What Israel Is Doing To The People Of Gaza Is Not “Defending Themselves.” It’s a Genocidal Massacre.

So listen, I realize that many of your collective eyes glaze over when people start talking about the Bible… That being said, I’m going to start off this totally-non-controversial blog post by talking about the Bible. If you’re not familiar with the Bible, that’s totally fine. I’m going to summarize part of it: In the Biblical story of the Jewish people, the people of Israel were taken as slaves in Egypt. Their escaping bondage is a HUGE part of the Old Testament story and of the Jewish faith. When the law was being laid out, all through Deuteronomy the people were told OVER AND OVER to REMEMBER. “Remember that YOU were slaves in Egypt.”

When they were told not to oppress workers who are poor & needy…
When they were told to treat people fairly…
When they were told to leave part of their fields to feed the foreigner, the fatherless, & the widow…
When they were told to forgive debt & commanded to observe the Year of Jubilee…

They were told to REMEMBER. You KNOW how awful & evil the oppression of evil of Egypt was… You KNOW how it felt… REMEMBER that awfulness & evil, & uses those memories to be sure to never treat others with those same acts of oppression.

There’s something about knowing how oppression feels that SHOULD inform & hopefully alter people’s actions when & if they ever find themselves in the position of oppressing others… But you have to remember. This is why, later on, when he told a story of a man who was forgiven a great debt, but had no grace for someone who owed him just a little bit, a Rabbi named Jesus came down so hard on the guy whose large debt was cancelled, but he beat up the poor schmuck who owed him a little: He should have known better. I have written about this before…

About 80 years ago, millions & millions of Jewish people were the victims of a genocidal campaign. People like to paint the Holocaust as if it were the actions of one evil madman… But there are many ways people support genocide. Some support it actively, some support it by going along with the crowd, and some support it staying silent when they know they should be speaking up. And please hear me when I say this: WHAT ISRAEL IS DOING TO GAZA RIGHT NOW IS AN ACT OF GENOCIDE.

One month ago today, Hamas militants led a coordinated attack on both military & civilian targets. In one day they killed over 350 members of the Israeli military & police, and they targeted & murdered over 1000 Israeli civilians. They also took over 200 civilians and soldiers hostage. These murders were brutal & horrific, they were war crimes, and they were almost universally condemned. And when people commit war crimes, the international community must come together to decry those actions, followed by working toward consequences for those crimes and taking those criminals out of power. Instead, how Israel has responded is by deciding to bomb everywhere they think a Hamas member might be, regardless of how many civilians are in the same area. These bombings have killed anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 Palestinians… Thousands & thousands of whom are children.

Under the guise of retaliation for the October 7th attacks, Israel has engaged in what can only be described as a genocidal attack on the people living in Gaza. There are people who study genocide in the hopes of preventing it, and those people have observed 10 stages of genocide. By any estimation, what Israel is doing to the people living in Gaza in the late stages of the 10 stages of genocide. Read through these stages… This is full-on genocide.

The people living in Gaza are living in the world’s biggest open-air prison. They live in a permanent state of apartheid. Just under 50% of the people living there are children. Israel is using white phosphorous bombs—an international war crime. They have turned off electricity & water to the people living in Gaza. Multiple times, Israel has bombed refugee sites, killing hundreds. They have killed thousands of children as they openly attack civilian sites. Nearly HALF of the housing units in Gaza—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—have been destroyed by the bombs being dropped by Israel.

And they do all of these horrific things with the support of the United States government. As the world cries out for a ceasefire, American politicians on both sides of the aisle have reaffirmed their support for Israel’s war crimes. It seriously makes me feel insane. Ta-Nehisi Coates is smarter & more eloquent than I could ever hope to be, and I need you to watch this video of him talking about how what is happening in Palestine is NOT complicated. Yes, the history of the region is complicated… But the MORALITY of what is currently happening is very clear: It’s an occupation. It’s oppression. It’s apartheid. It’s genocide. Please, please watch this video:

Dozens of journalists have been killed. You can find the translation in the comments of the tweet below, but you really don’t even need it. You can see the emotion pouring from this journalist’s whole body as he talks about the atrocities he has seen and the murdered family of his colleague, killed by Israeli bombs.

