Israel is Genociding Gaza. It’s far worse than anything I saw during two brutal Israeli wars on Gaza

Over one month into Israel’s ongoing genocide of Gaza, the massacres of Palestinians are so frequent, widespread and endless, it is a scale of horror that even I—having experienced two horrific Israeli wars on Gaza—cannot comprehend.

Reports state that Israel has dropped an astounding 24,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip, noting that is the size of two of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima.

To give just one example of Israel’s massacres of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, in it’s fourth week of murdering Palestinians, Israelis warplanes dropped what were said to be six one ton bombs on the densely-inhabited Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City, killing and injuring over 400 Palestinians (as of first estimates).

The following day, Israeli warplanes bombed the same area anew, reportedly firing eight more missiles on the ravaged neighbourhood.

As of November 10, Israel has murdered over 11, 000 Palestinians in Gaza, and injured over 27,000, after over 35 days of relentless Israeli airstrikes on a literally imprisoned population who cannot flee by air, land or water. Keep in mind doctors are reporting they are treating severe burns and skin melting injuries that they have not seen before, making it difficult to deal with.

Still thousands more are likely dead under the rubble.

Of those killed, roughly 4,500 are children, on average Israel is killing one child every 10 minutes. According to Save The Children, October 29, more children have been killed by Israeli bombings of Gaza in three weeks than, “the number killed in armed conflict globally – across more than 20 countries – over the course of a whole year, for the last three years.”

This is a staggering statement which—if the endless images of lifeless Palestinian children being pulled out of rubble or wrapped in white shrouds doesn’t already shock you—should shock the general public.

Due to the over sixteen year long Israeli siege on Gaza, there has consistently been a dearth of the most basic necessities of life, and in particular essential medicines. When I drafted this article, that dearth was so severe that even anaesthesia is lacking, meaning children and adults alike who are fortunate enough to get medical care now at all are often being operated on without anaesthesia.

Now, the scant numbers of hospitals that were still somewhat functioning have shut down or are being bombarded.

Reflections from two prior Israeli massacres of Gaza

I watch from afar in horror at Israel’s ongoing massacre, one which surpasses the 2009 and the 2012 Israeli wars on Gaza combined, the bloody results of both of which I documented from on the ground.

It is difficult to understand the layers of terror experienced during an Israeli bombardment campaign. In addition to the bombing itself, there is the sense of isolation, not being able to call for help if needed, not knowing if friends and family are still alive, not being able to bury or properly grieve for those who have been killed, not knowing what is going on outside of your district, not knowing when the horror will end nor when the next nearby bombing will occur.

In its December 2009-January 2009 war on Gaza, which killed over 1400 Palestinians, most of whom civilians, Israel first attacked by dropping 100 bombs simultaneously in the first minutes. In Gaza City, I went to one of the sites bombed in that first wave of attack, a mosque and police station, seeing the chaos of people scrambling to remove rubble and pull out bodies, also seeing a new missile hit roughly 150 metres away.

Massive plumes of black smoke rose everywhere around me. The main hospital, Shifa, was nonstop receiving the dead and the injured. The ICU beds were filled and doctors told me as soon as one patient died another took the place.

I rode in Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances with heroic Palestinian medics who were doing their utmost to save wounded Palestinians, injured by Israeli bombing or sniping. Israel killed 23 medics, including firing a flechette (dart) bomb at the ambulance of one medic I knew and had accompanied. He was shredded by the darts, went into shock and died of his injuries. He was a volunteer medic, high school teacher by profession.

Other medics I knew came under Israeli sniper fire when—during “ceasefire hours” an Israeli sniper fired at them and then at our ambulance, a bullet puncuring one of the medic’s legs, the last of at least 14 bullets hitting the back of the ambulance as we raced away.

The night the Israeli land invasion began, shells flew dangerously close to the Red Crescent station in the district east of Jabaliya I was then based in when not in one of the ambulances. By morning it was impossible to access, and by the end of the war, we return to find it studded with machine-gun fire and blasted by shelling.

