The goal of the assault on Gaza that began on October 8, the goal or the objective, is perfectly clear. There hasn't been really much in the way of disguising it. The goal is to once and for all solve the Gaza question, and they were prepared to use any means within the limits or constraints imposed by the international community, and in particular the United States.
There were three, as you might call it modus operandi, and they flowed into each other; these aren't hermetically sealed compartments. There was outright genocide, which was actually carried out with greater efficiency than Israel is normally credited for. So to take just two examples. Number one, and just so we can remain clearly focused, I'm now dealing with the outright genocidal aspect of Israel's solution, final solution to the Gaza question. Between October 7th and October 31st, the very first month of the Israeli assault on Gaza, approximately 1900 children were killed, according to Airwars, which is a reputable military assessment organization. So 1900 children between October 7th and October 31st. If you take the very worst month of the situation in Syria (it was in 2016), the worst month approximately 250 children were killed versus 1900. Now if you take the very worst year in the Syrian situation approximately 1900 children were killed -- almost exactly the number of killed in Gaza between October 7th and October 31st.
So often you hear the argument if Israel was carrying out genocide, how come they haven't killed the whole population, dropped the nuke, or whatever. In fact, within the political constraints, their achievement is actually quite impressive.
To take another example, the Israelis killed 300 times more children than have been killed in Ukraine, proportionately, if you take in all the factors -- size of population, duration of conflict, and so forth -- and you juxtapose the two. 300 times more children have been killed in Gaza. And if you take any metric -- number of UN workers killed, number of medics killed, number of journalists killed, proportion of civilians to combatants killed, proportion of children killed, proportion of women and children killed -- if you take any metric, Israel for the 21st century is in a class all its own. In fact for some metrics, like amount of tonnage of bombs dropped, it surpasses places like Dresden. We have to go back to World War II to find the right comparison. So we should not underestimate the extent or the effectiveness, the extent and efficacy, of the genocidal element of Israel's assault on Gaza.
Norman Finkelstein
