We have a duty to speak plainly about what Israel is doing

He adopts six rules, which can be boiled down to a general theory: Write in simple terms. Never use jargon. Don’t write extra words for the sake of it.

In this week’s column, we apply this method to events in Gaza, Lebanon and the expanding war sought by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.

To speak plainly about the conditions of the people who live there. We cannot simply bury our heads in the sand about the enormity of the situation. It is much too grave for that.

Before we get into the statistics – behind which are human beings like you and I – we should recall that US president Joe Biden claimed he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using” in relation to civilian deaths. These comments were made on October 25 last year when 6500 had been reported killed.

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In August of this year, the Palestinian Health Ministry produced documents listing the deaths of around 40,000 Palestinians.

These are deaths of people they have been able to name and identify.

Save The Children report that more than 13,800 children have been killed in Gaza and 113 in the West Bank. More than 12,009 children have been injured in Gaza and at least 725 children in the West Bank.

Unicef reports that more than 1000 children have had one or both legs amputated. It is estimated that 10,000 bodies are under rubble, and as such are not counted in the official death toll.

Devi Sridhar wrote in a recent article: “In December 2023, my estimate was about half a million deaths without a ceasefire. This roughly aligns with the Lancet estimates – they used a very conservative estimate, but allowed that the number could easily be much higher.”

The bombing of hospitals has left the health system on its knees. There have been repeated attacks on health workers and staff from aid agencies. The Norwegian Refugee Council states: “83% of required food aid does not make it into Gaza, up from 34% in 2023.

“This reduction means people in Gaza have gone from having an average of two meals a day to just one meal every other day. An estimated 50,000 children aged between six and 59 months urgently require treatment for malnutrition by the end of the year.”

Meanwhile, 1.87 million people are in need of shelter, with at least 60% of homes destroyed or damaged by January 2024. Tents for just 25,000 people have entered Gaza since May 2024. A million women in Gaza are now going without the personal hygiene supplies they need. That is to say nothing of the lack of basic medicinal supplies such as insulin and anaesthesia.

Repeated massacres have taken place, including upon people in Gaza attempting to source aid, such as the infamous “flour massacre” in February this year. The attack on human life in Gaza includes civilian and agricultural infrastructure.

Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, reports that Israel’s ground invasion has uprooted most of the orchards relied upon for food, and has systematically targeted farmland.

Israeli bombardment has also destroyed Gaza’s wastewater facilities. This has led to the spread of disease, including polio.

As Oxfam reports: “Polio is a waterborne disease and it is directly linked to the sanitation situation.

“The sanitation infrastructure has been damaged severely to the point that it is flooding the streets and the neighbourhoods, and people are basically living adjacent to puddles of sewage.”

The attack on journalism – foreign press are banned from entering the Strip, other than on tightly controlled visits with Israeli military – has claimed the lives of at least 128 media workers. Recently, Israeli troops stormed Al Jazeera’s headquarters in the West Bank, forcing it to shut down.

In addition, more than 80% of the schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. A UN press release states: “More than 5479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza.

“Thirteen public libraries, have been damaged or destroyed and at least 625,000 students have no access to education. Another 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques and three churches, have also been damaged or destroyed, including the Central Archives of Gaza, containing 150 years of history. Israa University, the last remaining university in Gaza was demolished by the Israeli military on 17 January 2024.”

The genocide is not just about the scale of the deaths, but about the eradication of the fundamentals of life, including a man-made famine. It is also about the destruction of Gaza’s history, and the attempt to make the place uninhabitable.

In addition, Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, has produced a report documenting abuse in Israeli jails: “Daily violence, physical violence, mental violence, humiliation, sleep deprivation, people are starved.”

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It goes on: “The Israeli prison system as a whole, in regard to Palestinians, has turned into a network of torture camps.”

Now, the Israeli state is on the cusp of launching a land invasion of Lebanon. After conducting what a former CIA director refers to as terrorism, in the form of the pager attack, the plan is to destabilise Lebanese society writ large.

A million Lebanese are now displaced, having fled their homes in the face of a barrage of aerial attacks. On September 23 alone, at least 558 people, including 50 children and 94 women were, with more than 1800 injured. More than 1000 people have now been killed in total.

After making his speech to the UN, which he referred to as the “house of darkness”, Netanyahu authorised the use of “bunker busters” to assassinate the leader of Hezbollah.

Untold numbers of civilians were killed in the process of this massive escalation. This, just hours after Western leaders called for diplomatic resolutions, rather than an expansion of the war.

That, though, is what Netanyahu wants, as the flow of American, British and European arms continues: a sprawling “civilisational” conflict into which the US is dragged ever more directly. In this project, the Israeli hostages still in Gaza barely factor, as protesters in Tel Aviv make clear on weekly demonstrations.

It is described as a regional war, but the geopolitical fault lines are global in dimension.

Every red line has been crossed, setting a nightmarish precedent for a century of war where anything goes.

This represents a threat to global security and to our common humanity. It must be stopped.