After invading the Tel al-Hawa district in the third week of its war on Gaza, Israel repeatedly bombed the Quds hospital, Israeli snipers targeting Palestinian civilians fleeing residential areas. I was with an ambulance that went to evacuate civilians from the hospital and take them to the Shifa hospital (which had no space), going back repeatedly to save Palestinian civilians, each time at risk of being shot by Israeli soldiers.

During and after the war, I took countless testimonies of Palestinian parents whose children were deliberately murdered by Israeli soldiers including young children and infants: shot point blank, drone struck during ceasefire hours, shot by a sniper…


An infant was was burned alive by the White Phosphorous (WP) Israeli soldiers fired onto a civilian home in northern Gaza. Five other family members were killed by the WP and shelling. I met the mutilated survivors in Shifa hospital during the war, and followed up on their horror story afterwards, learning the entire sordid story and seeing the hate graffiti left in their home by Israeli soldiers. One included, “it will hurt more next time,” a sadistic and cruel threat.

I also saw terrified civilians who had been kept hostage by the Israeli army, denied food, water, medicines, and in many cases terrorized. People streaming from areas all over northern Gaza, on foot, under the bombs, seeking safety where none was to be had. I will never forget the shrill wailing of a man whose wife was caught in a fatal “second tap” bombing just minutes after the first, shrieking as he picked up the pieces of his wife and accompanied her to the morgue. [Video here]

During the November 2012 war, eight days of Israeli bombing which killed 171 Palestinians, I saw the mangled bodies of civilians, especially children, pour into the Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah. Two of the children were killed just hours before a ceasefire—already agreed upon—was to be implemented.

The four year old girl’s family had returned to their home, from which they’d fled, thinking it would be safe since the ceasefire was coming. She died of shrapnel to her temple, standing next to the door of her home. Nader, the fourteen year old, likewise thought the pending ceasefire meant he was safe to move, walking to a small shop to buy food for his siblings who’d only had bread the past five days. He was targeted by a precision drone strike which tore his body into the shreds I saw in the hospital.

Not only did the Israeli army massacre more Palestinians, but it also wreaked havoc on the Strip’s infrastructure, again destroying key bridges, water and sewage lines, schools, health clinics and hospitals. The near full ban on the entry of construction materials into Gaza meant rebuilding the destroyed homes, buildings and infrastructure was largely impossible.

Further, few outside of Gaza ever hear of the Israeli bombings of civilian areas when not officially warring on Gaza. I experienced them, they are a part of the psychological warfare Israel wages incessantly on Palestinians, never letting them know peace, calm, stability.

But it’s not just the bombings, it’s every aspect of life, which Israel controls, rendered impossible.

In September 2023, Save the Children reported that, “Nearly 400 children in Gaza were denied permits to go to the West Bank for critical healthcare in the first six months of 2023, leaving them without access to life-saving surgery or urgent medication.”

This is a sadism that Palestinians have been subjected to throughout the duration of the over 16 year Israeli siege on Gaza, which I’ve written about at length, but which in summary has meant a vast increase in poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, anaemia, stunting in growth, diabetes, treatable illnesses going untreated, water that was 95% undrinkable when (back in 2014) I wrote a lengthy overview on life in Gaza.

Observations from Occupied Palestine: Gaza

In that article, I highlighted how extremely sadistic the Israeli policies against imprisoned Palestinians in Gaza have been, noting that Israel, “went as far as to calculate the minimum amount of calories needed to keep Palestinians not quite fully starving.” Alive, just barely.

I also highlighted some lesser known facts: that compounding the siege is Israel’s relentless, deliberate, deadly firing on Palestinian farmers and fishers, under the pretext of “security”. Given that in my three years in Gaza I routinely accompanied farmers while they were on land and came under Israeli gunfire, I can state definitively that in those many, many, many experiences of coming under Israeli gunfire, none of us were armed: not myself, not the elderly grandmothers, not the children, not the paid labourers. They posed zero threat to Israel other than simply existing.

It’s GENOCIDE

When Israel’s 2009 war on Gaza finally ended after 23 days, I thought it was the worst bombardment Palestinians had endured. I was wrong. The scenes coming out of Gaza since October 7 are of hideous, horrific, an endless onslaught of Israel murdering civilians in the most sadistic ways, entire families, hundreds of people sheltering where they thought they would be safe, on and on…

Further, Israel has killed at least 46 journalists in the Gaza Strip since October 7, while another three remain missing.

