For nearly two years, Israel has waged a campaign of total annihilation against the Palestinian people. Israeli bombing, shelling, and shooting have killed at least 58,000 people and almost certainly far more. Thousands remain missing and presumed dead. Tens of thousands have died of disease, exposure, and starvation. More than 140,000 people have sustained life-altering injuries, and Israel has created the world’s largest cohort of children with amputated limbs. More than 50,000 children have been killed or injured. Israel has intentionally withheld food, water, medicine, and every other necessity of life in a coordinated campaign to crush a civilian population of more than two million people. Every day, the Israeli military systematically destroys as many homes, farms, schools, and mosques as possible, leaving behind a scarred, barren landscape with no recognizable structures left standing. Nearly everyone in Gaza has been repeatedly displaced. Although the violence is far more intense in Gaza, the genocide is not confined to that territory. In the West Bank, government-backed settlers have increased their attacks on Palestinians. More than 1,000 have been killed, thousands displaced, and more land stolen. This, too, is genocide.

And for nearly two years, Palestinians have been livestreaming their own extermination. They have lived through and witnessed unbearable cruelties. Yet, somehow, they have found the strength not only to survive the eradication of their family members, friends, and communities, but also to document and share those horrors with the world. We do not have to wait for the carnage to end to see the mounting atrocities as in earlier genocides. Palestinians are sharing the evidence of their children’s burned, decapitated, starved, and obliterated bodies. They have shown us their mothers, sons, fathers, aunts, uncles, daughters, and friends killed in bombings, drone assassinations, and food massacres. And they have shared with the world their immense grief as they experience the pain of those losses. Every life in Gaza matters. Palestinians are human beings, and their lives are important. Men, women, and children do not deserve to die so Israel can pursue its maximalist goal of an expanded, ethno-religiously homogeneous state.

However, despite the overwhelming and publicly available evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent and actions, no one with the power to stop it has done anything. Instead, the United States, the country with the most leverage over Israel, has done everything it can to ensure that the killing continues. The US fully backed Israel under Democrat Joe Biden, and it fully supports Israel under Republican Donald Trump. When decades of dispossession, military occupation, and apartheid escalated into outright genocide after October 7, 2023, Biden immediately ramped up US support for the violence. The US has provided nearly 70% of the weapons and 70% of the funding for Israel to continue its military assault. This is an American genocide.

Justice demands that Israel immediately end its atrocities. It must unilaterally end the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and a now-expanded Syrian territory. Palestinians do not have to negotiate under duress or compromise with their oppressors. No one must beg for their basic freedom. Israel, and its benefactor the United States, must pay financial reparations to the millions of Palestinians harmed over the past 77 years. A full process of reparation would entail truth-telling by Israeli war criminals and genuine contrition. Without caveat or exception, Palestinians must have their full right of return upheld. Israel must dismantle its structures of ethno-religious apartheid, and new institutions of equality and democracy should be developed in all the territory. Eventually, there should be sustained reconciliation processes, led by the victims. But that can only happen if Israel and Israelis recognize and take responsibility for the crimes committed. Unfortunately, Israel has proved unwilling to take any of those actions. It will not do what is necessary without compulsion.

Third parties have a duty to intervene to stop genocide. Therefore, other governments and people of the world should leverage the entire gamut of tools to end the genocide and finally liberate Palestinians from Israeli subjugation. Every government in the world must enact an immediate arms embargo, either unilaterally or through international bodies. Governments must sanction Israel and its civilian and military leaders. States must uphold their obligations to honor the International Criminal Court warrants, and arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Soldiers who have carried out genocide should also be detained and tried through national or international mechanisms. A total economic, diplomatic, and cultural boycott is necessary to pressure the Israeli government. And finally, it is well past time for an international peacekeeping force to interdict and repel Israeli aggression. If “humanitarian intervention” or “responsibility to protect” meant anything at all, there would be a multinational coalition to protect Palestinians and to force Israel to end its genocide.

Those efforts are the universal, international law-based course of action demanded in the face of any genocide, including Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity. Israel’s defenders will often claim that it is held to a double standard unfairly. This is a total inversion of reality. In fact, the issue those people have is that they do not want Israel to be held equally to the same standards as any other country. No one anywhere in the world has a right to claim territory and to take it from the people already living there. Permanent military occupation is a violation of international law. And genocide is obviously a crime no group, people, or country has a right to commit. That includes Israel. When you are used to dominance, equality feels like oppression.

The ongoing genocidal Israeli assault on all Palestinians is the apotheosis of the supremacist ideology that guides Israel’s actions. Genocidal sentiment is now common in Israeli society. Eighty-two percent of Jewish Israelis back the ethnic cleansing of Gaza; 56% support expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel; and 47% openly support genocide. In perhaps the most shocking and brazen articulation of that sentiment, Israeli broadcaster Elad Barashi Tweeted in February 2025: “Good morning, let there be a Shoa (Holocaust) [sic] in Gaza.” He also wrote: “I can’t understand the people here in the State of Israel who don’t want to fill Gaza with gas showers … or train cars … and finish this story! Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza.” Barashi faced no repercussions for expressing such a view because it is widespread.

Yet, after nearly two years of genocide and decades of ethnic cleansing and subjugation in full view of the world, some still deny reality. That is why it is so important to reiterate emphatically our commitment to justice for Palestinians. Anyone who still denies that this is genocide is directly complicit in enabling the horror to continue. Denial comes in many forms: blaming the victims; doubting the casualty figures; claiming Hamas is responsible for those killed by Israeli bombs; engaging in “terminological hairsplitting;” and ignoring more than 140 years of colonization and dispossession while hyper-focusing on the attacks of October 7, 2023. We must understand what was happening to Palestinians on October 6: occupation, apartheid, subjugation, and extreme violence.

Nothing in the situation is complicated. Genocide does not have two sides. The only thing that matters is stopping the killing. Ignore the calumnies. Resist the intensifying government attempts to censor and silence. Never give an inch to the bullying campaigns that seek to force you to ignore the evidence in front of your eyes. Do not argue or accede to any of the disingenuous framings. Hold fast to the facts and to your ethical intuition that mass killing is wrong, no matter who does it. Continue to work toward stopping it.

The post Palestinians Deserve to Live: End Israeli Genocide in All of Palestine appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.