Hamas is a disgusting terrorist organization. Its charter, which refers to Jewish people as “the enemy,” calls for a constant struggle until they are “vanquished.” It calls for their annihilation. The organization’s attack on Oct. 7 led to the single bloodiest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust. Terrorists ransacked and burned homes, kidnapped hundreds of civilians, and murdered thousands more. For a people who have faced persecution, pogroms, and the Holocaust, Hamas is the embodiment of everything they’ve feared for centuries. There are not words strong enough to condemn the organization, its actions, and its members. Its indiscriminate targeting and murder of Israeli civilians has not and will never bring much-needed justice and liberation to the Palestinian people.

In response to Hamas’ attack, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to exact an “unprecedented price” from the enemy. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip, shutting off supply chains of food, fuel, electricity, and water to over 2 million innocent Palestinian civilians. He claimed that Israel was “fighting human animals” and was “acting accordingly.” 

Regardless of whether he was talking about the Palestinian people or about Hamas, the people of Gaza have been facing near-constant bombardment and dwindling access to clean water, electricity, and food for the past month. The Israeli government has repeatedly ordered the evacuation of 1.1 million people to Southern Gaza ahead of a land invasion, but has continued airstrikes along safe routes, resulting in at least 70 dead as of Oct. 15, and widespread fears among Gazans in the North as they decide whether to flee. The continuous Israeli bombardment has led some to see the choice as risking death in their homes or just somewhere else in Gaza. 

As of Oct. 30, approximately 350,000 civilians are trapped and facing a large-scale invasion as Israeli airstrikes have rendered the road into the South of Gaza unusable. From Oct. 27 to Oct. 29, the Israeli government shut off Gaza’s internet and phone services and commenced with some of its most intense bombings since the start of its siege. According to NPR reporters, this has decimated rescue efforts within Gaza as people have been unable to call for aid or ambulances.

When I told people in Texas that I would be attending WashU, they told me that the school might be too left-leaning, even for me. When I got to campus, I was relieved to hear people talk about U.S. war crimes in Vietnam and Iraq with the horror and revulsion that they deserved. When I brought up Nixon and Kissinger’s American carpet-bombing of Cambodia which killed thousands of innocent people, I was pleasantly surprised to hear fellow students condemn those war crimes. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the people I spoke to say that the US invasion of Iraq was unjust. Even the people I spoke to who disagreed with the now-infamous protest against the flags on Mudd Field on Sept. 11, 2021 acknowledged that the person responsible was right to bring attention to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians that were killed as a result of the U.S. war on terror. 

Over the past few weeks, I have seen these same students turn around and justify the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. In response to the dropping of 6,000 bombs in 5 days on one of the most densely packed areas in the world, I have heard students claim that Israel has a right to defend itself. This issue has been framed as an issue of justice — as the state of Israel striking back against evil forces who seek to destroy it. Yet, I don’t understand how murdering more than 8,000 Palestinian civilians and injuring tens of thousands more is necessary to achieve justice. I don’t understand how forcibly removing millions of people from their homes and then turning them into rubble helps Israel remain secure. 

How does the constant bombardment of 2.1 million civilians — almost half of whom are under 18 —  by the 4th strongest military in the world achieve any measure of justice? What good can come of the murder of thousands of innocent Palestinians? What good can come out of destroying the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Gazans? How does depriving almost 1 million children of food, water, and electricity bring justice to anyone? 

The bombings have displaced more than half of Gaza’s people from their homes — an estimated 1.4 million people. In addition to those already displaced, the Housing Ministry in Gaza has reported that 45% of homes in the Strip have been either destroyed, rendered completely uninhabitable, or been damaged in some way. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been rendered permanently homeless while others remain unsure whether their homes will continue to remain standing or functional. As death tolls rise and Israeli bombings continue, these numbers have risen faster than Gazan officials can accurately count. How does sieging and traumatizing an entire region of people do anything to deter terrorism? In fact, doesn’t it do the opposite? 