According to updates from Gaza’s Ministry of Health,111 medical staff have been killed, 16 (of 35) hospitals out of service due to bombing and fuel shortages, 39 ambulances destroyed or out of service.

On November 1, the Ministry of Health announced that Gaza’s sole cancer treatment hospital has ceased operating due to Israeli bombings and the complete lack of fuel, putting 70 patients immediately at risk.

Israel demanded the (impossible) evacuation of Shifa and twelve other hospitals, threatening to bomb them. Shifa hospital—which Israel already bombed in July 2014—is under threats of Israeli bombings and is otherwise precariously close to shutting down.

Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert has countless times over the years made trips to Gaza to work alongside Palestinian doctors in Shifa hospital, particularly during Israeli bombardments of the Gaza Strip. I met him briefly in January 2009, at Shifa Hospital when arriving there with Palestinian medics and the injured Palestinians they had retrieved.

In a recent interview, he addressed the Israeli claims of Shifa being a “command centre” for Palestinian resistance.

“I’ve been working in Shifa for 16 years, in very active periods. I was able to walk freely around, I take lots of pictures, I video film, I’ve been all over it. I’ve never been restricted, nobody has ever controlled my picture & documentation material,” Gilbert said. “In accordance with the Geneva Conventions, you can’t bomb hospitals unless they have very clear military functions.”

In their October 29 update, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that Israeli bombing had targeted the vicinity of the Shifa and Quds hospitals in Gaza city and the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, noting the bombings, “followed renewed calls by the Israeli military to evacuate these facilities immediately.”

Keep in mind that Shifa and Quds are the two main hospitals in Gaza City, combined they now house over 60,000 displaced Palestinian civilians who’ve fled Israeli bombing in their home regions. Calling for their evacuation and proceeding to bomb around them are absolutely criminal acts that meet the definition of war crimes.

With the whole world watching, Israel continues to unabashedly bombard the Gaza Strip’s main hospitals. Most are out of commission for want of electricity or fuel to run generators.

On November 10, journalist Marwa Osman reported: “Israel targeted Al-Shifa Hospital with U.S-made R9X non-explosive missiles, as the missile turns into blades that fly over a distance of 100 meters to cut off human limbs in a criminal scene that is chilling to the bone. The U.S. regime is a primary accomplice to Zionist Israel in this Genocide.”

Doctor Mads Gilbert, in a video published November 10, said:

“We just got the report from Shifa Hospital that the Israeli attack forces have placed snipers around the hospital, and these snipers are shooting through the windows of the hospital, killing, targeting, damaging health care workers trying to save lives inside.

One report says a nurse approaching the incubator in the neo-natal unit was killed while trying to care for the babies. The oxygen supply to the incubators are now running out, they’re destroyed and shut down.

The doctors report, ‘We are minutes away from death as the world is watching.‘”

According to the Palestinian Red Crescent:

“Israeli tanks are 20 meters away from Al-Quds Hospital. Direct shooting at the hospital, creating a state of extreme panic and fear among 14000 displaced people.”

At this point, anyone arguing that Israel is not committing genocide and ethnic cleansing is either ignorant or wilfully complicit. A week ago, statements from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights specified concern, “that war crimes are being committed. Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Compelling people to evacuate in these circumstances… and while under a complete siege raises serious concerns over forcible transfer, which is a war crime.”

Craig Mokhiber, the Director of the UN’s New York office, resigned from his position in protest and disgust, stating, “Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.”

Regarding the question of whether Israel is committing genocide, Mokhiber, wrote, “The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people…coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate….This is a textbook case of genocide.”

I echo Mokhiber’s sentiments, including that having lived three years in Gaza and seen the endless, needless, preventable suffering of Palestinians, this is deeply personal to me. I no longer know whether friends and people I knew a decade ago when I still lived there are alive after such relentless Israeli bombardment all over of Gaza.

