If that headline shocks you, it shouldn’t.
As an outright extermination camp, Auschwitz stands alone. 1.2 million people—overwhelmingly Jews—were systematically starved, degraded in countless ways and in the end herded into showers where they were gassed to death, en masse. The world was shamed to have stood by. Auschwitz was part of what the Nazis called the “final solution.”
Yet look at Gaza and ask yourself: Where is this going? And where is the outcry against it?
In Gaza, over 2 million Palestinian people are being slaughtered, maimed, starved, humiliated, terrorized, and displaced by Israel. Their society is being destroyed, their homes reduced to rubble, their schools turned to ash, their land bulldozed, and their fields torn up. It has been over 70 days since any food, water, fuel or medical supplies have entered the fully blockaded area. The bombs have not stopped dropping, the horror seems to have no end.
Perhaps the most gut-wrenching marker of all, 96 percent of the children in Gaza questioned in a study feel their death is imminent, and almost half said that they wished to die. That’s children. Children who should be full of joy and energy, curiosity and hope, with their whole lives ahead of them. Instead, they wish for an end to the suffering, hunger and misery.
The essence and logic of genocide is the same everywhere: the conscious murder and systematic destruction of a whole people, making it impossible for them to live and survive.
Now is not the time to turn away. It is time to step up, and demand with all our hearts—this genocide must stop…and the U.S. must stop arming and supporting it!
Operation “Chariots of Genocide”
On Monday, May 5, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his cabinet had approved a new more “forceful” offensive in Gaza. Code-named “Gideon’s Chariots,” Israel calls for tens of thousands of Israeli troops to storm into Gaza and seize and hold all or nearly all of Gaza.1 Gaza’s 2+ million people would be forcibly displaced and squeezed into “sterile” areas—read internment camps—amounting to less than a quarter of Gaza’s already densely-populated territory.
These areas are to be located in Gaza’s south, along its border with Egypt. A military official said that a “voluntary transfer programme for Gaza residents… will be part of the operation’s goals." To translate: this would in reality be forced expulsion—following through on Israel's long-term goals and Trump's recent threats that “We’re going to have Gaza... We’re going to take it.”2
Israel—not the UN or other humanitarian organizations—would take control of food and aid distribution.3
“We are finally going to conquer the Gaza Strip”
Unleashing its customary barrage of lies, dutifully repeated by major U.S. media outlets, Israel claims its operation is aimed at freeing the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas,4 and that Gaza’s population has to be moved for its own “protection.”
Given the more than 62,000 Palestinians Israel has slaughtered over the past 16 months—and continues to slaughter—and their ongoing war of starvation, any talk from Israel about “protecting” Palestinians is obscene and insulting.
But let’s let those now ruling Israel speak for themselves. Here’s what Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s fascist finance minister and key member of Netanyahu’s cabinet, has said just in the last week or so:
- “We’re occupying Gaza to stay,” “There will be no more entering and leaving.”
- “We are finally going to conquer the Gaza Strip. We are no longer afraid of the word 'occupation.' We are conquering Gaza, clearing it out and taking control of every area we enter.”
- "...we can declare that we have won. What will the picture look like? Gaza is completely destroyed," and its Palestinian population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”
Significant Israeli media outlets such as Israel's Channel 14 News have aired hundreds of similar statements, openly calling for genocide: "Now it really needs to be total annihilation. We shouldn't be afraid of terms like humanitarian disaster." "We need to bomb indiscriminately.” “Gaza, as it exists today, must be wiped out." “There are no innocents.” Gazans are "animals" who must be "exterminated." "The more humane solution is to starve them, okay? I think Israel's interest is famine and humanitarian disaster in Gaza."
As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian said last year, “Israel has done something truly incredible—Israel has managed to turn Jews into Nazis!”
In Gaza City, a truck takes the bodies of some of the 29 victims from an Israeli army strike on a restaurant, May 7, 2025. Photo: AP/Jehad Alshrafi
On May 8, a number of civil society organizations filed a petition with Israel's High Court of Justice arguing that Channel 14 had “broadcast hundreds of statements amounting to incitement to genocide, violence, and racism.” The petition was also directed against Israel's attorney general, the state prosecutor, and the Israel Police, for failing to open a criminal investigation against Channel 14. So far there has been no response from the High Court.5
“An Engineered System of Deprivation”
What will Israel’s new offensive mean for the people of Gaza?
