Seven months and one day have passed since Hamas executed the execrable slaughter of at least 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, and the Netanyahu Government began the no less execrable slaughter of Gazans. I don’t remember if they achieved a draw in casualties that same day, but it was clear to us that the thirst for revenge went far beyond a draw.
In seven months and one day, at least 35,000 deaths have been recorded. Criminals thus please a cruel, harsh, unrelenting and soulless god, that of Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah. We read: “You don’t have to feel sorry, it will be paid life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot”. And this they do, under the orders of the current Ultra-Orthodox Government of Netanyahu, devoutly fulfilling the Old Testament today modernized by the ruling Likud, which demands thirty eyes for each eye, thirty teeth for each tooth and thirty hands for each hand.
Sometimes numbers are just numbers. But once a certain threshold of barbarism is passed, what was only quantitative becomes qualitative, and in this case the threshold has been crossed by a State that, protected by the right to defend itself from terrorist attacks, ignores laws and international agreements and exterminates civilians without restraint, carrying out a genocide of Palestinians as has happened on other occasions with Armenians, Kurds, Tutsis or with the Jews themselves in the most abominable extermination of the 20th century.
With the invasion of Rafah, Netanyahu and the Government of Israel intend to complete the second step of the Palestinian Shoah. They have already achieved the first: 35,000 innocents dead and Gaza razed to the ground. The third step, if the world does not prevent it, will be the West Bank. And, for now, the world does not prevent anything. There haven’t even been cries of protest, just some mutterings… and the resounding silence of most European countries. Meanwhile, our ability to be horrified wears away. That is why it is appropriate to talk about it again, to repeat what we already know, or if the words are already worn out, to contemplate the photographs of Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian photojournalist who, for some time and despite the enormous difficulties, has been documenting the massacre (the images they can be found on Instagram for anyone who at some point has the heart and courage to step out of their comfort zone and face a bloodbath).