But even if it is not personal for you, the slaughter now is so atrocious and endless that I hope it does become so. If this were being done by any country except Israel, the whole world would be outraged.

15 thoughts on “Israel is Genociding Gaza. It’s far worse than anything I saw during two brutal Israeli wars on Gaza”

  3. smfh I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe this is being allowed to happen. Or rather i can believe it because nothing any of the perpetrators in this genocide has ever done would lead me to believe anything else, but i’m still disgusted and angry, no… sickeningly furious, at the inhumanity.
    Again, thanks Eva.

  4. Bill Hicks may have prophesized the intentional provocation of Middle East Muslims being undertaken by the Nazi 4th Reich (USA/UK/EU/Israel) now in 2023, – in what appears a desperate, criminally-insane, not-so-covert attempt to launch/spark a major war…

  5. Eva, I asked for an interview long ago but our schedules did not line up.

    Could we try again?

    Thank you, Marty

  9. I am seeing a number of articles citing the Ben Gurion Canal

    Richard Medhurst was the first to come to my attention.

    • Israel Destroys Gaza to Control World’s Most Important Shipping Lane – Richard Medhurst

    https://rumble.com/v3t4nim-november-1-2023.html

    • The Ben Gurion Canal Project – Declassified Documents Reveal Truth – Martin Armstrong

    https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/world-trade/the-ben-gurion-canal-project-declassified-documents-reveal-truth/

    • IS THE ISRAELI/HAMAS WAR REALLY ABOUT THE BEN GURION CANAL? – HARRY RICHARDSON

    https://harryrichardson.substack.com/p/is-the-israelihamas-war-really-about

    And I am always interested in what Kevork Almassian has to offer

    • The untold history of Hamas – syrianaanalysis – Kevork Almassian with Zachary Foster

    https://rumble.com/v3uhqwg-what-you-need-to-know-about-hamas.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=2

  11. Thank you for compiling this history of your time in Gaza, Eva. So few people know (or care about) the background to the October 7th strike against the occupying troops and settlers in northern Gaza, which as the UN Secretary General said, didn’t happen in a vacuum. I compare it to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the occupying German Nazis in the Fall of 1944. An irony that seems lost on Israeli Zionists.

  13. Thank you for bearing witness to the suffering of the people in Gaza and the criminality of their Israeli oppressors.

  14. Eva, Here is why: The War According to Paula: Look, these things that have happen are connected, have been planned. In 1999 it was known about the oil and gas reserves under Gaza and in their waters that legally belonged to the Palestinians. In 2019 this article was published: ( https://unctad.org/news/unrealized-potential-palestinian-oil-and-gas-reserves). A live news report circulating on X addresses this issue and the taking of land, and explores a timeline of “incidents.”

    The Biden admin placed sanctions on Russia and asked the EU to do the same, and then blew up the Nordstream pipeline. EU would not have let that happen had they not known another source would soon be available. So, to weaken Russia, EU and US have to back a genocide on the Palestinians in Israel to replace the energy the EU so foolishly let go.

    US has long sought Russian territory, ( https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b000726582&view=1up&seq=5), and this was an opportunity, all well planned down to Hamas, whose attack was obviously gauged to begin the genocide. Can any of this be proved? Not yet, but to outsmart and expose evil, you have to know and think evil.

    Why did Israel keep the occupation for so long? They were making money using Palestinians to test their high tech crowd control and surveillance weapons on them, then selling the weapons as “battle” tested to other nations who have people they consider “surplus” humans. (would sure like to know their client list. ( https://tlv1.fm/the-tel-aviv-review/2016/01/15/exporting-the-occupation-how-israel-gains-clout-on-the-back-of-the-palestinians/). When all the plans were in place and the time was right, Hamas gave Israel a reason to begin the genocide. The Western powers must back Israel in their genocide of Palestinians to replace the EU’s energy sources the US destroyed when it bombed the Nordstream pipeline. The script was already written and MSM and all the players already knew what to say after it happened. What I have not seen on X is a slew of Hamas fighters captured by Israel nor any real proof of bunkers under hospitals. Their narrative is not believable any more than that of the USA. They both have lied so often, their stories cannot be trusted.

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