More than 1.9 million Palestinians—some 90 percent of Gaza’s population—have already been displaced since Israel’s onslaught began over 20 months ago. Many of them multiple times. Almost all of Gaza’s homes and residences have been destroyed, forcing people to seek refuge in tents, temporary shelters or abandoned buildings.
Already mass starvation is spreading by the day because of Israel’s blockade of food, water, medicines and other needed goods. Officials in Gaza warn that “3,500 young children face imminent death from starvation, another 70,000 children are being hospitalized for severe malnutrition, and 1.1 million Palestinian children lack the minimum nutritional requirements for survival.”6
In a powerful call to conscience (This Is the Moment of Moral Reckoning in Gaza), Sean Carroll writes, “Two million Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them children, are now surviving on a single meal every two or three days. At makeshift clinics run by my relief organization, American Near East Refugee Aid, signs of prolonged starvation are becoming more frequent and alarming.”
“Israel’s blockade—and the deliberate delays, denials and excessive security procedures that surround it—is not just a failure of logistics,” he continues. “It is an engineered system of deprivation.”7
Now Israel’s new, more aggressive offensive promises massive destruction of what’s left of Gaza’s infrastructure, and further mass deaths of civilians. And it means Israel is basically declaring that people in Gaza will be prevented from returning to their homes—perhaps ever.
“We don’t want to even hear the word ‘evacuation’ again,” said one displaced Palestinian living in a makeshift shelter in northern Gaza. He and his family had been displaced at least six times already. “Displacement means death, humiliation, homelessness.”
See box: “Voices from the Genocide.”
Israel’s Proposed “Aid Hubs”—Aiding Forced Displacement
As part of its promised new offensive, Israel has announced a plan to create its own “hubs” in southern Gaza in order to distribute needed aid, and supposedly prevent it from being stolen by Hamas. This is a constantly repeated lie that has been debunked repeatedly, including by aid agencies and workers on the ground.8
This isn’t only a cynical effort to stop worldwide outrage over its deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war—a war crime. It is also designed to facilitate the forced displacement and possible forced expulsion of the Palestinians in Gaza. Not only that, Israel’s “aid” won’t even begin to end the starvation in Gaza.
Israel has already launched a major assault on UNRWA,9 the main UN organization bringing aid to Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. It’s also working to sideline other humanitarian organizations. Taking over aid flowing into Gaza would give it an even tighter stranglehold over life itself.
Israel’s plan calls for allowing in 60 trucks of aid per day which would be distributed by U.S. contractors at 6 to 10 aid hubs. There are now 400 aid distribution centers across Gaza (which mostly can’t function due to the blockade). During the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas earlier this year, some 600 trucks of aid were entering Gaza every day. And there’s been no mention in these plans of providing healthcare, sanitation, water, fuel or other necessities of life.
So, Israel’s “aid hubs” don’t come anywhere near ending hunger, starvation or the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Locating the hubs in the south is a means of forcing Gazans out of the entire northern part of Gaza. Along the way, they’ll be screened, supposedly to prevent any Hamas “infiltration,” but more likely in order to create a registry of the population. And when they get to the hubs, they’d have to collect aid “under the watchful gaze of private U.S. security contractors, who would use facial recognition technology to vet who receives it.” Yes, American security contractors! This raises the real prospect of being denied aid, interrogated, detained or even killed by Israeli or, now, security forces run by Americans.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has condemned Israel’s plan and said it would not take part in it: "The design of the plan presented to us will mean large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies," adding that the plan "contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles... It is dangerous, driving civilians into militarized zones to collect rations… while further entrenching forced displacement.”
“This is a scheme to make it seem like this is about aid,” one humanitarian worker said, “but what it’s really about is entrenching military occupation of Gaza.”