This article, along with any article talking about the Israel-Hamas war, is irresponsibly incomplete without mentioning the on-the-ground impact of the constant bombardment on Gazan civilians. Day after day, horrific accounts have flooded out of Gaza, describing the hellish conditions to which innocent people are being subjected. There have been reports of the Israeli military firing shells filled with white phosphorus — a gas which causes second- or third-degree burns and is easily absorbed into the bloodstream upon contact — near civilian populations. Health workers for Doctors without Borders have reported multiple instances of Israeli airstrikes targeting ambulances (which is a war crime), leading to Gazans driving injured and dead bodies to the hospital in personal cars since they believe it to be potentially safer. Over Halloween weekend, as Israel shut off all communications in Gaza ahead of its intense bombings, civilians found themselves in the dark and unable to contact any emergency services while facing heavy bombardment from fighter jets. On October 31st, Israeli airstrikes destroyed multiple apartment buildings in a refugee camp, killing at least 50 civilians and injuring hundreds more. 

Amidst the constant bombardment and the rubble, Gazans have fled to hospitals in the hopes that they will not be bombed there. Hospitals across Gaza are filled with dead, dying, injured, and scared innocents while doctors scramble to do what they can. These medical facilities are running out of basic medical supplies, clean water, anesthesia, operating room space, and personnel to tend to all those who are injured. Even then, medics have reported being unable to operate on anything beyond dire and life-saving procedures as Gaza faces fuel depletion. Doctors have resorted to using vinegar instead of antiseptic, and doctors have claimed that, despite receiving training on how to handle mass casualties from the WHO, there is no training in the world to prepare someone for this scale of injury and death. As morgues fill up with the dead, ice cream trucks are being used to store dead bodies. Shifa Hospital in Gaza City has already been forced to dig a mass grave for its bodies to prevent plague and infection. In this conflict, the Israeli government has the power to plunge Gaza into darkness, cut off any forms of communications, and turn the region into a rubble filled strip with dead bodies littering the streets. Yet somehow, people continue to claim that the Israeli state is still only “defending itself.”

What have Palestinians done to deserve this treatment?. Are we to sit and pretend like we shouldn’t be horrified as people suffer through a war zone for something they have no control over? Are we to sit and pretend that innocent deaths can be fixed with more innocent deaths from the other side? Are we to sit and stay silent as millions of innocents are murdered, traumatized, and bombed in the name of some false sense of justice? As we oppose a ceasefire in the U.N.,  the United States government is complicit in the brutalization and murder of millions of innocent people whose only “crime” is that they are Palestinians living in Gaza while Hamas is in power.

Hamas was elected without a popular majority in Gaza 17 years ago and has not since held an election. The fighters in its military wing, al-Qassem, remain in Gaza to conduct operations, and they still hold over 200 hostages from their Oct. 7 attack. Militants deliberately conduct their attacks near important infrastructure and civilian centers, effectively using civilians as human shields. Citing these facts, I have seen people rationalize the destruction that Israel has rained down on the Gaza Strip. While doing so, no one is willing to acknowledge the horrific reality of Israel’s response if left unchecked. If Israel wants to eliminate Hamas’ military capabilities with its bombings and if Hamas is hiding in schools, hospitals, homes, and mosques, then Israel must eventually eliminate every school, hospital, home, and mosque until there’s nowhere left to hide. 

I have sat in quiet horror as I’ve heard the people around me endorse the ethnic cleansing of a region, arguing that Israel is showing people mercy by simply removing them and planning to raze their homes instead of outright starving and murdering them. Every day, I read accounts of people writing their own eulogies from Gaza, teenagers who are younger than me knowing that they are going to die, and releasing some post on social media hoping that someone will see. I don’t know how badly this will end, nor do I know if there will ever be a way to move forward after the commencement of Israel’s assuredly bloody ground invasion. However, I do know that those who claim that this continued mass murder can bring any measure of peace or justice to the region are either lying, willfully ignorant, or some combination of both. Those who continue to support the Israeli military actions in Gaza or remain silent in the face of this horror remain complicit in an ongoing atrocity.