These pictures and these videos break my heart. I don’t want to post it here, but here is a link to video the aftermath of an Israeli attack on an ambulance because they thought a member of Hamas might be in one of the ambulances (Caution: It is VERY graphic).

Not everyone is staying silent. Some politicians and some celebrities are speaking up…

What feels most maddening is that any criticism of the war crimes Israel continues to commit in Gaza is met with accusations of antisemitism. And make no mistake, there is plenty of antisemitism out there… It is horrible & harmful, and where we see it, we need to loudly and consistently call it out. But for some people, any support for the Palestinian people or of a free Palestinian state is interpreted as anti-semitism. Wanting Israel to stop killing civilians and children who are trapped in a modern day concentration camp does NOT mean that you are antisemitic.

A common refrain is that the people of Gaza kind of had this coming… Like “this is what they get for voting for Hamas.” But 47.3% of Gaza’s population are kids. 28% of the population is under NINE YEARS OLD. The last election where Hamas was elected into leadership was held in 2006. The nearly 5000 kids that Israel has killed were NOT voting in that election… They weren’t even born yet. And they have grown up in the poverty & incredible hardship that comes with living in a strict land & sea blockade—enforced by Israel—that prevents food, medicine, & people from moving across the border.

A few days ago, the mother of this five year old girl attempted to celebrate her daughter’s birthday while living in the war zone that is Gaza. The mother’s name is Doaa. She had her Ph.D. and was living in Gaza working as an Arabic and English instructor. About a week ago, she tweeted about how hard it was to simply find a cupcake to celebrate her daughter’s birthday. Three days ago, she & another of her daughters (7 years old) were killed by an Israeli airstrike. Let this break your heart. This has got to stop.

These children being slaughtered are not terrorists. They are not members of Hamas. And they are NOT an acceptable casualty of war.

Imagine there was a violent gang was living somewhere in your neighborhood. And after a series of gang murders, the police decided to drop bombs on houses, schools, and hospitals in order to weed out the gang members. This is what is happening in Gaza. And it is not okay. Listen—If I am ever taken as a hostage, raped, or murdered by terrible people, and then those terrible people hide in a school or a hospital, I’d like to go on record as saying that I do NOT want you bomb that school or hospital—killing hundreds of kids in the bombings—because you think that’s the only way to get the bad guys. If you think that I would want you to do something like this, you don’t know me at all. This kind of thinking seems so monstrous to me.

So what can we do? We need to be putting as much pressure as possible on our representatives to CALL FOR A CEASEFIRE IMMEDIATELY. If you don’t know who your representatives are, you can put your zip code in ON THIS WEBSITE and it will tell you their name & give you their number. CALL THEM. In addition to that, speak up! Amplify the voices of people crying out for an end to the violence & carnage & genocide happening in Gaza right now. I guess that’s why I’m writing this: I mean, I want to inform people… Part of me is just angry & wants to vent… But really, a big part of me just wants to be on the record as speaking out AGAINST the genocide taking place right now. Calling for a ceasefire, calling for a free Palestine, and calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal attacks against the people of Gaza is NOT antisemitism. It’s just basic morality.

Thank you so much for reading. I have written on this subject before (HERE and HERE). It’s interesting to see my perspective progress… But one thing that HASN’T changed is that I believe God (in however the definition of that word has evolved for me) is more concerned with being on the side of the oppressed than God is concerned about who is getting the theology “right” (and I haven’t touched on the craziness that is Evangelicals believing that this conflict HAS to happen for Jesus to return). But without a doubt, the people of Gaza are being oppressed right now. PLEASE call your representative and demand a ceasefire. If you feel moved by the things I’ve written here, you can share this post. And if you value my writing and this blog, you can support me by BECOMING A PATRON or by leaving a tip ON PAYPAL or by Venmoing me at chris-boeskool