, or to try to gain some personal profit. Being subjected to suppression, occupation, and the hardships of war, it was not too difficult to legitimize the kind of behavior associated with the general statement of “we had no choice.”
We all have choices. And the vast majority of Israelis have chosen complicity, silence, even gleeful participation in genocide.
And what about the leaders of the so-called “democratic” Western world, with its talk of human rights and international law? Cowards, or worse yet, willing accomplices.
Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Antony Blinken, Marco Rubio, Lloyd Austin, Pete Hegseth, every Republican senator, many Democratic senators, U.S. weapons manufacturers, the Pentagon—these individuals and these systems have supplied the weapons that Israelis use to commit a genocide to protect their apartheid society.
Since Oct 7, 2023, the U.S. government has given or pledged over $50 billion in military aid to Israel.
Christian bombs dropped by Jewish pilots, 30 eyes for an eye.2
“Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
Line up to the mind cemetery now
What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and movin'
They don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells
Rally 'round the family, pockets full of shells”
https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-database-83-percent-civilians-militants/
At least 62,000 Palestinians have been killed (probably closer to 100,000) and 2,093 Israelis have been killed.