Staunch Trump Regime Backing for Israel’s Genocide—Use of Starvation as Weapon of War
The fascist Trump regime continues to fully back Israel as it starves people in Gaza, repeating the lie that the starvation is being caused by Hamas. At a recent press conference, Trump said, "We’re going to help the people of Gaza get some food. People are starving, and we’re going to help them get some food. A lot of people are making it very, very bad. Hamas is making it impossible because they’re taking everything that’s brought in. But we’re gonna help the people of Gaza because they are being treated very badly by Hamas."
Meanwhile it is Israel who controls the entry points. It is Israel that is blocking food aid trucks from coming in. It is Israel who is preventing fuel from entering. It is Israel that has turned off the electricity to Gaza! And it is Israel dropping U.S.-made bombs on the people of Gaza.
In an even further sick twist, the U.S. and Israel are discussing the possibility that an "American official" would lead a "temporary post-war administration of Gaza." According to Reuters, “The United States and Israel have discussed the possibility of Washington leading a temporary post-war administration of Gaza… [centering] around a transitional government headed by a U.S. official that would oversee Gaza until it had been demilitarized and stabilized, and a viable Palestinian administration had emerged.”10
The Bigger Picture
This underscores the urgent need for people in this country to stand up in mass resistance to demand: Stop the U.S./Israeli Genocide of the Palestinian People! It underscores the urgent need for everyone to stand up against the fascist repression of voices standing up against the genocide. And it underscores as well the need to dig into the source of this horror within this capitalist-imperialist system and to seek out and actively grapple with the revolutionary communist analysis and alternative posed by Bob Avakian.
As Bob Avakian has emphasized:
We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.
Voices from Israel’s Genocide
“Today is the last day. What will we eat? We will die of hunger, for the sake of our children. We are still alive because of the communal kitchen. We don’t cook or bake or do anything, only heating the food that we beg to take. If it weren’t for the communal kitchen, we would have died. For the sake of our children, what shall we do? They said today is the last day. What shall we do? What should I feed them tomorrow?”
-Displaced Palestinian mother Huda Abu Diyya
“We are living a real famine, not metaphorically, but hunger that grips the gut, turning every meal into a battle and every loaf of bread into a small victory. People race each other for a handful of flour. They stand in the long lines, not to buy food, but to search for it. Markets are empty, and the shelves mourn themselves. Torn bags and empty boxes have become a daily scene. Vegetables, one or two types hardly worth mentioning, are sold at a price — prices beyond belief. A single piece is sold, like a pear, in an auction. No fruit, no milk, no eggs, no oil. Everything is rare, and everything is expensive, even water. People now cook what’s left of lentils as if they are cooking hope.
“And mothers, like me, hide our hunger so our children won’t see it. Amir, my son, asks me every day, ‘Mom, when will we eat pizza again?’ I say, ‘Soon,’ and I smile at him while my heart breaks piece by piece. Karim doesn’t speak much, but he runs after anything that looks like food, as if instinct has outrun language.”
-Duha Latif, a teacher from Gaza, mother of two young children
“This annihilation is not only continuing, but the levels that I saw with my own eyes, it’s just—there are no more words to use—‘unbearable,’ ‘horrific,’ ‘indescribable’… We have this horrific trifecta of starvation, of lack of medicine and supplies, and bombings.”
Pediatric nurse Sandra Adler Killen, just returned from her third medical mission to Gaza
“Because of the blockade, hunger is part of our daily reality now. It is deep and cruel, and there is no relief
“It has been more than 30 hours since I last ate. At times, I go as long as two days without food. For most people around the world, the word hunger is a fleeting feeling, easily fixed with a trip to the kitchen or a nearby store. Saying “I’m hungry” is routine, almost meaningless. But imagine if every time you felt hungry, there was nothing to eat - no food, no relief, just emptiness. This has been my daily reality in the Gaza Strip for over a month....
“Children in the Gaza Strip have begun to die of hunger. Unlike adults, they cannot endure such suffering. I think of them, imagining the food they long for but can’t have – and the thought is heartbreaking....
“It feels as though the Gaza Strip is no longer part of this world, as if we’re living in some distant, forgotten galaxy. Our lives are marked by suffering and strangeness, while the rest of the world carries on as if our reality doesn’t exist.
“I never truly understood the feeling of hunger – its depth, its cruelty, its ugliness – until I experienced it fully, in every painful detail.”
