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It has been a year since the massacre began: such a degree of destruction had not been seen in decades anywhere else on the planet.

Around 50,000 dead and 200,000 wounded, some two million displaced souls, wandering in the desolation of Gaza, with infrastructure practically destroyed, hunger, disease, and misery. That is the brief and summarized balance of this year of brutal military campaign, by air, sea, and land, decreed by the Tel Aviv regime a year ago.

Such a degree of destruction had not been seen in decades anywhere else on the planet; the power of the bombs dropped by Israel on a piece of land barely 360 square kilometers exceeds the great records of destruction seen in major European cities during World War II. The damage suffered by the city of Gaza in its schools, hospitals, sports centers, power plants, roads (those that are not used for the movement of occupation forces and their incursions), water tanks, etc., has no parallel in the records of modern wars. Almost everything, destroyed.

The barbarism that the Israeli army and government continue to commit, with the approval of most of its public opinion, now tilted towards the extremism of radical settler movements, finds no one to stop it. These days, as the anniversary of this genocidal campaign is being marked, civilian casualties among the Palestinian population are around one hundred per day. Victims of bombings on what remains of a medical dispensary, a refugee center, or the line to buy bread, rationed and always scarce.

The human rights violations committed by this pack — the "most ethical and moral army in the Middle East!" — include all kinds of excesses: Palestinian civilians used as human shields, sometimes tied to the front of military vehicles, arbitrary killings of people suspected of just “passing by,” looting of homes, abuse and torture of women, men, and children, theft of personal belongings that some soldiers later shamelessly display in triumphant videos... And all for what?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly claimed that their goal, after the "affront" perpetrated by Hamas and other Palestinian militias on October 7th, 2023, was to eliminate all of them and free the prisoners, both civilian and military, some 250, who had been taken to Gaza by the “terrorists.” They have achieved neither.

The Islamist militants continue to destroy tanks, armored vehicles, and bulldozers daily, causing deaths and injuries among the occupying forces, although military censorship hides or reports the casualties much later. So much so that even the top commanders have acknowledged that they are beginning to run out of armored vehicles and transport trucks for their troops. The famous videos of the inverted red triangle, spread by the few Arab televisions and non-Israeli-American aligned media, show increasingly bold actions, with “multiple” operations in which Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other factions manage to attack three, four, or five targets in a single sequence.

It's no coincidence that the Palestinian journalists covering the news from inside Gaza, and sometimes acting as intermediaries to receive videos recorded by the militias — not everything can be images of Israeli soldiers peacefully patrolling the ruins — have become a preferred target for the occupying soldiers. About 150 journalists have been killed, another infamous record in the annals of recent wars, just like the 200 UN workers who have fallen victim to bombings and snipers — without the leaders of the international organization taking decisive action against the State of Israel. No matter how you look at the data from this aberrant rampage of Huns and Vandals, traces of horror and multiple bloody records emerge. But there they remain, uncontrolled, increasing the brutality of their actions with every step.

They haven’t succeeded in freeing the hostages in military rescue operations either, except for a mere dozen. The rest were released through peace negotiations and exchanges last November, during a period of ceasefire which, despite the hopes of many, did not lead to a definitive cessation of hostilities. After recovering a large number of civilians, Tel Aviv resumed the confrontation. Today, the "hostage" issue is rarely mentioned by the regime's leaders. Netanyahu, in addition to systematically undermining talks for their release with Arab mediators, had another of his "brilliant ideas" in early August: to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas' Political Bureau, while he was in Tehran attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Masud Pezeshkian.

Haniyeh was one of Hamas' key figures, but within the political structure, he could be considered one of the most inclined to pursue negotiations and make proposals that, through reasonable concessions from both sides, might lead to a solution. But Netanyahu and his cronies do not understand reason, and the attack on Haniyeh led to Yahya Sinwar, the bogeyman of Zionism and leader of Hamas' military wing, also taking over political leadership, unifying both. Conclusion: The first thing Sinwar did was order the cells holding the prisoners in ultra-secret hideouts to execute them at the slightest sign of danger. Very few now hope to recover them, unless an improbable, at present, new round of negotiations takes place.

It has already been said — not by most Western media, who are there to repeat the pro-Zionist propaganda of Israel and the United States — that the Gaza campaign goes beyond delivering a final blow to the Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular. It fits, on the one hand, within a new stage of economic and commercial expansion that aims to transform the Middle East into a space led by Tel Aviv, supported by pro-Israel Arab monarchies and republics (United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, and in North Africa, Morocco, with the likely inclusion — once this all passes — of Saudi Arabia). Thus, Israel would become the overseer of major oil and gas supply routes. The neo-Zionist plan includes the creation of railway and maritime trade routes between Europe and the Indian subcontinent. A new order of peace and concord based on flourishing trade, though only for a few.

Then there is the push for expansion through settlements and the necessary confiscation of land, before or after, the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank. The hardline government representatives announce this openly, and the actions — the laws, the army’s incursions, and the settlers’ harassment of Palestinian properties — bear witness to this. But, as there are other matters to discuss, Netanyahu has once again embarked on another major military adventure: the invasion of Lebanon.

In there, the number of displaced people has already reached one million, with more than 3,000 homes destroyed and entire villages deserted. So far, neither has he achieved one of the stated objectives, namely, to stop Hezbollah's missiles from targeting northern Israel and to return over 100,000 settlers to the Galilee region and surrounding areas. Worse still, rockets from the Lebanese Islamic resistance are now reaching Tel Aviv itself. Then there are the disputes with Iran, which has become the source of all evils, and the very real possibility of a large-scale regional conflict.

In Gaza, where Israeli gangs have targeted journalists and humanitarian workers, all of whom are “saboteurs,” in Lebanon, they have focused on healthcare personnel and ambulance drivers. In the first three days of “limited” ground operations in the south, about 50 were killed. No one asks for explanations, no one is outraged, nor even asks pertinent questions in our Western political and diplomatic circles about all this madness. It is enough for a military spokesman from the regime to say that the paramedics were not transporting the wounded but explosives, or that the ambulances were being used to store Hezbollah weapons, for everyone to feel satisfied.

The pro-Zionist narrative, and the fear of being reprimanded by the Tel Aviv regime, the fear of being branded "anti-Semitic," or the punishments that its great patron, the United States, might dole out, act as deterrents. If the Palestinians and the Lebanese, or at least a large segment of them, continue to resist the Israeli benevolence and its sacred right to defend itself — that is, to keep doing whatever they want — we will be heading into a second year of barbarism. They, the "others," those resistant to the modernity and democracy that the misunderstood regime in Tel Aviv so well represents, are to blame.

Article under license CC BY-SA 3.0 ES (Atribución-CompartirIgual 3.0 España)